Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

Rating:
Summary: "We are eating our young"
Review: "Ellsberg is the most dangerous man in the world and must be stopped at all costs," Henry Kissinger proclaimed in the Oval Office on March 2, 1971. President Richard Nixon was equally fearful of Daniel Ellsberg because the highly regarded government insider had copied 7,000 pages of Top Secret documents about U.S. involvement in Vietnam and released it to the New York Times for publication.

Ellsberg, a former U.S. Marine infantry officer, Vietnam expert and dedicated cold-war warrior witnessed how the war was eating our young and decided to expose dark White House policy. On that note, "Secrets; A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers," is a startling exposure of how the White House often conducted destructive policy behind closed doors and lied to Congress and the American public about it. The author aptly summed up the situation he found when he finished researching years of Top Secret historical reports on Vietnam..."you don't have to be an ichthyologist to know when a fish stinks."

Ellsberg discloses (among many other things) that in March of 1969 William Beecher of the New York Times reported the Top Secret bombing of Cambodia. Beecher's story had been particularly embarrassing to Nixon and Kissinger because it revealed details on the operation that the White House had meant to keep from Secretary of Defense Mel Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers. Ellsberg also demonstrates how Nixon and Kissinger orchestrated a strong government denial that forced the quiet death of Beecher's New York Times report.

The author concludes that, "it appeared that only if power were brought to bear on the executive from outside," would the situation change. He realized just like many other Americans that the Vietnam War was a endless, hopeless bloody stalemate. Ellsberg also understood that we were supporting a corrupt South Vietnam government that primarily wanted to enrich themselves and who consistently ignored the needs of its suffering population.

As background...I myself am a former cold-war warrior, having spent two tours in Vietnam with an elite USMC intelligence unit. Moreover, I am well aware of the legendary work of USMC Lt. Colonel William Corson, who Ellsberg visits while in Vietnam and astutely observes (pgs. 173-175) the promise of his daring pacification program. As a long time admirer of William Corson I agree with Ellsberg that the Colonel deserves "rare praise." To this end, I applaud how Daniel Ellsberg has conducted himself. Those who critized the failures of the war from the inside were ignored. Ellsberg figured this out and bravely exposed the failures to the American people. Highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz





Rating:
Summary: Painfully Relevant
Review: "Secrets" is Daniel Ellsberg's superb memoir detailing the period of his life from childhood to his acquittal of criminal charges for releasing the now famous Pentagon Papers. This book is a superb read on several levels. It is fascinating and important historical source, since Ellsberg participated in defense planning as a Rand researcher and as a Pentagon deputy during the critical period when the United States decided to occupy Vietnam. Equally as important is the ethical dilemma Ellsberg chronicles of having to choose between the safety and comfort of maintaining his bureaucratic sense of loyalty or making dangerous personal sacrifices for the greater good of his country and his conscience. And contrary to most political memoirs that are often tediously written and sprinkled with excessive namedropping, this book reads like a novel.

Dan Ellsberg began his career as a self-described cold warrior. Prior to obtaining a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, Ellsberg served in the Marines as a peacetime company commander. After completing his graduate education he worked as a researcher in the Rand Institute where one of his projects involved estimating the total number of global casualties resulting from a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia (hundreds of millions of people within the first twenty-four hours). Ellsberg undertook this work because since childhood he found the practice of civilian terror bombing, as he understood it, to be morally repellant. Thus it should come as no surprise that when called to work in the Pentagon as the assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton, Ellsberg already brought a strong sense of moral purpose to the job, a situation that ultimately resulted in profound consequences both for him and for the government he served.

While serving in the Pentagon, Ellsberg witnessed the immediate confusion of the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Johnson Administration's subsequent decision to falsify the particulars of that incident as a pretext for invading Vietnam. Readers will probably be struck with the same sense of amazement that Ellsberg was about how America's military bureaucracy actually functions. From one perspective, Ellsberg was stunned by the sheer volume of crises that top officials including his boss and the president's cabinet, had to deal with in rapid succession. While Ellsberg admired his colleagues and superiors he often wondered if it was really possible to run a government by crisis hopping in this manner.

From another perspective, Ellsberg was deeply disturbed by the standard policy of lying within the military bureaucracy. It may surprise readers to know that the military never had any illusions about the possibility of winning the Vietnam War. In 1964, according to Ellsberg, top military officials briefed the president and his cabinet with astonishing accuracy on the precise number soldiers required (1.5 million), for a specific duration of time (8 years), and a large number of resulting casualties (50,000) and no guarantee of victory. Despite such dire warnings, a sanguine and poorly defined policy was implemented, and when it quickly began to yield disastrous results the president and his top officials lied to each other and to the American people about what was really happening. While Ellsberg correctly concedes that there are many instances when it is practical for the highest levels of government to conceal information from the American people, he also observes a kind of bureaucratic pathology at work. Top officials including McNamara often provided favorable reports to the president, which they personally did not believe in and which they knew would result in disaster but which their positions and careers compelled them to do. As a result Ellsberg notes, the highest levels of government were not able learn from their mistakes in Vietnam and to adjust accordingly. Instead top officials developed what Ellsberg terms a process of systematic "anti-learning" which in layman's terms means that they saw what they wanted to see instead of what was actually happening.

Ellsberg's observation of the Pentagon and Executive Branch's process of systematic anti-learning was powerfully reinforced by his subsequent personal experience when he served as a State Department official in Vietnam. Ellsberg was brave enough and fortunate enough to traverse unsecured roads in hostile territory with the legendary civilian general, John Paul Vann. He witnessed both the plight of bogged down American soldiers and the resourcefulness of the determined Vietnamese guerillas and concluded that even if nuclear weapons were introduced, the war was ultimately unwinable. Ellsberg quickly concluded that America was faced with a war that its leaders had always known they could not win, that it was currently in the process of losing, and which the highest levels of the military and government refused to view in realistic terms.

Ellsberg's opposition to the war took place gradually and culminated in the realization that America was in the process of destroying a generation of young men by sending them to war or imprisoning them for opposing the war. Shortly afterward, Ellsberg decided to risk a life sentence in prison by releasing the Pentagon papers to congress. The Pentagon papers are an astounding collection of documents both in their volume (several thousand papers) and in the frankness with which they make record the official process of lying to the American public. Many well-meaning congressional officials at first offered to produce the Pentagon papers to their colleagues on Ellsberg's behalf but ultimately declined for career reasons. Consequently Ellsberg released them to the media who subsequently disseminated them to the public.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a first hand view of how the highest levels of American government work. Be warned, however, that while Ellsberg's story is ultimately worth knowing, his revelations about the government are frightening and depressing. It is interesting to note that in several public speeches ...Dan Ellsberg has frequently drawn parallels to his own experiences chronicled in this book, and to America's current foreign policy with respect to Iraq. Obviously this is an issue that readers must decide on their own, but if anything else, it makes "Secrets" a highly relevant book to read.

Rating:
Summary: Arc Light
Review: "Arc Light" is a better read about the Vietnam War.

Rating:
Summary: Poor, Poor Danny = a cheap personal attack
Review: ...I did read the book and I believe it resonates today, with regard to the right wing Bush gang and their phony War on Terror and their phony War on Drugs. In "Secrets" Ellsberg shows us the secret, shadow government of the United States and gives us a glimpse of how a small group of unelected and unaccountable men manipulate our government for their own purposes. When caught out in the light of day, these men shrink in size...

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Summary: History Matters, Secrecy Permits War Crimes by Presidents
Review:

This extraordinary work comes at the perfect time, as an Administration is seeking to create new forms of secret operations invisible to Congress and the public, in pursuit of its war on Iraq and-one speculates-other targets of ideological but not public priority. The book covers seven areas I categorize as Background, History, Information Strategy, Pathology of Secrecy, Ethics, War Crimes, and Administrative.

By way of background, the book establishes that the author was not a peacenik per se, as some might perceive him, but rather a warrior, both in terms of Cold War ideology and from actual experience as a USMC infantry company commander and an on-the-ground observer traveling across Viet-Nam by jeep instead of helicopter, generally in the company of the top U.S. ground expert in Viet-Nam, John Paul Vann. The book establishes-as George Allen has also told us in NONE SO BLIND, that intelligence did not fail in Viet-Nam, that Presidents do get good advice from good men, but that the position of President, combined with executive secrecy as an enabling condition, permits very irrational and ineffective policies, conceived in private without public debate, to go forward at taxpayer expense and without Congressional oversight. The author is timely in emphasizing that the "spell of unanimity" is very dangerous and provides a very false image to the public-the stifling of dissent and debate at all levels leads to bad policy.

The author does an effective job of bringing forward the lessons of history, not only from Truman and Eisenhower forward, but from the Japanese and French occupations of Indochina. We failed to learn from history, and even our own experts, such as Lansdale showing McNamara the rough equipment that the Vietnamese would defeat us with because of their "will to win," were sidelined.

As a public administration and public policy text this book offers real value as a primary source. The author provides valuable insights into how quickly "ground truth" can be established; on how the U.S. Government is not structured to learn; on how the best answers emerge when there is not a lead agency and multiple inputs are solicited simultaneously; and most importantly, on how private truths spoken in secrecy are not effective within any Administration. The author stresses that Americans must understand what Presidents are doing in their name, and not be accomplices to war crimes or other misdeeds. He does a brilliant job of demonstrating why we cannot let the Executive Branch dictate what we need to know.

Interwoven with the author's balanced discussion of how to get ground truth right is his searing and intimate discussion of the pathology of secrecy as an enabler for bad and sometimes criminal foreign policy, carried out without public debate or Congressional oversight. The author adds new insights, beyond those in Morton Halperin's superb primer on Bureaucracy and Foreign Policy, regarding the multiple levels of understanding created by multiple levels of classification; the falseness of many written records in an environment where truth may often only be spoken verbally, without witnesses; the fact that the Department of Defense created false records to conceal its illegal bombings in Laos and Cambodia, at the same time that the White House created false secret cables, used Acting Director of the FBI Patrick Gray to destroy evidence, and sought to bribe a judge with the offer of the FBI directorship. The author presents a compelling portrait of an Executive Branch-regardless of incumbent party-likely to make major foreign policy miscalculations because of the pathology of secret compartmentation, while also being able to conceal those miscalculations, and the cost to the public, because of Executive secrecy. He is especially strong on the weakness of secret information. As he lectured to Kissinger: "The danger is, you'll become like a moron. You'll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours" [because of your blind faith in the value of your narrow and often incorrect secret information. P. 236]

On such a foundation, the author discusses the ethics of Presidential leadership. He is especially strong-and relevant today-in discussing how Presidential appointees regard loyalty to the President as a mandate for lying to Congress and the media and the public. The author excels at bringing forward how our corruption in permitting corruption is easily recognized and interpreted by indigenous personnel-just as how whom we support is quick evidence of how little we know about local politics.

From here the author segues into the ethics of collateral damage and the liability of the American people for war crimes and naked aggression against the Vietnamese because of our deliberate violation of the Geneva accords and our support for a corrupt series of dictatorships in South Viet-Nam. Much of what we did in Viet-Nam would appear to qualify for prosecution under the International Tribunal, and it may be that our bi-partisan history of war crimes in Viet-Nam is what keeps us from acknowledging the inherent wisdom of accepting the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal in future wars. Tellingly, at one point his wife reads the Pentagon Papers and her tearful reaction is: "this is the language of torturers."

Administratively we are reminded that the Pentagon Papers were 7,000 pages in total; that Neil Sheehan from The New York Times actually stole a set of the papers from Ellsberg before being given a set; that character assassination by the U.S. Government is a routine tactic in dealing with informed dissent; and that it is not illegal to leak classified information-only administrative sanctions apply, outside a narrow set of Congressionally-mandated exceptions.

This book is a "must read" for any American that thinks and votes.

Rating:
Summary: Must reading
Review: A primer on how presidents and their administrations lie to the
American public.

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Summary: Spellbinding Recounting Of The Pentagon Papers Story!
Review: After finding this book quite by accident while browsing through the wonderful Concord bookstore the other day, I was astounded to find how relevant and interesting a story author Daniel Ellsberg manages to conjure up after all this time regarding his legendary experience leading up to and including the leaking, release and publication of the infamous "Pentagon Papers' by the New York Times. As he explains early in the long yet fascinating monologue, he fully expected to be sentenced to a long prison sentence for having secreted a copy of the highly classified Department of Defense's official history of the American Government's policy and involvement in Vietnam. The report was a damning confirmation of the worst fears of the anti-war movement, and provided overwhelming evidence of the cynical, manipulative, and deceitful character of our government and its deceit to its own people regarding its involvement.

What surprised Ellsberg most in all of this swirling excitement and activity was his own growing celebrity, and while he spent years fearing the worst for his own admitted culpability in defying criminal statues by stealing and leaking official government secrets, eventually the charges against him were dropped based, among other things, on the revelations of the Nixon's plumber's unit's illegal break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Ellsberg was an unlikely hero, a graduate of the Harvard University economics doctoral program, a former marine officer turned defense issue intellectual, a frequent visitor to Vietnam who was rankled by the distinct difference between what he was seeing and experiencing during his visits, on the one hand, and what the official American government position regarding what the situation was on the ground on the other.

Based on this growing dissatisfaction and the discovery of the so-called Pentagon papers, a treasure trove of more than 7,000 pages of carefully documented details about the U.S. Government's involvement in Vietnam and its motives, considerations, and actions, Ellsberg tried to enlist the support of a number of Senators and Congressmen in an effort to use the evidence in the Pentagon Papers to undercut the Government's position and thereby end the war itself. Failing to do so, he finally surrendered the documents to the New York Times, which agreed to publish them through a series of daily excerpts (and also later in an abridged best-selling paperback version). The Government tried to stop publication, but was denied the right to do so by the Supreme Court. Of course, with the publication came an increase in public opposition to the war and a recognition of the degree to which the Executive branch and the military had intentionally misled the public regarding the conduct of the war and the situation on the ground for the moiré than 500,000 troops then stationed in-country. Still, it took more than five more years before the American involvement in Vietnam ended.

This is a wonderful book to experience, and in reading it one comes to recognize the formidable skills Ellsberg brings to bear in terms of his amazing recall, eye for details, and ability to successfully juggle a variety of interacting considerations at the same time. This guy is smarter than the average teddy bear, and it is easy to see how difficult a task it would have been for the Department of Defense and the nitwits over in the White House to try to outmaneuver him. I was a bit surprised at some of the personal revelations in the book, and while it is obvious that Mr. Ellsberg has a healthy ego, he manages for the most part to keep it at bay in retelling a story that could have easily have devolved in a retelling of the David against Goliath epic, but which he keeps objective and factual enough to keep the story rolling along as a recounting of the gripping events that transpired more than thirty years ago and helped to turn the tide of public opinion toward the war in Vietnam. I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in 20th century American history. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Ah, the kiss of death is nigh
Review: Daniel Ellsberg has the privilege of being both the Quisling and anti-Quisling for those in American society who were concerned about the responsibilities of government in the 20th century. Philosophically, American foreign policy was the area in which people were most likely to become early illustrations of the final sentence of Section 354 of THE GAY SCIENCE by Friedrich Nietzsche:

We simply have no organ for knowing, for `truth': we `know' (or believe and imagine) exactly as much as is useful to the human herd, to the species: and even what is here called `usefulness' is finally also just a belief, a fiction, and perhaps just that supremely fatal stupidity of which we some day will perish.

Quisling was Norway's perfect Nazi in the way that the Saigon government was always the perfect forerunner of democracy as far as American policy ("just a belief, a fiction, and perhaps" just what Nietzsche wrote) was concerned. The assumption that people in South Vietnam, after 1954, when their (SVN) government was largely determined by what the United States was willing to impose or maintain, would be willing to die so their future might improve was as obvious to those who find the kiss of death the ultimate test in logic as Quisling's belief that people in Norway would not die if the government of Norway welcomed the Germans instead of attempting to fight an invasion. Each policy was supported by factions in the U.S. government. President Kennedy preferred to maintain the fiction that Saigon's government was a perfect Quisling, so Americans should assume that any American would be as safe in South Vietnam as German officials might feel entitled to safety in Norway during World War II. The anti-Quisling factor never really accepted the idea of Quisling as an ideal ally. The original Quisling was a Nazi, after all, and allowing anyone else the opportunity to die for our freedom was not the kiss of death, as far as they were concerned.

An outline of Ellsberg's book, SECRETS, splitting the factions as they appear in particular settings, might turn out like:

I. Preface, Ellsberg alone, "carrying a briefcase filled with top secret documents," (p. VII) determined to show that American policy was "just a belief, a fiction, and perhaps just" (what Nietzsche wrote) as secret as Quisling's plans to topple the government of Norway at the right time for the Germans. Ellsberg, acting in secret, is practically Quisling himself, without actually being a Nazi.

Part 1, Prologue: Vietnam 1961, the view "that under President Ngo Dinh Diem, the dictatorial leader we had essentially chosen for South Vietnam seven years earlier, the Communists would almost surely take power eventually, probably within a year or two." (p. 3) This shows how Quisling politics works when everyone knows that the next Quisling would be worse. " . . . the Communists would probably win even faster. His reasoning was informed and complex; my notes of our discussion are filled with diagrams of `vicious circles,' a whole network of them. It was persuasive." The view of the anti-Quisling prospects, "But even American divisions, this colonel believed, would only postpone the outcome. The Communists would govern soon after our forces left, whenever that might be." (p. 4). This ultimately made any American policy "finally also just a belief, a fiction, and perhaps just that supremely fatal stupidity of which" Nietzsche wrote.

Chapter 1, The Tonkin Gulf: August 1964: The message, "Am under continuous torpedo attack," (p. 7) was just what anti-Quisling factors like LBJ needed to impress Americans with how brave bombers from Navy aircraft carriers could invade enemy airspace at will to impose reprisals for stunts like "Herrick reported another torpedo had run by him, and two more were in the water." (p. 7). "Torpedoes missed. Another fired at us. Four torpedoes in water. And five torpedoes in water." (p. 9). Ellsberg could determine, based on "In my new job I was reading the daily transcripts of this secret testimony, and at the same time I was learning from cables, reports, and discussion in the Pentagon the background that gave the lie to virtually everything told both to the public and, more elaborately, to Congress in secret session." (p. 13). As far as South Vietnam acting as our Quisling, Ellsberg learned that covert raids attacking North Vietnam had just taken place, and "these weren't South Vietnamese operations at all, not even joint operations. They were entirely U.S. operations, code-named 34A ops." (p. 14). In the realm of "their illegality, the danger both of exposure and of escalation, and their covertness, defined as `plausible deniability'--" (p. 15) South Vietnam as Quisling was only the cover story for what America was doing in a way that was altogether improper.

For a lot of people, American involvement in Vietnam was the kiss of death for American foreign policy, and no one is as qualified to tell that story as well as Daniel Ellsberg can and does in this book. The philosophy of Nietzsche might be considered an unusual personal choice for attempting to communicate how American policy was supposed to be more important than multiple young American lives at the time. I haven't read enough philosophy to find another famous theory that could come as close to my view of Nam. ...

Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: Daniel Ellsberg is famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers a series of secret studies. This occurred during the war and was important in providing material for those who argued against the war. It was a decision that led to him being put on trial but the scandals of the Nixon White House led to the case against him being dismissed.

One would have not thought that this would be much material to based a four hundred page book on but Ellsberg turns out to have an interesting background and he has a lot to say. He started out as a strident anti-communist cold war warrior. Despite this background he was always an opponent of methods of war which led to significant civilian policies such as bombing. He regarded the allied bombing campaigns in Europe and Japan as being close to war crimes.

He served as a marine and also spent a good deal of time in Vietnam as an observer with the military. During his time in Vietnam certain truths began to dawn on him. The first was that the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) was in poor shape. It had as an officer class people who came from the upper strata, and most had little training or enthusiasm for the job. Lower ranks were poorly paid and motivated. The ARVN in fact spent most of its time avoiding the communist forces. The tactics used by the communists were to maintain their force strength and to only become involved in combat when they wanted too. Direct American involvement had the effect of propping up the regime but it was not effective in reducing the level of the communist forces. Thus the doom of South Vietnam was inevitable. The continued presence of American field troops however was a disaster for the country. The Americans relied on the use of high firepower either by bombing or the use of artillery support. This generally took place in inhabited areas and led to unacceptable civilian casualties and infactructure loss.

Ellsberg however became involved about the morality of the whole thing. Five American Presidents had supported the continuation of the South Vietnamese State, something that was set up as a colonial offshoot by the French. The reason for the support related to issues irrelevant to the welfare of the people of Vietnam and related to domestic American politics. Presidents did not like to be seen as weak or responsible for the spread of communism thus they supported the continuance of the South Vietnamese regime, agreeing to coups, supporting unelected leaders all for reasons of vanity. Ellesberg released the Pentagon Papers to show that the actions of all the American Presidents involved had acted in the full knowledge that their policies were unlikely to succeed and had considerable civilian cost.

The book is fascinating despite the years that have gone by since the conflict. The biographical material is pretty much bare boned and only those things which are relevant to the war are discussed. The book is readable and it states with considerable clarity why the war was wrong.

Rating:
Summary: A must buy!
Review: Daniel Ellsberg offers critical insights into how men in power can lead the United States into tragic war with unexpected and catastrophic consequences. A must read for every American as Bush pushes us to war in Iraq.