Government officials would claim the study, and all it revealed, should be kept secret. It would be against America’s national security to release such information. But Daniel Ellsberg and his colleague, Tony Russo, thought otherwise. At least Congress should be told.
When it appeared the Congressional route would not be effective, Ellsberg approached Neil Sheean, a New York Times reporter who had spent time in Vietnam. He was the only journalist
Ellsberg thought he could trust.
What Sheehan saw stunned him. It took three months for Arthur O. Sulzberger (owner of the newspaper) and his team of lawyers to read the documents and decide whether to break the story. They were concerned whether printing the top-secret material would violate any laws.
But there was something that Ellsberg and the press did not know. Something extremely important. Henry Kissinger had made secret peace overtures to North Vietnam in May of 1971. If the story about McNamara's study were revealed before those initiatives could lead to a peace agreement, America could be embroiled in the war for a longer period of time. (You will need RealAudio to hear Nixon and Kissinger discuss the Times article for the first time. The White House recording is from 13 June 1971 at 3:09 p.m. and has occasional moments of deletions, especially at the beginning.) After all, some of the damaging documents (and the government's inability to keep them out of the press' hands) could cause other countries (who were supportive of America's efforts in Vietnam) to withdraw that support.
Many of the "Pentagon Papers" are stored at the National Archives. Some of the more damaging documents are available on-line. Let’s examine them by three of the most controversial issues:
- Did the people of South Vietnam support the war?
- Did the Kennedy Administration know about the coup?
- Did the Johnson Administration lie about the Gulf of Tonkin?