tayaneuro.blogg.se - Pentagon papers

Despite expecting a lifetime prison sentence, Ellsberg pushed forward with his plan to leak the papers, inspired by jailed anti-draft protesters. He viewed Russo as trustworthy because the man had been disgraced and fired from Rand for compiling reports exposing the use of torture by US-backed Vietnamese forces.

Having become disgusted with the war, he discussed with his friend and colleague Tony Russo the possibility of releasing the documents. We know this, of course, because Robert McNamara kind of sucked at keeping secrets.ĭaniel Ellsberg at the time was an employee at the Rand Corporation who was involved with compiling the report. The completed study was 47 volumes long, totaling 7,000 pages. This aim resulted in tight restrictions for the research team, preventing them from requesting interviews, contacting the military, or consulting with other departments.

Aiming to create a comprehensive and truthful history of the war, McNamara placed the project in the hands of his most trusted colleagues and strove to keep the secret from the White House. According to Ellsberg, McNamara had already begun to intensely regret his decision to urge President Johnson to keep bombing Vietnam. In 1967, Defense Secretary McNamara commissioned a study of the Vietnam War, motivated by his increasing fear that the war was not winnable. Daniel Ellsberg, interview on NPR in 2018. “ ”ombs were falling in Vietnam at that time, and I wanted to shorten that war as much as I could. Government's National Declassification Center finally declassified the entirety of the Pentagon Papers with no redactions in 2011 to mark the 40 th anniversary of the leak.

This was definitely the only time Nixon was ever involved in a scandal where someone broke into a building for political reasons. However, the charges were dismissed when the court discovered that Nixon had ordered a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in an attempt to uncover discrediting personal information. Īuthorities charged the whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, and his accomplice, Anthony Russo, with espionage, theft of government property, and conspiracy. The Nixon administration filed an injunction blocking further publishing of classified material, but the Supreme Court overturned the movement in the landmark press-freedom case New York Times Co. The New York Times and the Washington Post both published stories about the contents of the Pentagon Papers, just as they should have. Naturally, the disclosure of this information hit the US public sphere like a bombshell. There probably wasn't any single document that caused the most outrage it was simply the cumulative knowledge that the United States government spent decades railroading the country into a foreign-policy disaster that infuriated readers most.

that the Johnson and Nixon administrations expanded the scope of the Indo-China war to include Cambodia and Laos in a campaign subsequently known in America as the "Secret War".

that the Eisenhower administration intentionally sank a Vietnamese peaceful reunification and elections deal in 1954.

that the Kennedy administration helped assassinate a South Vietnamese President.

Specific revelations within the Pentagon Papers include: Compiled by Ellsberg himself, the Pentagon Papers are what he describes as "evidence of a quarter century of aggression, broken treaties, deceptions, stolen elections, lies and murder." The report gained notoriety after Daniel Ellsberg leaked much of its content to the press in 1971. The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a formerly classified study commissioned by United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara regarding the history of American involvement in Indochina both before and during the Vietnam War. “ ”To see the conflict and our part in it as a tragedy without villains, war crimes without criminals, lies without liars, espouses and promulgates a view of process, roles and motives that is not only grossly mistaken but which underwrites deceits that have served a succession of Presidents.