Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

I will start with a quote: A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. James Madison, drafter of the first amendment Once a self-described cold warrior, Daniel Ellsberg, a published expert in game theory who holds Harvard Ph.D. in Economics, has also been an analyst for the government and the Rand Corporation and, most significantly, the man who released the Pentagon Papers, which ultimately brought down the Nixon administration and forced the US out of Vietnam. In Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg finally tells his story of one of the most important periods in US History and the central role he played in it. Starting with his analysis of the Tonkin Gulf incidents, which led to the increased involvement of the US in Vietnam in 1961, Ellsberg leads the reader through an insider's tour of the intelligence community, the upper echelons of the administration and even the in-country conditions of Vietnam during the war . He does this on his way to explaining how he went from supporting the war as a way to prevent nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union to risking life in prison to leak the 7,000 pages of Top Secret documents that came to be known at the Pentagon Papers in a desperate attempt to stop the destruction both of US soldiers and the people and country of Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers themselves reveal the systematic deception of the American people about the scope of our actual and intended involvement in the Vietnam war, a history of deception which actually predates formal US involvement. Secrets reveals far more. Secrets reads like a Tom Clancy novel in some respects: while the Nixon administration is ordering G. Gordon Liddy and the Watergate Plumbers to steal confidential records from Ellsberg's psychoanalyst in California and to mount a physically debilitating attack on Ellsberg at a public appearance in Washington, Ellsberg and his friends are providing the New York Times and other newspapers with the Pentagon Papers. As subsequent newspapers are blocked by Justice Department injunctions from publishing what Ellsberg has provided them, Ellsberg and others courageously provide copies of the Top Secret documents to other media outlets. One of the most disturbing revelations of Secrets is the lengths to which the US Government went to try to in trying silence Ellsberg and to continue its known-to-be-futile efforts in Vietnam. John Mitchell, Nixon's Attorney General, even tried to override the 1st Amendment for the first time in history, filing an injunction against the New York Times and three other papers for printing the Pentagon Papers at all. Aside from being an important historical document, Secrets is a nearly confessional look into the hear

Like many others I was sucked into the Vietnam war against my will. I paid for what I thought was LBJ's war with my blood and sanity. What "SECRETS" does is to fill in the blanks with the background of the political agendas of a number of presidential administrations. "SECRETS" validates suspicions some of us have had for more than thirty years. "SECRETS" is the memoir of one person, Daniel Ellsberg, who took a stand on the side of humanity and morality in an effort to end the Vietnam war and topple the corrupt and insatiable desire for ultimate power thatwould have been Richard M. Nixon's had it not been for the release of the Pentagon Papers."SECRETS" is a story of patriotism at its finest, where one man risked everything in an effort to disclose the truth about power and war conducted by the United States Government. Reading "SECRETS" exposes war for what it really is, a manipulative tool of big business and government order.If more Americans would read this book they would become aware enough to argue whether or not we should ever engage in the brutality and ignorance of war again."SECRETS" should be required reading for anyone in America who believes him/herself to be a patriot.Bob Algie

After finding this book quite by accident while browsing through the wonderful Concord bookstore the other day, I was astounded to find how relevant and interesting a story author Daniel Ellsberg manages to conjure up after all this time regarding his legendary experience leading up to and including the leaking, release and publication of the infamous "Pentagon Papers' by the New York Times. As he explains early in the long yet fascinating monologue, he fully expected to be sentenced to a long prison sentence for having secreted a copy of the highly classified Department of Defense's official history of the American Government's policy and involvement in Vietnam. The report was a damning confirmation of the worst fears of the anti-war movement, and provided overwhelming evidence of the cynical, manipulative, and deceitful character of our government and its deceit to its own people regarding its involvement. What surprised Ellsberg most in all of this swirling excitement and activity was his own growing celebrity, and while he spent years fearing the worst for his own admitted culpability in defying criminal statues by stealing and leaking official government secrets, eventually the charges against him were dropped based, among other things, on the revelations of the Nixon's plumber's unit's illegal break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Ellsberg was an unlikely hero, a graduate of the Harvard University economics doctoral program, a former marine officer turned defense issue intellectual, a frequent visitor to Vietnam who was rankled by the distinct difference between what he was seeing and experiencing during his visits, on the one hand, and what the official American government position regarding what the situation was on the ground on the other. Based on this growing dissatisfaction and the discovery of the so-called Pentagon papers, a treasure trove of more than 7,000 pages of carefully documented details about the U.S. Government's involvement in Vietnam and its motives, considerations, and actions, Ellsberg tried to enlist the support of a number of Senators and Congressmen in an effort to use the evidence in the Pentagon Papers to undercut the Government's position and thereby end the war itself. Failing to do so, he finally surrendered the documents to the New York Times, which agreed to publish them through a series of daily excerpts (and also later in an abridged best-selling paperback version). The Government tried to stop publication, but was denied the right to do so by the Supreme Court. Of course, with the publication came an increase in public opposition to the war and a recognition of the degree to which the Executive branch and the military had intentionally misled the public regarding the conduct of the war and the situation on the ground for the moiré than 500,000 troops then stationed in-country. Still, it took more than five more years before the American involvement in Vietnam ended.This is a wonderful book to exp