The Pentagon Papers - Secrets Revealed

The Pentagon Papers: Secrets Revealed

Carlos Mujica

HIS 262 - History of the US Since 1865  

Ms. Valletta

 December 9th, 2015

Introduction

On June 13th, 1971 President Richard Nixon picked up an issue of the New York Times, only to see his picture next to a headline reading “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement.” The headline of this groundbreaking discovery proved the betrayal of an entire nation by their own government, regarding an extremely controversial issue, over the course of three decades. The information found within the 7000 pages of the Pentagon Files revealed evidence of a much greater involvement of the United States in Vietnam, in which one man changed the course of history through rightfully leaking this information to the American public. The man behind the declassification of this information was none other than Daniel Ellsberg, an employee of the RAND Corporation working as a strategic analyst where he concentrated on nuclear strategy and the control of nuclear weapons. Under the orders of the Secretary of Defense at the time, Robert McNamara, Ellsberg went to South Vietnam for two years in 1964 as a member of the State Department. When returning from South Vietnam in 1967, Ellsberg resumed working at RAND, contributing information to a study of classified documents that had been commissioned by Secretary McNamara, which would later become known in whole as the Pentagon Papers. Late in the year of 1969, Ellsberg secretly made several sets of photocopies of the documents he had access to in the Pentagon Papers, in which he later met with New York Times correspondent, Neil Sheehan, who helped published these files in 1971. 1(Ellsberg, 2002). Upon their release on June 13th 1971, The Pentagon Papers greatly influenced American culture within this time period by altering the public’s perception on the actions taken by the US government in the 1950’s and 60’s, President Nixon’s presidency, and during the Vietnam War.

Body

Throughout the course of its 7000 pages, the Pentagon Papers released a multitude of secrets in the history of the Vietnam War, disclosing evidence from successive US presidents from Harry Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson. The information leaked had influenced the public’s perception on how trustworthy the government of the United States was, and is to this day, where Presidents had gone as far as secretly expanding military operations. The greatest importance taken from the release of these secret files had given voters direct proof that they were being lied to for over two decades, since the end of World War II. The White House also demonstrated a clear understanding on the leak’s significance as the US Government immediately sought to persecute Ellsberg, immediately following the publication of the Pentagon Papers in the New York Times on June 13th, 1971. H.R. Haldeman, a close aide to President Richard Nixon during his presidency and at the time of the release of the Pentagon Papers had released a very powerful summary during one of Nixon’s secretly recorded Oval Office meetings.

“But out of the gobbledygook, come a very clear thing: you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong” 2(National Security Archive, 1971).

The statement made by a member so imbedded in government activities goes to show how corrupt the internal workings of the US government can be, especially in a case where aides of the President made negative claims regarding the trustworthiness of the government that they work for. Haldeman was later imprisoned for his part in the Watergate scandal in 1972.

The leak of the Pentagon Papers induced, perhaps, the most dramatized confrontation between the government of the United States and the media. Almost immediately following The New York Time’s release of these files with the aid of Daniel Ellsberg, the Nixon White House Administration obtained an injunction, ordering the New York Times to halt publication. Although Nixon’s administration had successfully brought the media giant that is The New York Times to court, while the paper was fighting the ruling, The Washington Post continued to release the series of papers until their injunction. Together, each of the two papers appealed their respective injunctions in the Supreme Court, fighting for the rights of the people and their own right to the viewing of these important documents. On June 30th, 1971 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the newspapers, 6-3. The Supremes Court’s ruling shed some light in such a dark situation where the press very well could have been persecuted and left without the right to free press. One of the 9 Supreme Court Justices, Hugo Black, had made a statement in the judgment regarding the responsibilities and duties of the press.

“Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press, is the duty of to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell” 3(New York Times Co. v. United States, 1971).

This statement holds extreme importance due to its effect on the public’s perception regarding the rights of the free press and their own rights to government information that directly affects their lives. Especially in such a time where the country betrayed and lied to its citizens, whom a majority of which disagreed with governmental actions and decisions made in the war in Vietnam. After the decision made by the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the newspapers, the American people were affirmed in their perception that their government had lied and misled them about the degree in US involvement in Vietnam over an extensive time period of over 30 years. As a result of this confirmation, there was a widening of the credibility gap between the United States government and its people that would eventually lead to President Nixon’s resignation and the Watergate scandal, as well as leading to the end of the Vietnam War.