The Pentagon Papers
On June 13 1971, governmental accountability and the American people's faith in their government was lost as the New York Times published the "top secret - sensitive" Pentagon Papers. Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and written by Daniel Ellsberg, this 7 000-page document outlines the American Involvement in Vietnam from the 1940's to the late 1960's. It included specific details on everything from the CIA's involvement in the early 1950's up to Nixon and Kissinger's discussions on using nuclear weapons during the later stages of the war. This paper will outline expert opinion on this document, some will be for the value of the papers and others will discount their true value. However the main purpose is to give a well rounded view of whether national security or public awareness takes precedence in an extremely volatile situation, such as the Vietnam War.The key to understanding the Pentagon Papers, is understanding two key men Robert McNamara and Daniel Ellsberg. It was McNamara's mind which envisioned them and Ellsberg's hand which opened them to the public; however these two aren't as different from each other as they may seem. Robert McNamara was secretary of defense for both the Kennedy and Johnson presid
Roche's opinion on the value of the documents is summed up well:"While occasionally interesting and enlightening, the Pentagon Papers is fundamentally a historical junk pile which provides neither proof nor disproof for any hypotheses about the origins and character of the war in Vietnam. Raskin makes an interesting appraisal of how the papers display the cavalier attitude of American foreign policy in the years leading up to the war:The Pentagon Papers show us how a group of men undertake to manage an empire. June 13, 1971 the New York Times published the first installment of the pentagon papers. encies; he was also keen to understand how the entire Vietnamese situation came about from 1945 onwards. Truman had his anti-soviet doctrine, Eisenhower had his strategic hamlets, Kennedy had Diem and Johnson was left to commit 185 000 American lives ; James Reston of the New York Times the actions best "deceptive and stealthy American involvement in the war under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. McNamara could see the war was going badly and he may have also wanted background into a conflict that had been boiling over since well before the Kennedy Administration. Firstly about 4 000 of the 7 000 pages are appended documents, maps, orders from government officials etc. Both of these are examples of horrors that may have been hidden from the American people. This is considered by many to be the primary reason for the compilation of the Pentagon Papers, McNamara has stated he wanted to preserve the information for scholars to study in future years . "It was a war," Ellsberg concluded, "no American President had. Daniel Ellsberg finally decided what his role would be, the American public deserved to know what had and was happening in Vietnam, so he gained access to a copy of the Pentagon Papers which was stored at the RAND corporation (A major military consultant) . He was stunned when he realized that current American policy seemed to be much the same as Truman's at the end of WWII, David Rudenstine sums it up best in his The Day the Presses Stopped:Ellsberg came to see the war not as "Kennedy's war or Johnson's war" but as a result of a "pattern of behavior that went far beyond any one" president. " So what was the true lesson learned from the Pentagon Papers, are state secrets so valuable that the public can't know? In some cases yes, but when millions of lives hang in the balance all three parts of our democratic system should have a choice not just the holder of the key.
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june 13 1971,
york times published,
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