Latest read: Secrets A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg‘s Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers is about his direct experience in Vietnam and more importantly his role in leaking The Pentagon Papers.  Daniel’s lessons in both academic research and military battlefields helped me learn more about the times he lived in and how it ultimately caused him to steal and publish top secret files regarding the war in Vietnam.

The Pentagon Papers showed world the surprising role of US involvement in Vietnam dating back to Harry Truman through the Nixon Administration.  His influence is not to be under estimated. I was impressed to learn of his work with President Kennedy in David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest. There was more to Ellsberg than meets the eye.

His background: undergraduate studies at Harvard and post graduate Woodrow Wilson fellowship at Cambridge in England. Daniel returned to apply for Marine officer candidates courses but had to wait a year — so he went to grad school at Harvard (during the Korean War) where he was expected to serve. In the beginning Ellsberg was a political hawk regarding communist expansion in the world especially Soviet aggressiveness in Czechoslovakia and Poland.

A week after getting his PhD he was in the military training to be a lieutenant. He would command a rifle unit in the second Marine division. As his tour was ending his first son was born. He was awarded a three year junior fellowship back at Harvard, but asked the Marine commandant to extend his tour as war in the Middle East appeared imminent. Daniel drafted secret plans against Egypt and Israel. As a research fellow back at Harvard in economic and decision theory he attracted attention of the Rand Corporation and in ’58 accepted an economic position with RAND in California. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik during this time-frame.  The cold war was beginning to really heat up.

At Rand he wrote about deterring attacks by the Soviets on American troops and the impact of thermonuclear war. He learned in 1961 that US ICBMs outnumbered the Soviet Union by a 10:1 ratio when all previous reports indicated the Soviets were equal or ahead of the US. During this time Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow urged President Kennedy to double military advisors with support troops — no ground combat units — in Vietnam. Over 12,000 US advisors were in Vietnam when Kennedy was assassinated. Daniel’s research was sponsored by Walt Rostow. He was invited by a former Harvard law professor John McNaughton to be his special assistant when McNaughton was appointed special assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

He arrived at the Pentagon on August 3rd, 1964. His first day working for McNaughton (August 4th) was the day of the Tonkin Gulf incident. One hell of a way to start a job! We understand three torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox. Ellsberg shares in detail his thoughts that all reports may have been falsified. Reviews indicated that there was no actual attack including reports from Captain John J. Herrick. By ’66 credible testimony showed an attack actually took place on August 2nd — with no attack on August 4th.  Welcome to the distortion that was the Vietnam war.  In fact, the US secret plan Desoto placed the Maddox to provoke North Vietnamese radar so US navy ships could plot against their installations. And just three days later LBJ got what he wanted — a resolution by Congress to authorize combat troops in Vietnam.

Ellsberg was at the top civil service ranking (GS18) and began seeing for the first time vast amounts of sensitive data from Vietnam. His background and working relationships in Washington placed him at the highest levels of government, briefing not only the State Department and Henry Kissinger but Presidential candidates as well.

From his first tour of Vietnam while at Rand he received reports from ‘in-country’ US military commanders that their efforts in Vietnam would fail. Ellsberg observed while serving with troops: they were thousands from home, their enemies had no uniforms yet knew the battlefields because they lived there….just like British redcoats during our American revolution. He was almost killed in a shelling of a temporary sleeping bunk as a mortar failed to explode that landing next to his bed as he was running towards a fortified command center. There were other dangerous trips.

John Paul Vann a highly awarded military and civilian advisors to the ARVN worked with Ellsberg during his military role in Vietnam. Neil Sheehan and his wife who were in Vietnam during the war knew Ellsberg and wrote a book about John Paul Vann called A Bright Shining Lie which won the Pulitzer Prize in ’89.  Sheehan’s book is a great read.  Vann was awarded posthumously both the Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished Service Cross. Ellsberg was present at Vann’s funeral at Arlington after John was killed following the battle for Kontum in 1972.

Realizing the continues loss of life, budget costs and his learned opposition of US involvement he began stealing the Pentagon Papers with the goal of having them published by the national press or senior congressional leaders. The 47 volumes were distributed to 20 newspapers highlighted by the New York Times and Washington Post. The Nixon administration had a temporary court order freezing further publication but it lost that ruling which put Ellsberg in the cross hairs of Nixon. The President’s black bag job team…er the Plumbers broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist while he was standing trial for stealing top secret documents. When this became known the charges against him were dropped. This exposed the ugly side of Nixon and was a trigger point regarding Nixon’s downfall and eventual resignation due to another black bag job: Watergate.