Call it "the Gary Cooper factor": pop culture (and pop history) demands a certain modesty (like that of Cooper's "aw shucks" film characters) from American heroes. So Ellsberg hasn't fit comfortably into the American pantheon. His signal contribution also remains controversial: Ellsberg "leaked" the Pentagon Papers, but those voluminous documents were simply a history of the Vietnam War few Americans actually read. They offered few surprises but did confirm the antiwar movement's charge that the government had lied to its citizens. An unlikely whistleblower, Ellsberg was a Harvard economics Ph.D. who shifted between government appointments and the RAND Corporation and spent significant time in Vietnam--a quintessential "defense intellectual." Even after he decided the "top-secret" Pentagon Papers should be released, he spent nearly two years trying to convince various dovish politicians to take the lead. The Pentagon Papers went to the press--the New York Times and, later, the Washington Post and other outlets--only because no one else would reveal them. The Nixon administration's hysterical reaction "justified" a number of the Watergate crimes that brought down Nixon's presidency. In this memoir of his years working first for and then against the U.S. defense establishment, Ellsberg clearly regrets he took action so many years after he realized the Vietnam War could not be won. An important addition to U.S. history in the 1960s and 1970s. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
...timeless... -- A. J. Langguth, author of Our Vietnams
...written with breathtaking excitement... -- Ben Bagdikian, former assistant managing editor, Washington Post
If our nation could absorb its lessons we might all face a better future. -- Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
It is a chilling tale of life at the bureaucratic top, and what profound compromises it takes to stay there. -- Seymour Hersh
The most important expose of Washington since the Pentagon Papers themselves, Secrets is essential reading for any American... -- Martin Sheen
This is an honestly and lucidly told narrative by someone who single-handedly changed the course of history. -- Daniel Schorr, Senior news analyst, National Public Radio
[Ellsberg's] story reminds us that to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship is to always ask questions and demand the truth. -- Senator John Kerry
Product details
- Hardcover: 512 pages
- Publisher: Viking Adult (14 October 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0670030309
- ISBN-13: 978-0670030309
- Product Dimensions: 16.3 x 4.1 x 24.3 cm
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