The title comes from Kissinger's characterization of Ellsberg as "the most dangerous man in America." Ironically, the Harvard grad, hard-core cold warrior and former Marine lt. went to work in a very high staff position at the Pentagon on the day of the Gulf of Tonkin attacks. Within days the 33-year-old knew McNamara had lied to Congress and the President to the American public. A year later, with the war escalating significantly, Ellsberg was sent on a 6-week tour of Vietnam. He later went back for two years as part of the Saigon Embassy staff. His knowledge and understanding of what was going on on the ground was extensive. He became more and more disillusioned as he watched Genl. Westmoreland and LBJ keep up the rhetoric, while completely ignoring the truth. He went to work at the Rand Corporation, a think tank with an extensive consulting relationship with the Pentagon. He had maintained his top-secret classification and asked Mort Halperin, Kissinger's deputy, if he could read the 'Pentagon Papers'. It was a project on crisis decision making, Ellsberg's academic specialty, initiated by MacNamara when Mac began to despair of our efforts in Vietnam. Ellsberg had actually worked on the project during his last tour in Washington. As he read through them in 1969, he later recalled "What I had in my safe at Rand was seven thousand pages of documentary evidence of lying, by four presidents and their administrations over twenty-three years." There were only fifteen copies. He began clandestinely photocopying number 16. Unable to get either Senator Fullbright or McGovern to hold hearings on the Papers, he brought the story to Neil Sheehan of the NYTimes. One weekend while Ellsberg and his wife were away, Sheehan and his wife entered the Ellsberg apartment, removed, copied and replaced Ellsberg's copy. The Times had their own copy and the commitment from the top to publish the "story of the century". The articles began on Sunday, June 13, 1971. When the Nixon administration obtained an injunction against the Times, Ellsberg gave a copy to the Washington Post. The Post was enjoined after one day of publication. Eventually, 17 newspapers received parts of and published the Pentagon Papers, while the matter went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court heard the case on June 26th; Ellsberg surrendered on the 28th, the same day Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska began reading from the Papers in the Senate and placed them in the Congressional Record. That same day, in a 6-3 decision the Court supported the newspapers. Hugo Black wrote, "In revealing the workings of the government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely what the Founders hoped and trusted they would do." When Ellsworth went to trial in January, 1973, Watergate was unravelling and the burglary of his psychiatrist's office came to light. Then John Ehrlichman offered the presiding judge the top job at the FBI. In May, a motion to dismiss was granted and Ellsberg was free. He is one of the few principals of the era still alive today.
In July of 1971, I was at 22, unwillingly and because of my low draft number, in a six week R.O.T.C. training camp at Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA. I saw one of the officers painfully hunched over newspaper reports of the decision. We had a 3 day leave and I went back to NYC for a weekend. Reading about the falsehoods, misconceptions and deceits on our road to war, confirming the futility of it all was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. I've long been a fan of Ellsberg and an admirer of the Times and the Post. This well-written book had me at page one.
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