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The Pentagon Papers: Secrets of The War

Adriana Kelly Junior Division Paper 1,890 Words

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The Pentagon Papers are a series of classified government documents leaked by

Daniel Ellsberg in 1971. These papers revealed the lies that both the public and

Congress were told about the involvement of the United States in the , and were essential to the withdrawal from the war. inspired many other whistleblowers to come forward and break the barriers between the public and the government.

The involvement of the United States in Vietnam reaches all the way back to

1946. Vietnam was previously a French colony, but during WWII overthrew the

French and gave Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia freedom. When WWII ended in 1945,

Japan was removed from the area and Vietnam needed new leadership. Ho Chi Minh, a

Vietnamese nationalist with Marxist ideas 1, led a group called the to fight for

Vietnamese independence against the French, who were trying to reclaim Vietnam. The

United States had to pick a side in this war, which is usually referred to as the First

Indochina War. On one hand, the United States wanted to support independence and free Vietnam from French rule. But on the other hand, if Vietnam was independent it would be communist which could trigger something called the domino theory. The domino theory states that if one political event in a country, surrounding countries will follow with similar events. Politicians in America were afraid if Vietnam became communist, surrounding countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand would follow. The

United States decided to support France, and began sending money and military aid.

Five years later in 1954, this war ended and Vietnam was finally self-governing. It was split between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (), and the State of

1 “The Vietnam War.” Ushistory.org , Independence Hall Association, w ww.ushistory.org/us/55.asp. 2

Vietnam (South Vietnam). North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh and was communist, while was led by , and was democratic. Elections were set to happen in 1956 to combine the two into one country, but these elections never happened. War soon broke out between North and South Vietnam to gain control, which is where trouble starts to brew. Though Mihn led a communist state, the majority of

Vietnamese supported him and saw him as a national hero for freeing Vietnam from

French rule. 2 Diem supported a democratic government, but his leadership was actually very corrupt and not much of a democracy. Additionally, Diem was Catholic so his religious views conflicted with the majority of Vietnamese who were Buddhist. The

United States still wanted to avoid any communist governments, so they sent money, weapons, and other military assistance to South Vietnam.

This continued for a few years before the United States got more involved. In

August of 1964, American military ships were supposedly attacked by Viet Cong (North

Vietnamese) ships. This was a major turning point in the war, soon known as the Gulf of

Tonkin attack. Lyndon Johnson, the president at the time, sent a request to Congress for permission to retaliate and attack the Viet Cong. Congress granted Johnson the ability to decide how to fight the war with basically infinite funding. At this point, the majority of the public supported this idea and agreed that some degree of involvement was necessary.

But around the same time, in August 1964, Johnson said to the public, “ I have had advice to load our planes with bombs, and to drop them on certain areas that I think would enlarge the war and escalate the war, and result in our committing a good many

American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help

2 Ibid. 3 protect their own land.” 3 Johnson implied to the public that the military would use conservative measures and try to keep American troops out of Vietnam. Despite this,

Johnson and members of the Department of Defense began bombing trade routes the

Viet Cong used to transport supplies. These routes entered the surrounding countries like Cambodia and Laos but were still bombed. Johnson and other government members who were launching the bombings were aware of these immoral deaths but continued the bombings without telling the public or Congress about the ci rcumstances. 4

The military also decided to start using chemicals to fight the war -- chemicals such as

Agent Orange and Napalm were used to kill forests and to make more effective bombs.

Agent Orange in particular had horrible side effects which affected countless civilians.

Muscular, neurological, and immune diseases, liver failure, and cancer were just a few of the side effects. 5 None of these tactics were actually impacting the Viet Cong, so the military began to send ground troops. One thing that made them so hard to fight was the fact that Viet Cong fighters were undetectable, they could blend in with the normal population but then the next day they could be setting traps for Americans.6 The army tried to only kill Viet Cong by conducting “Zippo Raids”, where soldiers would burn down

Vietnamese villages if there was any sign of affiliation with the Viet Cong. These war tactics caused the deaths of thousands of civilians in Vietnam and surrounding countries, but didn’t have a major effect on the Viet Cong. Despite this, President

Johnson was assuring the American public that victory was close. By the end of 1967,

3 Sheehan, Neil. “Not to Enlarge the Wa r .” New York Times, 14 .

4 Ibid.

5 “Dioxins and Their Effects on Human Health.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 4 Oct. 2016,

6 Ibid. 4

there were almost 500,000 American troops in Vietnam.7 The war was starting to lose public support. Over half of the public now wanted withdrawal from Vietnam8 , but

President Johnson, and later President Nixon, continued to send troops and escalate the war.

Here Daniel Ellsberg comes in -- a military analyst for the Department of Defense.

Ellsberg was one of the 20-40 analysts who began working on a study about the

Vietnam war in 1967. The 7,000 page study was finished in 1969, and included information about involvement in Vietnam since WWII. These papers included information on the murdered civilians, rigged elections, debt, and lies that were told to the Congress and the public. 9 Daniel Ellsberg realized just how corrupt this war was, and thought the public should know. While writing the papers, he also changed his opinion on the war, he thought it was unwinnable at this point. In a 2018 interview by

NPR, Ellsberg explained “ Without young men going to prison for nonviolent protests against the draft, men that I met on their way to prison, no Pentagon Papers.” Daniel

Ellsberg decided to do something about this injustice, and started taking key parts of the study from his office. Ellsberg photocopied the pages one by one every night, along with fellow researcher Tony Russo. It took months to scan all the pages Ellsberg took, even with the help of some of his friends and family. 10 There were many famous figures resisting the war who were punished. For instance, the famous boxer Muhammad Ali

7 Ibid

8 Ibid.

9 Sheinkin, Steve. : Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War. Roaring Brook

Press, Square Fish, 2019.

10 Davies, Dave. “Daniel Ellsberg Explains Why He Leaked The Pentagon Papers.” 18 Jan. 2018. 5 resisted the draft and served in prison for three years before his sentence was overturned.1 1 Daniel Ellsberg realized the danger of what he was doing, and later said he realized he would probably go to prison for his actions. 12 Ellsberg then sent it to members of Congress after collecting all the relevant information. But there was no action taken, so Ellsberg made another risky decision. He sent all the documents to The

New York Times to be published. Then on June 13, 1971, published the first articles on the study. This first publication had over six pages of direct quotes and analysis of the information. One of the first paragraphs in the newspaper was a summary of the status of the war, stating, “The situation is very disturbing. Current trends, unless reversed in the next 2–3 months, will lead to neutralization at best and more likely to a communist controlled state.” 13 This is just a small part of the study that revealed many government members knew this war was almost impossible to win even though the public was told the opposite. Another very major revelation was about the blocked elections in Vietnam. The report states, “Diem matched his refusal to consult with the Vietminh about elections with an adamant refusal to ever hold them. Neither

Britain nor the pressed the matter; the United States backed Diem's position.”1 4 The only reason the war started was because there were never elections to unite Vietnam, and now the public is finding out that the United States tried to avoid the

11 Brown, DeNeen L. “'Shoot Them for What?' How Muhammad Ali Won His Greatest Fight.” ,

WP Company, 31 July 2019,

12 Ibid.

13 Sheehan, Neil. “Key Texts From Pentagon's Vietnam Study.” New York Times, 13 June 1971.

14 Pentagon Papers: The Defence Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam. Beacon, 1971.

Print 6 elections. T he main thing these papers really showed was that the public was being lied to. There were tens of thousands of young men dying halfway across the world, and they were dying for reasons the government was hiding.

Within the next day, the Washington Post was also publishing the Pentagon

Papers. For the next two days, the Washington Post and the New York Times continued to publicize this information before the White House sent a legal notice to stop publishing. This notice claimed the papers were causing “irreparable injury to the defense interests of the United States.” 15 The newspapers refused to stop publishing the papers, so a legal case ended up in the Supreme Court. The case was called New York

Times V. United States, and was decided in four days. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the New York Times, so now any newspaper was allowed to publish the

Pentagon Papers. Though the White House may have claimed the papers were causing harm to national security, throughout the case it became clear that they wanted to halt publication because the papers not only made the White House look bad, but could also incriminate several members of government. was the president at this time, and though he was elected in 1968 there was no information about him in the

Pentagon Papers. He still was determined to prevent the publication because the papers would create public distrust of the government which would hurt his chances of being reelected in 1972. Daniel Ellsberg became a target of the White House after this. Just one example -- in 1972, CIA members were told to “incapacitate him totally.”1 6

Additionally, he was indicted with espionage, conspiracy, and other crimes. He faced up

15 F rankel, Max. “Court Step Likely.” New York Times, 15 June 1971

16 Ibid. 7

to 115 years1 7 in prison for leaking the papers, but the charges ended up dropped. It was revealed that Nixon sent spies to Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to collect information to make him seem unreliable. In the end, no one involved in the publication of the

Pentagon Papers faced legal consequences for it.

The leaking of the Pentagon Papers still holds a great deal of importance in today’s society. Daniel Ellsberg has become known as one of the most influential and most important whistleblowers, and was an inspiration to more recent whistleblowers.

For example, very recently a whistleblower revealed information that led to the impeachment of the current president Donald Trump. Another important change is the laws that have now been passed to protect whistleblowers. The Whistleblower

Protection Act of 1989 was a major step in protecting federal government employees who release or leak important information. 18 Daniel Ellsberg played a major role in not only the withdrawal of the United States from the Vietnam War, but also helped set up a future for others to be able to come forward with information similar to the Pentagon

Papers.

17 “ What Were The Pentagon Papers? | History.” YouTube, YouTube, 20 Jan. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_-efpukppE.

18 United States, Congress, Cong., Legislation. “Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989.” W histleblower Protection Act of 1989 , U.S. G.P.O., 1989. 101st Congress, 20th session. 8

Annotated Bibliography Primary Sources

Davies, Dave. “Daniel Ellsberg Explains Why He Leaked The Pentagon Papers.” 18 Jan. 2018. This is an interview with the leaker of the Pentagon Papers that explained his motivation and the behind the scenes of it.

“Dioxins and Their Effects on Human Health.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 4 Oct. 2016, I used this website to learn the side effects of chemicals that the United States used in Vietnam.

Frankel, Max. “Court Step Likely.” New York Times, 15 June 1971. This was a newspaper article that informed the public that the White House was trying to cover up the Pentagon Papers and trying to silence the press.

Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam. Beacon, 1971. These were the actual government documents that were leaked, so I used them for quotes and examples of what was leaked.

Sheehan, Neil. “Key Texts From Pentagon's Vietnam Study.” New York Times, 13 June 1971. This was the first publication of the Pentagon Papers, and was the first information the public saw about it that showed the corruption of the war.

Sheehan, Neil. “Not to Enlarge the War.” New York Times, 14 June 1971. This source is the newspaper publication that was the second publication of the Pentagon Papers and analysis.

United States, Congress, Cong., Legislation. “Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989.” Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, U.S. G.P.O., 1989. 101st Congress, 20th session. These are some of the major laws protecting whistleblowers that were not in place when Daniel Ellsberg originally leaked the Pentagon Papers.

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Annotated Bibliography Secondary Sources

Brown, DeNeen L. “'Shoot Them for What?' How Muhammad Ali Won His Greatest Fight.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 31 July 2019. This article helped show other resistors of involvement in the Vietnam War and the consequences they faced.

Sheinkin, Steve. Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War. Roaring Brook Press, Square Fish, 2019 This book showed a lot of background information and helped provide a general understanding of the situation.

“The Vietnam War.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association, www.ushistory.org/us/55.asp . This textbook also helped to develop background information and understand what events led up to the release of the Pentagon Papers.

“What Were The Pentagon Papers? | History.” YouTube, YouTube, 20 Jan. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_-efpukppE . This video helped me to understand the effects of the leaks and what happened during and immediately after the release.