installment of a 7000-page document that came to be known as the “Pentagon Papers.” How
important was the public airing of a secret government study of decision-making about the
Vietnam War? None other than Henry Kissinger labeled the man who leaked that study — Daniel
Ellsberg (b. 1931) — “the most dangerous man in America.”
Author H. Bruce Franklin called Ellsberg, “That young man with boundless promise who graduated
third in his Harvard class of 1,147 in 1952, when America too seemed boundlessly promising.” An
officer in the U.S. Marines, a Cold War theoretician for the Pentagon, Franklin explains that Ellsberg
was “not content with planning wars for others to fight and defending the Vietnam War on college
campuses, (so he) volunteered in 1965 to go to Vietnam” where he “displayed such personal bravery
in combat that some, such as his present biographer, claim he must have been suicidal.”
All that changed in 1969 when Ellsberg discovered that President Richard Nixon was “the fifth
president in a row now… choosing to prolong the war in vain hopes that he might get a better
outcome than he could achieve if he'd just negotiated his way out.” Nixon, like those who came
before him, would not accept anything that even looked like defeat and nothing would change his
or his handlers' minds.
“That meant that if his decision was going to be changed — and because I cared about Vietnam
and this country, I felt quite urgently that I wanted the United States to stop bombing them and
stop killing Vietnamese — the pressure would have to come from outside the executive branch,”
explained Ellsberg. “Reading the Pentagon Papers and reflecting on Vietnam revealed to me
(that) you could do more for the country outside the executive branch.”
important was the public airing of a secret government study of decision-making about the
Vietnam War? None other than Henry Kissinger labeled the man who leaked that study — Daniel
Ellsberg (b. 1931) — “the most dangerous man in America.”
Author H. Bruce Franklin called Ellsberg, “That young man with boundless promise who graduated
third in his Harvard class of 1,147 in 1952, when America too seemed boundlessly promising.” An
officer in the U.S. Marines, a Cold War theoretician for the Pentagon, Franklin explains that Ellsberg
was “not content with planning wars for others to fight and defending the Vietnam War on college
campuses, (so he) volunteered in 1965 to go to Vietnam” where he “displayed such personal bravery
in combat that some, such as his present biographer, claim he must have been suicidal.”
All that changed in 1969 when Ellsberg discovered that President Richard Nixon was “the fifth
president in a row now… choosing to prolong the war in vain hopes that he might get a better
outcome than he could achieve if he'd just negotiated his way out.” Nixon, like those who came
before him, would not accept anything that even looked like defeat and nothing would change his
or his handlers' minds.
“That meant that if his decision was going to be changed — and because I cared about Vietnam
and this country, I felt quite urgently that I wanted the United States to stop bombing them and
stop killing Vietnamese — the pressure would have to come from outside the executive branch,”
explained Ellsberg. “Reading the Pentagon Papers and reflecting on Vietnam revealed to me
(that) you could do more for the country outside the executive branch.”
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