Secrets FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Daniel Ellsberg came to international attention in 1969 when he smuggled out the Pentagon Papers, an act that flung open the gates of secrecy that surrounded American conduct and policy in Vietnam, and changed United States history. Now he tells the whole exciting story in this impassioned memoir.
In the 1960s, ex-Marine Ellsberg was a high-level government adviser, spending considerable time in Vietnam. Upon his return Stateside, he worked for the Rand Corporation, a private think tank with close ties to the Pentagon. There, he took part in the creation of a comprehensive history of the Vietnam conflict for former defense secretary Robert McNamara. After reading the completed 7,000-page document -- which became known as the Pentagon Papers -- Ellsberg's disillusionment with U.S. policies turned to outrage. He discovered that, from the start of U.S. military involvement in Indochina in the 1950s, our government had systematically misled the public about its actions and objectives. With the Vietnam War still going strong under the Nixon administration -- despite official statements that it was winding down -- Ellsberg felt compelled to go public with this top-secret history of government duplicity.
At considerable personal risk to himself and his family, Ellsberg made the Pentagon Papers available to the media, and they were published in their entirety by The New York Times. The reverberations were titanic. Ellsberg was arrested and put on trial. At the same time, President Nixon's paranoia grew, resulting in illegal actions that led to his political fall from grace.
Whether he was crawling on his belly in the rice paddies of Vietnam's Plain of Reeds or fleeing the FBI in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ellsberg's actions demonstrated that he was a man of conscience. This memoir should inspire the reader's sense of civic duty. It raises serious questions about our responsibilities, what it is we owe our government and our community, and asks whether there is a path of integrity that can be taken to preserve both. Dana Isaacson
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Daniel Ellsberg began his Vietnam-era career as the coldest of cold warriors: a U.S. Marine company commander, a Pentagon official, and a staunch supporter of America's battle against Communist expansion. But in October 1969, Ellsberg - fully expecting to spend the rest of his life in prison - set out to turn around American foreign policy by smuggling out of his office and making public a seven-thousand-page top secret study of decision making in Vietnam, eventually to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In this penetrating political memoir, Ellsberg now tells the full story of how and why he became one of the nation's most impassioned and influential antiwar activists and the most important whistleblower of the last fifty years." "Secrets is a detailed insider's view of the secrets and lies that shaped three decades of American foreign policy during the Vietnam era. Ellsberg's exposure to the lying began on his very first day in the Pentagon, August 4, 1964, which was also the day of the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident. The more Ellsberg learned about the war from top decision makers, confidential documents, and reports of secret maneuvers, the more skeptical he became about prospects for military victory in Vietnam. Then, during a two-year volunteer tour in Vietnam as a State Department official, he saw firsthand how disastrous American military strategy was, and he became convinced that the Johnson administration's policies were hopeless. Returning to the United States in 1967, he began to see that his pessimism was widely shared inside the government, despite encouraging public statements by the president and other high officials. And yet the war continued. Richard Nixon, elected president in 1968 with promises of peace, escalated the war further. By 1969 Ellsberg had gone beyond a commonly shared position critical of U.S. policy, and he describes here in detail how he came to risk his career and his freedom to expose the deceptions and delusions of the ent
FROM THE CRITICS
Howard Zinn
If our nation could absorb its lessons we might all face a better future.
Seymour Hersh
It is a chilling tale of life at the bureaucratic top, and what profound compromises it takes to stay there.
Daniel Schorr
This is an honestly and lucidly told narrative by someone who single-handedly changed the course of history.
John Kerry
[Ellsberg's] story reminds us that to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship is to always ask questions and demand the truth.
Ben Bagdikian - Washington Post
...written with breathtaking excitement... Read all 10 "From The Critics" >
Home
