Complete Version of Pentagon Papers Released Today
Exactly 40 years after portions of the controversial documents were leaked, a complete version of the Pentagon Papers will be made available to the public, one of the first hard looks at corruption and deceit at the highest levels of U.S. government.
40 years ago, Daniel Ellsberg took great personal risks to bring to light decades of lies that were putting more American lives in danger in Vietnam. Ellsberg was certainly the primary forerunner to WikiLeaks and the philosophy of transparency that the controversial website promotes. Ellsberg was able to make photocopies of portions of the detailed government memo that became known simply as The Pentagon Papers. He would take them out of the safe at night, photocopy them, then return them to the safe the next morning.
Eventually, when the pages were published by the New York Times and other news outlets, Ellsberg was identified as the source of the leak. And the Nixon administration wasted no time in going after him with everything that they had, including illegal wiretaps and break-ins that foil any attempt at prosecuting Ellsberg for treason. Ellsberg was never convicted of any crime associated with the Pentagon Papers release and the New York Times and others won Supreme Court cases protecting their right to publish the material that had been leaked.
The Pentagon Papers were a government sanctioned report that tracked, primarily, the ongoing and escalating conflict in Vietnam and how that conflict was being sold to the American people as something other than what it really was. America was fully engaged in a war in Vietnam long before the American public was aware of that fact. The Pentagon Papers pulled back the curtain on just how careful and deliberate previous administrations had been in deceiving the American people about the true nature of the Vietnam War.
And although the Pentagon Papers were released during Nixon's time in the White House, the report primarily covered the deception perpetrated by the previous administrations of Lyndon Jonhson and John F. Kennedy. Eventually, Nixon's bumbling of the Pentagon Papers release would set the stage for the Watergate Scandal and the demise of his presidency, but the Pentagon Papers weren't really about Nixon.
Eventually, when the pages were published by the New York Times and other news outlets, Ellsberg was identified as the source of the leak. And the Nixon administration wasted no time in going after him with everything that they had, including illegal wiretaps and break-ins that foil any attempt at prosecuting Ellsberg for treason. Ellsberg was never convicted of any crime associated with the Pentagon Papers release and the New York Times and others won Supreme Court cases protecting their right to publish the material that had been leaked.
The Pentagon Papers were a government sanctioned report that tracked, primarily, the ongoing and escalating conflict in Vietnam and how that conflict was being sold to the American people as something other than what it really was. America was fully engaged in a war in Vietnam long before the American public was aware of that fact. The Pentagon Papers pulled back the curtain on just how careful and deliberate previous administrations had been in deceiving the American people about the true nature of the Vietnam War.
And although the Pentagon Papers were released during Nixon's time in the White House, the report primarily covered the deception perpetrated by the previous administrations of Lyndon Jonhson and John F. Kennedy. Eventually, Nixon's bumbling of the Pentagon Papers release would set the stage for the Watergate Scandal and the demise of his presidency, but the Pentagon Papers weren't really about Nixon.
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