Screeria nigeria. They did it. They said throughout that were not considering costs. Thank you, your honor. Thank you counsel, the case is submitted. With congress out this week for the spring recess were featuring American History tv in primetime. Up next, part one of a twopart interview with daniel ellsberg. While working at the Rand Corporation in 1967, mr. Ellsberg became consultant to the white house and Defense Department on matters concerning the vietnam war. Giving him access to classified and top secret documents. He photocopied a 7,000page study that later became known as the pentagon papers. In 1971 he gave those documents to the new york times. The Richard Nixon president ial library conducted this interview as part of a project to document the 37th president s administration. Mr. Ellsberg talks about his motivations in leaking is pentagon papers as well as his opinions on the vietnam war. This portion is about an hour and 20 minutes. Right from the beginning and until late in 71 when they came out, so for, what is that, two years, a couple of years, i always thought for the pentagon papers to have any effect, they should be the basis for congressional hearings. Precisely because i knew they didnt tell the whole story or an adequate story. I knew what was a lot of what was excluded from them. And what you needed was oral testimony, preferably under oath of people who really knew the decisionmaking at the time and could explain what was the implications of these papers where the documents themselves didnt tell the whole story. I knew that very well. For example, they gave a very missleading impression of what john mnaghten ever thought, my boss, the assistant secretary of defense for International Security affairs. When he wrote anything down, it was a briefing paper for mcnamara to use to argue with other people, to present mcnamaras preferred policy. It didnt usually express what mnaghten thought was appropriate policy or what he thought to expect or considerations. He was writing lawyers briefs for mcnamara to present. That was just one example. But i knew that many in many other cases it didnt answer many of the questions. So what you wanted was testimony. And to keep people honest and to job their memories you needed to be able to show them, read these documents and tell us now why you wrote this or what is not said in this document. So forth. So i always wanted congressional hearings. And i had the mistaken belief then that congress was more likely to hold those hearings if they had the documents in the first instance and were not scooped by the press. That they could present dramatic material. In retrospect 40 years later, thats not the way congress works. In the end, it was very important that they appear in the newspapers. Congress reacts to what the public is concerned with. And if you dont have a public concern, they dont investigate. And they dont press things. And neil sheehan later in urging me not to give it to a congressman first but to let the times do it, which i was skeptical about. I thought, well, they just want a pulitzer prize. I didnt really think that was the way to do it. But he was right. The times had a greater potential for getting those hearings done than simply giving the documents to congress in the first place. I was wrong about that. I might note the times didnt do it either. The hearings never took place. Both fulbright and mansfield, when the pentagon papers came out, said, ah we must hold public hearings on this subject. They both said that publicly right away. They were in charge. No hearings happened. And nixon wanted them. Nixon wanted them. And they didnt happen. They both understood each other. The hearings would mainly have incriminated the democrats. And fulbright and mansfield and the other democrats had no interest in pulling mcnamara in front and confronting him with lies that hed made to the public and mistakes that hes made and the democrats had made. So the democrats held no hearings even when there was Public Interest in the thing. Nixon, on the other hand was very anxious. He on the tape says, oh we cant wait to get mcnamara answering these questions it will drive him crazy so forth. Didnt happen. Because the democrats were in control. If the republicans had controlled congress there would have been hearings. And i would have been happy with that. I wanted the truth out. But in short both of 71 and 69, what i believe Hubert Humphrey said i keep forgetting whether it was humphrey or wall rosstow one or the other both speaking to halderman and hague and nixons people about the pentagon papers. One of them made the comment, no good democrat could have released these. Now, i was a democrat. And i am a democrat. But i wasnt a good democrat. Nor am i now, i must say. Im kind of a selfhating democrat at the moment. In 69 i wasnt a good democrat. I was prepared to see the democrats get the blame which they richly deserved. I didnt want to punish them or do anything but in terms of ending the war, i thought it will only happen if the democrats accept the blame that is rightfully theirs. Early on before nixon has planted his flag on this war. Quickly. And i say the democrats i talked to were democrats and they rejected that idea. They would not have wanted to put out the pentagon papers. And so in answer to your question, my thought on the pentagon papers was this. That if they are the basis for hearings before fulbright they may fulbrights initial reaction was very favorable, to put them out till he thought better of it. But at first he promised me that he would put them out. And my thought was that if he gets them out in time, then nixon will perceive that he has the option of blaming this war on democratic deception democratic incompetence democratic lilyliveredness, from his point of view, and say, all right, the war is hopeless. I have to get out. My mistake was to imagine that nixon would have picked up that opportunity. Nixon mansfield did give him that opportunity privately and nixon rejected it. He was determined not to get out. And on the other hand, fulbright it turned out was much more when he thought about it when he saw what the pentagon papers were, could see that there were real dangers in it for the democrats. Now, dan, you tried this in the fall of 1969. 69. So i gave them so but you dont what do you do for the next two years . Because nothing what you wanted to have happen doesnt happen. In fact what youd feared would happen does happen. Yeah. Now, heres where my mistake about nixons policy was had an effect. Had i realized that as i was copying the pentagon papers, nixon was directing the duck hook planning in connection with his november ultimatum. In other words, that the war had the potential for exploding very quickly, even that very fall or perhaps later. A little later. I would have felt more urgent about what i was doing. Theres a number of whatifs. As it was, i didnt know about duck hook because he didnt carry it out. The reason he did not carry out the escalation was i believe strongly, because 2 Million People walked in the streets and were in demonstrations on october 15th 1969. The october moratorium effort. And another demonstration was scheduled for november 15th. Again was extremely large. And that led him to give up his escalation planning because he knew that there would be perhaps ten times as many people out if he escalated. So it was not the right time for that. I didnt know any of that at the time. The reason was hell principle had been kept in the dark on that, working for kissinger. It was what i was talking about compartmenttation. Hell principle had been identified by kissinger as somebody who was working for him but thought we ought to get out in the interests of the country and nixon who he was working for. He wasnt sabotaging anything he believed we should get out. Therefore, he wasnt told. People he was working closely next to, tony leek roger morris others, didnt tell him any of that. Even though they were working side by side, essentially. Then hell principle left for related reasons in late august, early september. I believe if hed stayed in the white house aneven a couple more months he probably would have learned of the planning that was going on. If hed told me, i would have made every effort to get at that planning and release with some hope of doing it. I knew all the people. I was trusted by them. Id worked with them earlier. If id had the duck hook planning or the november eliminate mate actual i would not have copied the pentagon papers. That was only history. It ened in 68. I knew from the beginning that it didnt show what nixons planning was. And had only a small chance, a small chance of affecting nixon policy. I described what i thought the chance was. But if id had documents or information on his current planning, i would have put that out. Ten pages of that or 30 pages would have been worth more than 7,000 pages of history of the democrats. I copied the pentagon papers only because it was all i had. It was the best i had. And i hoped that people would see that a history that showed four president s in a row to some extent as early as fdr but then truman eisenhower, kennedy, and johnson, you could say five president s had all planned escalation or involvement in vietnam. Different from what theyd told the public. Made secret threats. Secret operations. With costs much higher than they ever admitted to the public. And with prospects much dimmer, much less promising than they ever admitted to the public. All of them had done that as a pattern. Perhaps the public could believe what i was told by hell rin, that another president , the latest president , was doing the same. Thats what my hope was with the pentagon papers. It didnt happen. My hopes were not fulfilled. The public was inpressed by how much lying had been going on by all these earlier president s. They still wanted to believe that our current president was telling the truth that there was a new nixon, that he was getting out which was after all very plausible, how could he not want to get out . In 68, 69 everyone gave him the benefit of the doubt because it was hard to imagine a sane person wanting to do anything else other than get out. If he wasnt burdened with it like humphrey or johnson. But if he was a new person coming in. Now, so the pentagon papers did not reveal to them what nixons or even make them inquisitive about what nixons real policy was. At the time and for a generation later, nixons policy has been supped up about i nearly everyone journalists, academics, public, he was trying to get us out as fast as he could. And that was an extremely missleading description. Although not entirely false. He was trying to get us get u. S. Troops out. But not by allowing the communists to achieve any kind of success. Except to control the parts of the country they were already controlling. But not to control saigon. Not to have a coalition government. Nixon as i understand it and did in 69 never intended for saigon to become Ho Chi Minh City while he was in office. That is, through 76. If ever. He hoped to leave his successor, republican or democrat with a strategy that could be persisted, could be prolonged, with enough will. And i think had a good pacebasis. It turned out he had a good basis for doing that. He hoped even more to make it easily sustainable. A cheap sustainable war. Because the North Vietnamese troops would not be there anymore. Let me ask you, tell us about 1970. What effect did kent state have on you . What effect did the escalation into cambodia have on your sense of urgency . There i thought that did have a big effect. Because it told me the escalation is happening sooner than i expected. Let me go back now to 69. I did not foresee it happening in 69 where we came very close. As close as 2 Million People. If the moratorium had not occurred, i believe we would have escalated and probably used Nuclear Weapons. In the fall of 69. Nixon intended, had plans done for Nuclear Attacks as march morris informed me a mile and a half from the chinese border. In a relatively unpopulated area. I wont go into all the details. The intention was not was actually to kill very few civilians but to send a very large signal to the chinese and to the North Vietnamese. I think he wanted to use Nuclear Weapons. And actually an aide to hague who was later chief of staff told sy hirsch that hague was amazed 69 had ended without the Nuclear Weapons being used. Robert ellsworth, later nato ambassador under nixon, was also amazed there had been no use of Nuclear Weapons by the end of 69. But that was because of the moratorium. I didnt know that. I thought escalation was likely to occur. Nixon didnt. And kissinger didnt. They thought the threats would succeed. I thought their threats would not succeed. And therefore there would be escalation, eventually. The north would launch an offensive. So i thought the escalation would come when the north launched an offensive. Which i thought was pretty sure to happen no later than 72. Probably not 1970. A little more likely 71. Probably not till 72. But probably just as ted was intended to affect our election in 68, probably 72 was a good year. Maybe 71. So there would not be an escalation till then. So there was kind of a year coming where there would not where things would go on as they were. A stalemate at a relatively low level. And so when you say when nixon didnt when my hearings didnt take place in 69 i sort of gave up on the pentagon papers being very important. I continued to copy them for a while and give them to fulbright until id given them all. I thought he should have them all for his maybe he would eventually use them. But i didnt feel a great sense of urgency. And weeks would go by when i didnt copy. And then something would come up and i would copy some more. Then cambodia happened. And that said to me, wait a minute. Hes prepared to escalate actually, what i interpreted that was still part of the threat. He wants to make clear that if they have an offensive, he will blow North Vietnam to pieces. What he really was trying to make clear was what the threat hed made in 69. If you dont get the northern troops out ill blow you to pieces. But in either case i saw it as a demonstration that would lead to further escalation. It would not be effective, in my opinion, and i was right about that. The North Vietnamese did not ever concede what he was asking. So at that point i did become quite urgent. Fulbrights people told me, and norvil jones they would hold haerts. I began looking at the papers and saying, heres the witnesses you should call. I worked in the Foreign RelationsCommittee Offices for a while. Trying to prepare for hearings. And actually unfortunately the pressure instead of going from mcgovernhatfield type bill of getting all the troops out of indochina, the pressure the political strategy by the democrats was to press the churchcooper bill to get them out of cambodia only. And nixon did agree to that and did get them out of cambodia. And the air went out of the large movement that responded to kent state. I think the war could have been ended in april may of 1970. If the what was it 200,000 people, i think, in washington then, for demonstrations after kent state, had closed down washington. It was the one time this is a whatif that i think is of some interest. Congress was for once furious at the executive because they felt theyd been totally misled by the escalation in cambodia. They hadnt been briefed on it. I think the one person thats come out that they briefed was ford. The person they expected to forget what hed been told. At any rate would not tell anybody, and he didnt tell anyone. So congress felt totally blindsided on that. They were very angry. And had i think if people had shut down washington, which you could do with 200,000 People Congress for once would not have been against the antiwar movement. They would have been sympathetic. And what you could have gotten possibly no guarantee but there was a chance of cutting off funds for continuing the war. What finally happened, this is 1970, what finally happened three years later in 1973, when they cut off funds for combat operations in indochina. Instead of just in cambodia. I think that could have been done. If i look back at what i could have done, it would have been a good time to put out the pentagon papers. To make an allout push. The war was illegitimate in the beginning. Look at the papers of 45, 46, 47, 48. Thats what made the greatest impression on me. But it was history that never did get published too much. Nobody read it very much. And what influenced me really never got to the public. The fact that we had begun the war in support of a french imperial reconquest of a colony that had declared its independence. That went from American Values and american antiimperialist ideals it had no legitimacy from the beginning. It was not clearly illegal, by the way, i found. Because the u. N. Charter does allow for colonies. And even for internal policing. And it wasnt clearly illegal for france to continue to claim ownership of indochina, even though theyd declared independence. But from the point of view of american policy you know and what fdr was secretly agreeing to do, let the french back in, and harry truman did do, and eisenhower did do, all of these had to be very much obscured from the American People because sustaining the french empire was not part of american ideals. Or to me so it was illegitimate from the beginning. To me that meant in 69, when i read these documents, that it was unjustified homicide, which i saw as murder. Not just an error. Not just bad, incompetent policy. It was mass murder. To be killing people who wanted to be independent in order to sustain an imperial control of them. Whether it was the french or ours. I didnt think we had any more legitimate right to run vietnam than the japanese or the chinese for 1,000 years before them or the french. And we had no more prospect of doing it. Dan you men when you went to vietnam in the 60s 69. I had a different perception in 64, 65. Everyone knew that indochina was a french colony. I mean, that wasnt a secret. You know, as a historian how old are you . 46. 46. So you have to be in your 50s to remember, i found, even the pentagon papers. And i think make a generalization that obviously doesnt apply to you personally. I think historians its very hard for historians to get a feel for what peoples understan