40 Years After Explosive Leak Of Pentagon Papers, Secret Vietnam War Study Coming Out In Whole

[Purveyor]

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

By: Calvin Woodward,Richard Lardner, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Forty years after the explosive leak of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study chronicling deception and misadventure in U.S. conduct of the Vietnam War, the report is coming out in its entirety on Monday.

The 7,000-page report was the WikiLeaks disclosure of its time, a sensational breach of government confidentiality that shook Richard Nixon's presidency and prompted a Supreme Court fight that advanced press freedom. Prepared near the end of Lyndon Johnson's term by Defence Department and private foreign policy analysts, the report was leaked primarily by one of them, Daniel Ellsberg, in a brash act of defiance that stands as one of the most dramatic episodes of whistleblowing in U.S. history.

On Monday, the National Archives and presidential libraries are releasing the report in full, long after most of its secrets had spilled. The release is timed 40 years to the day after The New York Times published the first in its series of stories about the findings, on June 13, 1971. The papers showed that the Johnson, Kennedy and prior administrations had been escalating the conflict in Vietnam while misleading Congress, the public and allies.

As scholars pore over the 47-volume report, Ellsberg says the chance of them finding great new revelations are dim. Most of it has come out in congressional forums and by other means, and Ellsberg plucked out the best when he painstakingly photocopied pages that he spirited from a safe night after night, and returned in the mornings. He told The Associated Press the value in Monday's release was in having the entire study finally brought together and put online, giving today's generations ready access to it.

At the time, Nixon was delighted that people were reading about bumbling and lies by his predecessor, which he thought would take some anti-war heat off him. But if he loved the substance of the leak, he hated the leaker.

MORE...

Read more: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/breakingnews/123725269.html

[Bozita]

1. Read (maybe?) and ignore, a great American tradition

[bemildred]

2. When they get around to discussing this sort of moronism in public before we do it, let me know.

:sarcasm:

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[lfairban]

4. You are being too kind!

The papers showed that the Johnson, Kennedy and prior administrations had been escalating the conflict in Vietnam while misleading Congress, the public and allies.

Misleading? I believe the word you are fruitlessly searching for is "Lied".

[alp227]

5. After 40 Years, the Complete Pentagon Papers

Source: The New York Times

It may be a first in the annals of government secrecy: Declassifying documents to mark the anniversary of their leak to the press. But that is what will happen Monday, when the federal government plans to finally release the secret government study of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers 40 years after it was first published by The New York Times.

At first blush, it sounds like the release of one of the worst-kept secrets in history — finally unlocking the barn door four decades after the horses bolted. The study, after all, has already been published by The Times and other newspapers, resulting in a landmark First Amendment decision by the Supreme Court. It has been released in book form more than once. But it turns out that those texts have been incomplete: When all 7,000 pages are released Monday, officials say, the study can finally be read in its original form.

That it took until the era of Wikileaks for the government to declassify the Pentagon Papers struck some participants as, to say the least, curious.

“It’s absurd,” said Daniel Ellsberg, the former RAND Corporation analyst who worked on the report and later provided it to The Times. He said Tuesday that the report should not have been secret even in 1971, when newspapers first published it, adding: “The reasons are very clearly domestic political reasons, not national security at all. The reasons for the prolonged secrecy are to conceal the fact that so much of the policy making doesn’t bear public examination. It’s embarrassing, or even incriminating.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/us/08pentagon.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[freshwest]

6. Ellsburg signed the book for me in '71. It was a turning point. Gravel did his part, too.

And this would not be happening now with a GOP POTUS.

[No Elephants]

13. Gravel was a true Profile in Courage, Thanks to him, anyone who wanted to read the Pentagon Papers

has been able so to do for decades.

Republican or Democratic President, this is a non-event.

[pinboy3niner]

7. Is this the light at the end of the tunnel? nt

[No Elephants]

14. Irag and Afghanistan tell us there is no end of the tunnel.

[Electric Monk]

8. But but but, there aren't real "conspiracies" to start wars and shit, that's all tinfoil nuttiness!

Not in America! That'd never happen!

:sarcasm:

[Citizen Worker]

9. Maybe some day ALL of the documents relating to the assassination of President Kennedy will be

released. We're coming up on the 50th year since the assassination. Isn't it time?

[Demeter]

10. Not while there are still survivors living, I'll betcha

[bemildred]

11. So this is what "transparency" means?

:puke:

[jakeXT]

12. Even Ellsberg calls it a non-event

Until now, the public has been able to read only the small portions of the report that you leaked. What do you think the impact of releasing all 7,000 pages might be?

The "declassification" of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event. The notion that "only small portions" of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library. Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971, between the redacted (censored) Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press.

http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/07/daniel-ellsberg-all-the-crimes-richard-nixon-committed-against-me-are-now-legal/