Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War

When Ellsberg’s ex-wife learned that her son was copying top-secret documents with Ellsberg, she “went ballistic.” She confronted Ellsberg, and he agreed to no longer involve his children. However, he still brought Robert and his daughter, Mary, to the agency on some nights, where they helped him make copies and cut the “top secret” stamps off the top of the documents.

Ellsberg spent the entire month of October 1969 making copies. Then, at the start of November, he was invited to a strategy meeting with antiwar organizers in Washington, DC. Eager to offer the study to Senator William Fulbright, Ellsberg accepted the invitation. He and Patricia, with whom he had resumed his relationship, flew to Washington with the first volumes of the Pentagon Papers hidden in his suitcase. He delivered the papers to Senator Fulbright, who promised to read them “right away” and set up a hearing with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. With the release of the papers seemingly imminent, Ellsberg confessed his mission to Patricia. She supported him completely; they were no longer divided by their views on Vietnam. When they returned to California, Ellsberg again asked Patricia to marry him, and this time she said yes.

Meanwhile, the antiwar protests were picking up steam again. Hoping to appease the public, Nixon announced that he was implementing a policy called “Vietnamization,” in which American troops would slowly be withdrawn, and the war would be left in the hands of the South Vietnamese. There was no timeline for the withdrawal, which depended on the continuing peace talks with North Vietnam, but the public was mollified, and Nixon’s approval rating rose.

In February 1970, Henry Kissinger began a series of secret meetings with Le Doc Tho, a representative of the North Vietnamese government. Tho’s “entire life had been dedicated to revolution,” and Kissinger knew “he’d met his match” for negotiating (181). Without the support of the US, the “puppet” government of South Vietnam would fall; this was “the weak point of Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy” (182), and Tho knew it. However, the two agreed to continue their talks, and Kissinger warned that President Nixon wasn’t to be “underestimated.”

Meanwhile, Ellsberg received no word from Senator Fulbright, who had “serious doubts” about releasing the Pentagon Papers (182). At this time, Ellsberg realized that he was under suspicion for committing anti-government acts. The FBI came to his ex-wife’s house, asking questions about secret documents, and Ellsberg decided it was time for him to get out of California. He quit his job at the Rand Corporation and accepted a position at MIT’s Center of International Studies. He knew his friends and colleagues at Rand would see the release of the Pentagon Papers as a betrayal. He regretted this, but he felt he had no choice.

On April 30, Nixon announced that the US would send troops into Cambodia to disrupt North Vietnamese forces that were using the territory to wage their war on the South. Following this announcement, “college campuses absolutely erupted” (185). The National Guard was called in to control the protests at Kent State University in Ohio. Four students were killed, and the campus was left looking “like a war zone” (186). Reporter Philip Caputo was shocked by the violence, arguing that such a thing “was not imaginable in America” (186). Protesters shut down 450 college campuses across the country, and the White House was “under siege.” Nixon was “very disturbed” by the protests and the tragedy at Kent State. In a “bizarre” episode, one morning before dawn, he ordered his valet to drive him to the National Mall. Nixon was “[i]ntensely frustrated with his inability to connect with young people” (188), so he spoke to the protesters camped out around the Lincoln Memorial.

Ellsberg and Patricia were married in August 1970. After returning from their honeymoon, Ellsberg set up a meeting with Henry Kissinger. He hoped he could still “influence the White House’s Vietnam policy” (191), and he asked Kissinger if he had read any of McNamara’s secret study. Kissinger doubted that he could learn anything from the study, arguing that decisions at the White House were made “very differently now” (192). Discouraged, Ellsberg began looking for other outlets to expose the Pentagon Papers.

He contacted another senator, George McGovern, who wanted to release the study. However, after reading through the documents, the senator backed out. He wanted to run for president and couldn’t damage his reputation. In need of advice, Ellsberg and Patricia agreed that she should read the study to better help Ellsberg. After reading for just an hour, Patricia told her new husband: “These have to be exposed” (194).

At the start of 1971, Kissinger went to give a talk at MIT. Ellsberg was in the audience, and when Kissinger argued that the war in Vietnam was ending, Ellsberg spoke up, arguing that casualties among Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were actually increasing. He demanded to know “[h]ow many human beings” Nixon’s policy would kill in the next year (195). Kissinger’s only reply was “a long, tense silence” (195). Frustrated, Ellsberg visited Neil Sheehan, a friend and reporter for The New York Times. They stayed up all night discussing the Pentagon Papers.

Meanwhile, Nixon was installing a secret recording system in the Oval Office. He “was hardly the first president to do it” (195); many others had bugged the office and recorded phone calls.

Kissinger’s talks with North Vietnam continued in Paris. Publicly, the American forces were leaving the country slowly “to ensure an ‘honorable’ end to the war” (200). Privately, however, Kissinger and Nixon agreed that they couldn’t let the communists “knock the whole place over” until after the next presidential election (200).

Meanwhile, Ellsberg and Patricia made more copies of the Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times debated what to do with the story. Sheehan received permission from his superiors to proceed with writing an article about the Pentagon Papers. Most importantly, the Times had to contemplate the legal ramifications of publishing classified documents. The paper’s in-house lawyer warned that Nixon would try to prosecute them under the Espionage Act, a 1917 law stating that sharing national defense documents with unauthorized individuals could result in fines or jail time. However, the law was meant to protect against sharing government secrets with enemies, and The New York Times felt they were “inform[ing] the public of a story it had every right to know” (204).

As Ellsberg anxiously waited for news from Sheehan, he visited the antiwar activist Randy Kehler in prison. Kehler was serving two years for draft evasion. Ellsberg asked him about prison life, making Kehler wonder if he thought he might be arrested soon, too.

As the spring of 1971 progressed, the Vietnam War became increasingly unpopular. Even veterans began speaking out against the war, including the veteran and future secretary of state John Kerry, who testified before Congress.

In mid-April, Neil Sheehan and more than a dozen other New York Times reporters, editors, and secretaries set up a “kind of makeshift war room” at the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan (208), where they spent weeks reading the Pentagon Papers and writing articles about it. The Times’s lawyers advised against printing these stories and argued that the Pentagon Papers should not be released as “a matter of patriotism” (208). However, on June 12, Ellsberg received a tip from another reporter friend that the Times planned to publish the papers the next day. He was glad the study would finally be public knowledge.

At the Times newsroom, the managing editor waited anxiously for 4:30 pm, when the copy would be typeset. The story had been approved, but until it was printed, “anything could happen.” The staff working in the Hilton Hotel room assembled to watch the historic story roll off the press.

Ellsberg and Patricia went to dinner with friends and saw a movie. Coming home just after midnight, Ellsberg saw an early copy of the Sunday Times. Sharing the front page with a story about Nixon’s daughter’s wedding at the White House was the headline “VIETNAM ARCHIVE: PENTAGON STUDY TRACES 3 DECADES OF GROWING U.S. INVOLVEMENT” (214). The story was “absolute dynamite.”