The Paradox of the Pentagon Papers

Secret U.S. documents on the Vietnam War have been released in their entirety for the first time.

Exactly 40 years after the spectacular publication of portions of the “Pentagon Papers,” the U.S. government finally released all 7,000 pages on Monday.

The man makes no secret of his sympathetic feelings toward WikiLeaks. That’s no surprise, since Daniel Ellsberg is almost considered the founding father of the disclosure platform. His name is inextricably linked to the Vietnam War-era “Pentagon Papers,” which he made public in 1971 and which are now finally available in their entirety in the United States for the first time. Ellsberg, who studied at Harvard and Cambridge, had the well-known Ellsberg Paradox named for him. The Ellsberg Paradox is a well-known phenomenon in decision theory, which was based on his research and deals with decision-making under uncertain conditions. Ellsberg, an economist who worked as a high-level adviser in the Pentagon and the South Vietnamese foreign office, was a confirmed anti-communist. That, however, didn’t deter him from releasing classified documents pertaining to the war the United States was waging against the communist regime in the People’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Newsweek magazine called Defense Secretary McNamara’s secret study of the Vietnamese war a historian’s dream and a statesman’s nightmare. The excerpts, made public on June 13, 40 years ago, had already shown that every president from Harry S. Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson had lied through their teeth to the American public and revealed strategies and methods used by the intelligence services to manipulate political conditions and armed conflicts. The war in Vietnam had been planned well in advance, according to The Washington Post newspaper, while the nation’s leadership was presenting a different image to the rest of the world.

Attempts by the Nixon White House to limit press freedom failed. Publication of a major portion of the papers couldn’t be halted. Attempts to charge Ellsberg with unlawful possession or theft of the papers also had to be abandoned. The Supreme Court struck down the prohibition on publication of the papers as unconstitutional. Release of the papers strengthened those opposed to the war and materially helped make the Freedom of Information Act and its 1974 amendment into an effective tool in the fight for more political transparency.

Now the complete dossier, bearing the title “United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense,” may be viewed at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, in three presidential libraries or online. No big surprises are expected. The newly released portion of the complete file deals mainly with the peace negotiations between the U.S. and North Vietnam.

The USA Today newspaper describes the publication as “the final act in a saga that changed the presidency, the press and all of government four decades ago.” It is also legendary that similarly shameless lies were told by the Bush administration three decades later, when they were used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Against that background, publication of the entire dossier, something Ellsberg describes as a “non-event,” actually was important — provided it encourages the public to begin questioning the absurd over-classification of almost everything the government does.