Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

Rating:
Summary: Top notch
Review: p83... I noted where the book went from where the editors had too much control (I assume they put in the attempts a short bios on key figures where are so disjointed from the rest of the book), to where the story takes on a life of its own. I expected a dry, academic read, but was pleasantly surprised that I had misjudged Ellsberg's capabilities as a writer and storyteller.

Ellsberg does a masterful job of presenting a lot of "inside" information, and making it accessible to the lay-person. The book is not overloaded with governmental alphabet soup as are too many military/political accounts. Better than presenting the information, Ellsberg takes us on a journey--his personal journey--tying together many threads of detail into a single story, and allows the reader to share the "aha!" (perhaps the "oh, no!") he must have felt as he unraveled the events forcing his hand to leak Top Secret information. Having read "In Retrospect" a few years ago, I'm left wanting to revisit that work as there are disparities between the two "I was there" accounts which, if my memory serves, may simply be a result of how McNamara was "spinning" the facts--but why are we still "spinning" now...

From this story, Ellsberg provocatively takes us beyond the Pentagon Papers to their impact on the world's most important personalities. I would very much like to see a sequel to this book which investigates the implications of the Pentagon Papers in more depth.

Whatever the first 80ish pages lacked is more than made up by the rest of the story.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book. real issue, questionable perspective
Review: Read the five star reviews: Everthing they say about the quality of the writing, the suspence, the detail and the ultimate importance of the Pentagon Papers is true. As a veteran of both the war and, later, the anti-war movement, I could not be more pleased that the Pentagon Papers came to light and the futility of the Vietnam War was finally made clear. ...The truth is the tragic story of the Vietnam War and the muddled decision making that got us there and kept us there. The fiction is that Daniel Ellsberg is a hero.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening History
Review: Some of these reviews are ludicrous, and I would hope readers are not scared off the book by them. I, as a conservative, was a little leery about reading this book. Not that I have any respect for people like ultraliberal Lyndon Baines Johnson, but some of Ellsburg?s more pacifistic tendencies made me a little worried about what I would read in this book. I did not know much about Ellsburg or his politics, but I was worried I would be reading a far left tract on the evils of any US action overseas. This is far from the case. Ellsburg does not reveal any secret government, or any other kind of leftist fantasy. Indeed, his real claims might be more disturbing.

Daniel Ellsburg was a very smart, former Marine officer. He was, and is, patriotic, and dedicated to the defeat of communism and tyranny. He quickly climbed the ladder of the US foreign policy power strata, ending up, in the early 60's, as aide to the Assistant Secretary of Defense, John McNaughton. At the time, the nation was slowly being drawn into the Vietnam War. The narration begins with quite the bang, as Ellsburg's first day at the Pentagon was also the day of the Tonkin Gulf Incident. Ellsburg was swamped with dozens of hysterical wire messages, giving a totally confusing image of the "attack". Soon after, however, Ellsburg realized, and let his superiors know, that the "incident" was most likely a misunderstanding and a mistake in communications. Then, as a reader, we are first introduced to the shroud of lies that clouded the eyes of most American policy makers of the era.

Ellsburg lays out his case very well. Even before the Tonkin Gulf Incident, people in the Johnson Administration were determined to start a war with North Vietnam, unbeknownst to the American people or Congress. Massive covert operations were carried out, with the full knowledge of the President and Secretary of Defense McNamara. Again, the lies covered any of this up. Later on, Ellsburg is tapped to write a history of how the US got involved in Vietnam. This was probably the most enlightening part of the book, as it showed many US policy makers and officials had tons of early doubts about involvement in Vietnam. Their warnings went unheeded. I felt, from reading the book, that no one could imagine the US would get so involved, then actually lose, so there was no need to "rock the boat". The effect of this was no one could be honest. LBJ would never entertain any negative reports, nor would McNamara and the military.

One of the things I had no idea about was Ellsburg's actual trip to Vietnam, where he worked with the legendary John Paul Vann. This was amazing, as Ellsburg took on some extremely dangerous missions. He quickly saw what many others were reporting about. Because of the lack of any South Vietnamese leadership, and continuing American misunderstanding of the situation, the war was unwinnable. The worst part about this was that many trusted US sources were writing back to their superiors about the futility of the war, but no one would listen. Slowly, Ellsburg begins to realize that Presidents like Johnson and Nixon had no interest in actually telling the truth to the American people, and were more than willing to continue the massive coverup of the truth. Bravely, Ellsburg revealed a wealth of government documents to the New York Times, known as the Pentagon Papers. They documented the decades of American reports, describing the ultimate futility of the US presence in Vietnam. Of course, President Nixon and his cronies responded to this leak with their characteristic dirty tactics. Ellsburg almost went to jail for his bravery, but was later vindicated.

So what does the book teach us? Well, it teaches us that there must be strong public attention to government business. People like Johnson and McNamara, the two main "villains" of the book, could do whatever they wanted as long as the public did not care. Ellsburg does make a few statements I did not agree with, but overall, there is no doubt in my mind he is a brave man who loves his country, and was willing to put his life on the line to save it from an even more terrible disaster. This book does not condemn all government, or the US system, but it does argue for more oversight. Most people can agree on that, no matter what their political bent.

Rating:
Summary: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
Review: The book is a must read. Per previous reviews, Daniel Ellsburg may have been a "little fish" with "the morals of a ferral cat," but the Pentagon Papers speak for themselves. It isn't and wasn't about Daniel Ellsburg. It's about the truth. Others may have "secretly opposed" the war as the book clearly documents, but no one stuck out their neck as Ellsburg did and that is the difference. McNaughton made his choice. Ellsburg made his.

Rating:
Summary: personal account of a difficult decision. inspiring
Review: The most moving part of this book is his description of when he realized what he needed to do. After living so closely with the Vietnam war for years, and contributing to its efforts, he became very emotional when he realized the truth, and knew he had to bring the documents to the public. These documents came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.

He put his own future at great risk by doing this. He faced many felony charges that could have put him in prison for years. But he did what he had to do. His efforts helped end the Vietnam war.

I admire his courage. I believe he set an example for those who are close to Bush and the Iraq war. They realized they shouldn't wait as long as Ellsberg did to reveal the truth to the public.

Rating:
Summary: very timely
Review: This book is very important, very much worth your time. If you can't read it, listen to the audio tapes. As the US heads to war against Iraq a look back at Ellsberg's time in and around the Vietnam war are key. Ellesberg is a true American hero. Read it now!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent, though maddening tale of government deceit
Review: This book should be read by everyone who responds to those polls saying that they support the current administration's efforts to involve our nation in another war with Iraq. Daniel Ellsberg laid his liberty on the line to disclose the government's deceit that got us into and kept us in the Vietnam quagmire. Only time will tell whether the government's efforts to deceive the public in the 1960's are currently being repeated, but it certainly makes you wonder when the current administration claims to have facts to justify a war, but is unwilling to disclose those facts for fear of putting certain operative's lives in danger. Unfortunately history repeats itself and the arrogance and disdain shown by our nation's leaders for the public in the 1960's is most likely being repeated in our own times. Where is the Daniel Ellsberg of today?

Rating:
Summary: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
Review: This is one of the most important books about the Vietnam era. Dr. Ellsberg has demonstrated the need for citizens to be vilgilant and never to take the word of government officials at face value. His exposure of the Pentagon Papers was, by far, one of the more patriotic actions of that time period.

Rating:
Summary: The U.S. Vietnam war: an insider's difficult confessions
Review: This timely book has appeared when debate continues to rage on America's role in the post-Cold War world and particularly since the events September 11, 2003. It is timely notwithstanding its chronological sequence which ends about thirty years ago, bracketed by two key events: the famous Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, coinciding with author Daniel Ellsberg's first days on the job as a top Pentagon official with the highest civil service grade, and the May 1973 dismissal of the case brought against Ellsberg by the Nixon administration for his leaking of the "Pentagon Papers" to various media.

You can read this book on two different levels. It is first and foremost an insider's view of the policy and bureaucratic interactions through which successive U.S. administrations and agencies (including the various parts of the military and intelligence community) justified and pursued a growing U.S. military engagement in Vietnam, despite, as Ellsberg forcefully documents, deep convictions among many senior members of this community that this was a doomed enterprise from the outset. Second, the book is about the personal transformation of the author whose was continually wracked by his intellectual and moral struggles between his convictions of the futility of the ends and means of U.S. policy in Vietnam and his involvement with this policy for over a decade as a top Pentagon official and later as a consultant with RAND Corporation. Although much of the material has appeared elsewhere and also covered in other books such as David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest", Ellsberg provides some fresh material and insights in this latest work.

Ellsberg continually juxtaposes evidence of intelligence available to him others against a series of official pronouncements, beginning with those of President Johnson and Defense Secretary McNamara, claiming unprovoked enemy aggression and threats to U.S. interests. Within twenty hours of starting his new job at the Pentagon, and referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Ellsberg writes that he already knows that "each one of the assurances [given by the President and Defense Secretary] was false." However, Ellsberg, a former officer in the Marines holding a Harvard economics doctorate who is hardly dovish, is not alone in his incredulity about various claims, particularly between civilians (With whom General Maxwell Taylor tended to side, he says) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the scale of risks the U.S. being drawn into a war with China. "The JCS was inviting the administration to play with nuclear fire. And whatever their reasons and reservations, the top civilian officials were not refusing to play."

Ellsberg documents his own bureaucratic reflexes, as he responds to his Pentagon boss, John McNaughton, who reports directly to McNamara. "An order from McNamara to McNaughton for fast action was like an order from God; it wasn't an occasion for John to express reservations to show hesitation. He passed it on to me with the same expectation. I didn't disappoint him."

But Ellsberg continually struggles to explain why he remained in his Pentagon job despite his growing doubts, beginning with the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. "This book represents my continuing effort - far from complete - to understand my country's war on Vietnam, and my own part in it, and why it took so long to end both of these." He shares in this book the reactions of his future wife, an active opponent of the U.S. role in Vietnam, during their evolving relationship. Of his male friends she encountered during a tour in Vietnam, Ellsberg reports, "She observed to me later that all of them were either divorced or separated from their wives by more than distance. Nobody at the table had an ongoing marriage. It was her sense that they were desperate men, enamored of danger and the war, risk takers who didn't feel they had a lot to lose."

While his doubts grow, it is not until he begins to read the secret "Pentagon Papers" in the spring of 1969 that Ellsberg writes of changing his perspective on the Vietnam War drastically. "It was to be the last month that my writings expressed a concern with how we might have won in Vietnam." The papers which Ellsberg eventually leaked were a 7,000 page document officially titled "History of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68." Ellsberg is enraged after he seeke the counsel of a Harvard law professor to whom he describes his plan to leak these documents. When the lawyer refuses to hear any more about his "planned crime", Ellsberg shoots back: "I've been talking to you about seven thousand pages of documentation of crimes: war crimes, crimes against the peace, mass murder. Twenty years of crime under four presidents. And every one of those presidents had a Harvard professor at his side, telling him how to do it and how to get away with it."

Ellsberg reminds how, when the Nixon administratation obtains a temporary court injunction against New York Times, the first of several newspapers to which he leaks the documents, a threshold in crossed in U.S. legal history; "For the first time since the Revolution, the presses of an American newspaper were stopped from printing a scheduled story by federal court order." Symbolically, on May 11, 1973 the day when the case by the Nixon administration against publication of the Pentagon papers is dismissed, Ellsberg writes of someone holding up headlines from the same day proclaiming the indictment of former Attorney General John Mitchell, the man who had indicted Ellsberg.

Several books have recently appeared on the U.S. war in Vietnam. Few share both the personal perspective and the insider's views of this book which underscore how damaging secrecy can be for democratic institutions. Ellsberg conmveys tha passions of his convictions against U.S. involvement even while he acknowledges the distance he feels with the tactics and aims of many of the student protesters he meets, through his future wife and others.

Just as for Ellsberg himself, this book is important for anyone who continues to seek to unravel the enigma of the U.S. political process which was to engulf the country into one of its most serious period of domestic crisis, culminating in Watergate. While Ellsberg does not broach events beyond 1973, the publication of this book nearly thirty years later will re-open our eyes to a series of events and lessons which tend today to be relegated to the collective amnesia.

Rating:
Summary: A memior relevant to our times.
Review: With this memoir (much like the Pentagon Papers themselves), Ellsberg offers to every citizen something that is deeply informative--an insider's look at those in powerful positions. And with this startling insight comes a warning.

Unlike others such as Chomsky or Vidal--who are reflexively dismissed by some as disconnected, ivory tower radicals--Ellsberg's account of government malfeasance gets its inescapable weight from its personnel nature. Ellsberg was there on the front lines of the cold war through most of the 50's and 60's. As a Marine, a Harvard educated analyst for The Rand Corporation and then the Pentagon, Ellsberg was part of the establishment that pursued an unjust war in Vietnam and lied about it to the American people.

This full reality was not completely apparent to him in his early years and like other dedicated "Cold Warriors" he kept his head down and rationalized that it was all for the best. He hoped that by making the government's decision-making abilities more effective, a more appropriate foreign policy would emerge. What he didn't realize was that for the men making the decisions, the process was as effective as they wanted it to be. He came to discover that these men were fully aware of the consequences of their policies. The problem was not that their decisions were corrupted by lack of information, but instead they were corrupted themselves by the institutions that bore them. The culture of these bodies fostered an arrogant belief that government needed to lie to the ignorant masses. Internal dissent was minimized and punished by an ardent allegiance to the hierarchy. The distance between the comfortable, safe offices where decisions were made and the far off countryside where those decisions spilled the blood of hundreds of thousands made human suffering peripheral to what they conceived to be the greater good. And this detachment ultimately lead to a top down decision-making process where desire and wishful thinking drove policies instead of facts from the ground below. All of these factors contributed to what Ellsberg identified as immoral policies that could only be corrected from outside the institutions that created them.

His super top-secret "Pentagon Papers" showed the folly of four consecutive administrations as they pursued a path that virtually all on the ground said was certain to fail. And despite Nixon's public claims to the contrary, Ellsberg knew that Nixon intended to continue on that path and in fact escalate the War further. Knowing that he was destroying his career and quite possibly giving up his freedom, Ellsberg published the Pentagon Papers in an attempt to put pressure on these institutions from the outside. If anyone can tell us why government must be always questioned and monitored, Ellsberg can and does in this book.

This is a very engaging read because it is well written and clearly laid out by Ellsberg. One can see the mind of a top Pentagon analyst in the proficient examination of the relevant issues. If you like foreign affairs and politics this is a very good book for you. If not, you may find it dry and drawn out because as memoirs go, this one is rather unemotional. Ellsberg brings in some emotion at times (when himself and others are brought to tears by anguish over the war), but it seemed to me that the surrounding book did not explain that emotion. Although the emotional landscape of those times is not adequately explored, this observation is not a criticism since that is not the book's purpose. However, if the purpose of this book is to warn all citizens--in and out of government--of the corruptive force inherent in power, it is a success.