Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

"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 entire American involvement in Vietnam, from President Truman onward - for the Pentagon Papers revealed that Washington had clearly known Vietnam to be a catastrophe for decades.".

"The release of the Pentagon Papers, first to the New York Times and the Washington Post, set in motion a chain of events that included a landmark Supreme Court decision, the arrest and trial of Ellsberg and his collaborator, Anthony Russo, and the crimes of Watergate. Ultimately his actions helped end not only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War.

Infused with the political passion and turmoil of the Vietnam era, Secrets is at once the memoir of a daring and committed man, an insider's expose of Washington, and an exploration of conscience and patriotism in a government intoxicated by secrets."--BOOK JACKET.