11 words still classified in Pentagon Papers
Forty years after they hit front pages, the Pentagon Papers will be released by the government next month. But eleven words of the finally declassified history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam will remain secret.
The forthcoming release will be the complete study Photo: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
The National Declassification Center will say only that the 11 words are all on one of the work's 7,000 pages.
Set for the week of June 13, the hard copy and online release comes 40 years after excerpts from the study first appeared in The New York Times.
The resulting public uproar led to a major legal victory for press freedom when the Supreme Court upheld the right of newspapers to publish the papers. The forthcoming release will be the complete study, unlike the version leaked by former Defense Department special assistant Daniel Ellsberg.
Telegraph.co.uk
The entire Pentagon Papers episode was, however, a critical turning point for the Nixon administration, which located with in the White House a group that became known as the "Plumbers Unit." Ostensibly charged with investigating the improper disclosure ("leaks") of classified information, in the fall of 1971 this group burglarized the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in search of information about Ellsberg and his accomplices. Nine months later it broke into the headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate building complex in Washington, D.C. Thus, the Pentagon Papers indirectly led to the Watergate scandal, which caused Nixon to resign the presidency on 9 August 1974.
Telegraph.co.uk
Impact
The Papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US.[8] The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public regarding their intentions. For example, the John F. Kennedy administration had planned to overthrow South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem before his death in a November 1963 coup. President Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign,[3] including plans to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 Election. President Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.[9]
In another example, a memo from the Defense Department under the Johnson Administration listed the reasons for American persistence:
- 70% - To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat.
- 20% - To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
- 10% - To permit the people [of South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
- ALSO - To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
- NOT - To 'help a friend'[3][10]
Another controversy was that President Johnson sent combat troops to Vietnam by July 17, 1965, before pretending to consult his advisors on July 21–July 27, per the cable stating that "Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance informs McNamara that President had approved 34 Battalion Plan and will try to push through reserve call-up."[11] In 1988, when that cable was declassified, it revealed "there was a continuing uncertainty as to [Johnson's] final decision, which would have to await Secretary McNamara's recommendation and the views of Congressional leaders, particularly the views of Senator [Richard] Russell."[12]
Nixon Solicitor General Erwin N. Griswold later called the Papers an example of "massive overclassification" with "no trace of a threat to the national security". The Papers' publication had little or no effect on the ongoing war because they dealt with documents written years before publication.[3]
After the release of the Pentagon Papers, Goldwater said:
During the campaign, President Johnson kept reiterating that he would never send American boys to fight in Vietnam. As I say, he knew at the time that American boys were going to be sent. In fact, I knew about ten days before the Republican Convention. You see I was being called trigger-happy, warmonger, bomb happy, and all the time Johnson was saying, he would never send American boys, I knew damn well he would.wiki/Pentagon_Papers
Gale Encyclopedia of US History: Pentagon Papers |
Kliphnote: Now you wonder why people don't trust what the
government tells them.
And it's the same today as it was forty years ago as it has been forever.
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