Ever
since its beginning in 1954, the Vietnam War was controversial for a number of
reasons. Many people did not want the United States to be involved in the war
and wanted to keep the dispute between northern and southern Vietnam. The US
did get involved with the war regardless of popular public opinion. When a top
secret study or “encyclopedic history” of the war was leaked out of the Pentagon
and published in the New York Times,
the controversy surrounding the war doubled. The Papers were officially titled “Report of
the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force” commissioned by
Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. The report was leaked to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, who
was an official in the Pentagon who had helped write the papers, in June
1971and distributed all over the country. Even though the publications did have
many content inaccuracies, it shed a new light on the US government. The leak
of the pentagon papers changed the relationship between the government and
society because of the extent of the lies that the Nixon Administration and the
Pentagon told about the war, the lengths that the government went to to stop multiple
newspapers around the country from printing any more contents from the papers,
and the reaction of people all over the country.
Since
the beginning of the war, The President and other important government
officials had been lying to the American people about the war. The Government
had been telling people that the amount of casualties was low in Vietnam when really
soldiers were dying all over the place at an alarmingly fast rate. There is
evidence of this deception in a phone conversation between Nixon and Alexander
Haig after the Pentagon Papers were published. The conversation is about the number
of casualties from that week in Vietnam. Haig tells Nixon that there were more
than expected or predicted but neither of them intends for that information to
leave their conversation. The pentagon papers showed the public the true facts.
This angered people because they found out that their government had been
giving them false hope and added to the number of peace protests and anger
about the US government decision to get involved in the war. Also, Nixon and
others were telling the public that the war was going wonderfully and that the
US was “winning” by a long shot when really, American troops were suffering
just as much as anyone else and the whole war effort was crashing in on itself.
The Papers also shed a new light on presidents Kennedy and Johnson who had
apparently also been lying about the war as well. The public was not happy
about the government’s fall from their pedestal, and neither was the
government.
The
government took extreme action to try to stop the Pentagon Papers from being
published in various papers. Firstly, they got a restraining order on the New York Times to keep them from
continuing on with their daily series on the Papers, which is a direct
violation of the first amendment of freedom of press. Ellsberg was also charged
with violating the espionage act when really he was just trying to do what he
believed was the right thing. The Nixon Administration went do far as to call
the publications a “massive security leak” and say that they were detrimental
to the safety of the nation. The government went head-to-head with the New York Times and Daniel Ellsberg in
the Supreme Court, but was unable to give any evidence that the publications
had actually harmed the security of the nation.
The Government was not seen as trying to protect the country’s national
security, but actually trying to protect their own images and status. They were
trying to preserve the relationship between the government and the American people,
but only so that they could keep themselves on top of the unspoken hierarchy in
the U.S. President Nixon responded to the incident by saying “[T]he sonofabitch
thief is made a hero and is going to get off on a mistrial, and the New York Times gets a Pulitzer Prize for
stealing documents… what in the name of God have we come to?” this quote shows
the extreme difference between the way that the government thought of the leak
and the was that society thought about it.
The way that the American people responded
to the deception changed the way that society used to look up to the
government. The American people could have written off the fact that not just
one president, but three presidents and many other important historical figures
had lied to them and just accepted the new facts as new to everyone, but they rightly
chose to examine their trust in the government. The president lost the “father-like”
image that had been developed in years past and became a reason for people to
be suspicious. In one quote from Haldeman, who was the white house chief of
staff (Wikipedia), says “But out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing;
you can’t trust the government; you can’t trust what they say; and you can’t
rely on their judgment; and the- implicit infallibility of presidents, which
has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows
that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the
President can be wrong.” This quote is a clear example of the new distrust of
the government by the American people.
Also, Daniel Ellsberg was looked at as a hero for giving Americans the
truth. Not only did the New York Times
publish parts of the Pentagon Papers, but so did the Washington Post and the Boston
Globe when the Times had a
restraining order placed on it. Ellsberg did not give up trying to inform America
of the lies that they had been fed for so many years. Americans lost their
belief in the government because of the pentagon papers.
The lies of the government over many years, the reaction to the leak by the government, and the reaction of the American people to the leak changed the way that American saw the government forever. The Pentagon Papers are still a big topic in the news today and continues to be inspiration for “whistle blowers” every time the government is not to be trusted. It is important to have people in society or in the government who will stand up and tell the truth. It may cause dissension between the ruling party and the people, but it allows us to exercise our equal rights and it keeps us from being conformist. Whistle blowers keep America moving forward. When something needs to be questioned, it is expected that someone brings attention to it so that the constitution remains intact and America can continue to be a nation that is in constant disagreement, but also a nation that works.
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| Daniel Ellsberg Trial |
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| President Nixon |
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1.
This source included brief background information
on the Pentagon Papers and it also included the full document in a PDF file. I
did not use the real copy of the papers honestly because most of the political
jargon is over my head and the full document is 7,000 pages long. I did use
this source for background information such as when the Papers were leaked and
who they were commissioned by.
This source contained some brief background
information on the pentagon papers. It also had a range of phone call
recordings between President Nixon and various advisors, colleagues, and
others. The phone calls helped me to get a better idea of how Nixon felt about
the pentagon papers being leaked.
This source included some slightly more detailed
information about the Pentagon Paper’s leak. It also included a quote from President
Nixon that helped give me evidence to show the separation that was created by
the pentagon papers incident between the government and society.
This source included information on Ellsberg’s
trial and had a few quotes from Ellsberg concerning the pentagon papers. These
quotes also helped me to show the separation between the government and society.
In this source, I found background
information on the Vietnam War and more detailed information on the Pentagon Papers.
The info gave me a stronger position on my argument.
In this source, I found some fresh
information and a couple of quotes helping me form a stronger argument. This
source also had a video on the pentagon papers. The video was extremely helpful
in understanding the concept of the pentagon Papers and the effects of them on
the relationship between the government and society
Wow! Great job Lydia- very thorough and I love the last sentence. This is very quotable and a good way of summarizing the character of a nation as big and free as ours! Thanks for your work here and throughout the year.
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