Download Exhibit Narrative

DECLASSIFIED
The Pentagon Papers Revealed
DECEMBER 11, 2013
CATARINA GREEN – GEORGE CHAPMAN – LINDSAY PEMBERTON
In June of 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked a 7,000 page document to The New York Times
titled United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of
Defense. This forty-seven volume report was an assemblage of military involvement in the
Vietnam War compiled by thirty-six military personnel, historians, and defense analysts to
understand the narrative of American involvement in Vietnam after World War II. To the
American public, the content of these top-secret documents unequivocally proved that their longtrusted government had been deceiving them on a global scale. The release of the “Pentagon
Papers,” as they were commonly known, not only outlined, in black and white, the blatant
falsities dispensed by the administrations of four consecutive presidents from Truman to
Johnson, but also precipitated the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard
Nixon. They significantly contributed to the widespread citizen disillusionment towards the
government, and also had an impact on the United States that would last decades.
To understand the massive response to the Pentagon Papers, one must understand the
mood of American politics in the mid-1960s, and how Americans felt about their leaders.
Coming straight off the heels of World War II, ultra-patriotic citizens had been filled with
national pride for a moral and ideological victory in Europe. The celebration was brief, however,
as the United States began pushing against the Communist powers of the time. American
politicians, and citizens alike, were convinced that these countries were slowly pushing
Communism across the world, and that democracies like ours would suffer irreparable damage as
a result. This rhetoric of fear combined with the covert tactics and outright lies perpetrated by
the top echelon of leadership from the early-1950s to the mid-1970s ultimately caused citizen
confidence to plummet, taking it to rock bottom. The Cold War hysteria in Europe joined with
the mounting successes of Communism in China and Korea violently merged with local revolts
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against the new American-endorsed Vietnamese government to tangle the United States in a war
that, as the leaked documents proved, was believed by many top leaders to be impossible to win.
One disclosure contained in the Pentagon Papers was the deliberate disregard of the
Geneva Accords of 1954. These were clear boundaries and compromises set by the international
community, including the United States, which outlined the process of reducing the hostilities in
Indochina. The United States, while claiming publicly to be ready for peace negotiations,
secretly pressured France and its Prime Minister Joseph Laniel to essentially kill the talks from
the beginning.1 The negotiations, despite the Americans’ best efforts, were concluded in July of
1954, and several provisions were established including a systematic cease-fire, the temporary
partitioning of Vietnam, and most notably the strict restrictions put on the introduction of foreign
troops in any capacity.2 Not only did the United States show contempt for the peace terms
negotiated in Geneva, but they categorically broke every rule agreed upon. President John F.
Kennedy actively flouted both the spirit and written rules of the 1954 agreement by entertaining
ideas for planting a pro-American government in Vietnam. In a memo to Kennedy dated
October 2, 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concludes, “There is no solid evidence
of the possibility of a successful coup, although assassination of Diem or Nhu is always a
possibility.”3 Even the Johnson administration mentioned the Geneva Accords, saying:
As I have repeatedly made clear, the United States intends no rashness, and seeks no wider war.
We must make it clear to all that the United States is united in its determination to bring about the
end of communist subversion and aggression in the area. We seek the full and effective restoration
of the international agreements signed in Geneva in 1954, with respect to South Vietnam, and
again in Geneva in 1962, with respect to Laos.4
The most shocking revelation included in the leaked documents, however, was the
leadership’s true motivation for the war. While every President involved in the Eastern-Asian
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conflicts claimed they were fighting for the Vietnamese right to decide their own futures and
against any Communist traction in the area, the Pentagon Papers ultimately revealed that the top
American leaders were merely trying to avoid an embarrassing defeat in front of a global
audience. In a self-contradictory statement in the “’President’s Message to Congress, 5 August
1964,’ Department of State Bulletin, 24 August 1964, p. 261:”5 President Johnson claimed the
United States had “no military, political, or territorial ambitions in the area,”6 while
simultaneously presenting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to Congress that ultimately granted
unlimited power to the military to strike at any foreign aggression in Vietnam. The idea that the
United States sought no widening of the war yet were determined to end communism in the area
seem mutually exclusive.
By the spring of 1965, concern over the public image of U.S. involvement was at the
forefront of political and military leaders, and it ultimately shaped their foreign policy. Assistant
Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton plainly described the priorities of the American
presence in Vietnam by their relative importance in a memo to Secretary of Defense Robert S.
McNamara:
70% - To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).
20% - To keep SVN [South Vietnam] (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
10% - To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
ALSO - To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.7
On the same page, it is noted that McNaughton views negotiations for peace in Vietnam as
“‘tainted by the humiliation likely to follow.’”8 It is a common theme throughout the Pentagon
Papers that the top level of the American government essentially switched from fighting
Communism in Asia to simply trying to save their reputation in the face of crushing defeat.
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A major reason for this switch came in each election cycle from 1964 to 1972 with
Presidents Johnson and Nixon. In the 1964 election season, special attention was paid to the
public opinion of the war both domestically and globally. Johnson decided to get congressional
support in order to persuade the national and international communities to follow. The Johnson
administration needed to be elected for the first time after Kennedy’s assassination, and his
advisors determined that a congressional resolution granting a wider range of power regarding
authority overseas would “dramatize and make clear to other nations the firm resolve of the
United States Government in an election year to support the President in taking whatever action
was necessary to resist communist aggression in Southeast Asia.”9 In his most famous election
campaign commercial (commonly known as the “daisy girl” commercial), a small girl is picking
the petals off a flower until she is interrupted by an ominous countdown followed by a nuclear
explosion. Johnson is then heard in the background saying, “These are the stakes; to make a
world in which all of God’s children can live, or go into the dark. We must either love each
other, or we must die.”10 This message was broadcast in September of 1964 after Johnson’s
administration emphasized that the “communist ‘appetite for aggression’ through ‘wars of
liberation’ threatened not only other Asian countries, but also the United States if left unchecked.
The U.S. seeks no wider war [our emphasis]…Four basic themes govern U. S. policy, essentially
unchanged since 1954: America keeps her word; the future of Southeast Asia is the issue; ‘our
purpose is peace; [our emphasis] and, this war is a ‘struggle for freedom.’”11 The cover of LIFE
Magazine on November 26, 1965,12 coupled with editorials in The New York Times in February
of 1966,13 grew Johnson’s unpopularity. As Johnson geared up for the 1968 election season, his
campaign buttons promised peace and prosperity, yet his advisors had already been
implementing an extensive bombing campaign in Vietnam labeled “Rolling Thunder” since
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1967.14 Johnson even went as far as convening a group known as “The Wise Men,” to suggest
ways to unite the American people behind the war effort. Their solution entailed giving the
public more optimistic reports on the war.15
After Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election, Nixon decided to run for
president in 1968. In a campaign commercial, vivid images of the war are shown as Nixon is
heard saying:
Never has so much military, economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively as in
Vietnam. If, after all of this time and all of this sacrifice and all of this support, there is still no
end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership, not
tied to the policies and mistakes of the past. I pledge to you we shall have an honorable end to the
war in Vietnam.16
Nixon infamously escalated the war through widespread bombing and guerilla warfare tactics
after this election. In fact, Ellsberg recalls speaking with Morton Halperin (Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense under President Johnson) about Nixon’s strategic threats against bombing
escalations in North Vietnam. “Nixon’s answer to this challenge,” Halperin explained to
Ellsberg, “was in effect: ‘I’ll carry out, if necessary heavier destruction than the North has every
actually experienced before. And I’ll demonstrate that meanwhile by expanding the war in ways
that Lyndon Johnson didn’t dare.’”17 He was speaking of the secret bombing campaigns in
Cambodia that were mentioned on the front page of the New York Times in March of 1969, yet
the Pentagon denied them the same day.18 Although Nixon is not mentioned in the Pentagon
Papers because he was elected as the report was completed, he is forever linked to them because
of his administration’s reaction to them.
When the Pentagon Papers were first leaked in June of 1971,19 Nixon and his
administration reaction quite mildly, telling Republican congressional leaders that the study
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covered the period before his election in 1968, and it was more likely to embarrass President
Johnson and Kennedy than his own administration.20 However, his indifference to these
documents would change drastically in the next few months. The leaked documents, despite
Nixon’s early beliefs, did expose him to extreme criticism and made vulnerable several secret
negotiations and campaigns occurring at the time. Henry Kissinger (National Security Advisor
to Nixon) had promised that “peace was at hand” in October of 1972, and this helped Nixon’s reelection in the second largest margin in American history.21 Six weeks after the election,
however, Nixon dropped 20,000 tons of bombs on Hanoi.22
This potential for embarrassment and the exposure of secret missions and negotiations
prompted Kissinger and Nixon to employ any means necessary to spin these leaks in their favor.
Howard Hunt of the CIA sent a memo to Charles Colson (Special Counsel to Nixon) on July 28,
1971, titled “Neutralization of Ellsberg,”23 that proposed a “skeletal operations plan aimed at
building a file on Ellsberg that will contain all available overt, covert and derogatory
information. This basic tool is essential to determining how to destroy his public image and
credibility.”24 The day before this memo was drafted, Kissinger had a conversation with Nixon,
saying, “Once we’ve broken the war in Vietnam, then we can say, this son-of-a-bitch [Ellsberg]
nearly blew it…then we’re in strong shape—then no one will give a damn about war
crimes…Because he is a despicable bastard.”
25
Nixon would stop at nothing to discredit
Ellsberg, including giving orders to steal Ellsberg’s psychological evaluations, bribing a trial
judge, and wiretapping Ellsberg’s co-defendant Anthony Russo’s conversation with an attorney
in an effort to destroy his image.26
The United States went to the courts to force newspapers including The New York Times,
The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe to cease printing the leaked documents in the name
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of national security. The Supreme Court heard arguments in New York Times v. United States in
which the government claimed that the interests of national security trumped the First
Amendment right to a free press. In their Per Curiam Opinion, the court states:
Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption
against its constitutional validity. The Government thus carries a heavy burden of showing
justification for the imposition of such a restraint. The District Court for the Southern District of
New York, in the New York Times case, and the District Court for the District of Columbia and the
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in the Washington Post case, held that the
Government had not met that burden. We agree.27
This case set an important precedent that ultimately separated the press from the government. In
earlier wars, the press had been more a propaganda tool than a criticizer of policy. This ended
abruptly with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Ellsberg was also tried for espionage and theft, but all
charges were dropped once it was revealed that Nixon had ordered wiretaps of Ellsberg, another
defendant and conversation with their attorneys. This landed a major blow against Nixon and his
administration, and painted them as dishonest and larcenous. Only a year later, Nixon would
resign from office after he ordered the same men (Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy) to
burglarize the Democratic offices in the Watergate Hotel.28
The Pentagon Papers had many lasting impacts on the United States. They, along with
the Freedom of Information Act of 1966,29 forever divided the nation’s press from their
propaganda role in the government.
Their release sparked the last push of the anti-war
movement that swept the nation in the early 1970s. They exposed the five administrations that
were involved in the East Asian conflicts, their true tactics and motivations, and their willingness
to hide their dishonesties from the American people at all costs. Several cases have used
arguments before courts across the nation based upon the Supreme Court’s decision in 1971, and
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this will likely continue for decades. They precipitated the only resignation of an American
president in the history of the United States, and ultimately revealed the Vietnam War as one of
the nation’s most puzzling, bloody, and arguably needless conflicts. Their influence will ripple
throughout American history for many years to come.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: The
Penguin Group, 2002.
Herbers, John. "Nixon Resigns: He Urges a Time of 'Healing'; Ford Will Take Office Today."
The New York Times, sec. Front Page, August 8, 1973.
Isaacson, Walter, and Evan Thomas. The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. New
York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1986.
Katz, Alan M. "Government Information Leaks and the First Amendment." California Law
Review, 64, no. 1 (1976): 108-145.
Lukas, J. Anthony. Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years. New York: Viking Press,
1976.
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
Origins of Involvement, 1946-1960. The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. Edited by George
C. Herring. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993.
"Peace Little Girl (Daisy)." The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials
1952-2012 Broadcast September 7 1964. Museum of the Moving Image 2012. Web,
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy.
Schutzer, Paul. "The Blunt Reality of War in Vietnam." LIFE Magazine, November 26, 1965.
Sheehan, Neil. "Vietnam Archives: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S.
Involvement." The New York Times, Sunday edition, sec. Front Page, June 13, 1971.
"Vietnam." The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012
Broadcast
1968.
Museum
of
the
Moving
Image
2012.
Web,
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1968
Vietnam Task Force. United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967. Washington, D.C.: Office of
the Secretary of Defense, 1969.
9
Vietnam Task Force, "Geneva Accords 1954," chap. III in United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967,
(Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1969), Page A-5.
2
Vietnam Task Force "Origins of Involvement, 1946-1960," chap. 1 in The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition, ed.
George C. Herring (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993), pages 18-21.
3
Vietnam Task Force, "Justification of the War, Internal Documents, The Kennedy Administration, Book II," chap.
V.B.4 in United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of
Defense, 1969), Page 554.
4
Ibid.
5
Vietnam Task Force, "Justification of the War, Public Statements, Volume II: D – The Johnson Administration,"
chap. V.A. in United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of
Defense, 1969), Pages D-14 and D-15.
6
Ibid.
7
Vietnam Task Force, "Evolution of the War, Rolling Thunder Program Begins: January – June 1965," chap.
IV.C.3 in United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of
Defense, 1969), Page 86.
8
Ibid.
9
Vietnam Task Force, "Evolution of the War, Military Pressures Against NVN: February – June 1964," chap.
IV.C.2.a. in United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of
Defense, 1969), Page 38.
10
"Peace Little Girl (Daisy)," The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012, 1964
Johnson vs. Goldwater, Web, http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girldaisy.
11
Vietnam Task Force, "Justification of the War, Public Statements, Volume II: D – The Johnson Administration,"
chap. V.A. in United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of
Defense, 1969), Page D.
12
Paul Schutzer. "The Blunt Reality of War in Vietnam." LIFE Magazine, November 26, 1965.
13
Vietnam Task Force, "Evolution of the War, Re-emphasis on Pacification: 1965-1967," chap. IV.C.8. in United
States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1969),
Pages 29-30.
14
Vietnam Task Force, "Evolution of the War, Air War in the North: 1965 – 1968, Volume II," chap. IV.C.7.b.
in United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense,
1969), Page 134.
15
Walter Isaacson, and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, (New York: Simon
and Schuster Paperbacks, 1986).
16
"Vietnam," The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012, 1968 Nixon vs.
Humphrey vs. Wallace, Web, http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1968.
17
Anthony J. Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years, (New York: Viking Press, 1976), Pages 259260.
18
Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, (New York: The Penguin Group, 2002),
Pages 260 and 330.
19
Sheehan, Neil. "Vietnam Archives: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement." The New
York Times, Sunday edition, sec. Front Page, June 13, 1971.
20
Lukas, Page 68.
21
Ellsberg, Page 420.
22
Ibid.
23
Ellsberg, Page 439.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid, Page 440.
26
Lukas, Pages 97-101.
27
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
28
John Herbers. "Nixon Resigns: He Urges a Time of 'Healing'; Ford Will Take Office Today." The New York
Times, sec. Front Page, August 8, 1973.
29
Alan M. Katz, "Government Information Leaks and the First Amendment," California Law Review, 64, no. 1
(1976): 108-145, Page 119.
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