The Pentagon Papers, we all need a review, seriously.

MaeZe

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In advance of the movie release, The Post, planned this January, MSNBC is replaying the 2009 documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. This documentary should be a mandatory lesson in every high school in this country.

Inspired by war protestors who left places like MIT to go to jail protesting the war, Daniel Ellsberg was being eaten inside by what he knew about the Vietnam War: Presidents had been lying to the public from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon.

If that young person, a university student with so much promise, was willing to go to jail to end the Vietnam war, Ellsberg knowing what he knew had to risk jail himself

The most critical thing in the documentary to me (not counting the SCOTUS decision on freedom of the press) was the hypocrisy of Nixon calling Ellsberg "a traitor, making a decision on his own he knew what was right for the country," (paraphrased only slightly).

Let that hypocrisy sink in. It's stunning.

But not as stunning as the Nixon tapes revealing Nixon was ready to drop nuclear bombs 'to save face' essentially. Kissinger talked Nixon out of it.

The third most critical thing was the courage of the NY Times, then The Post, who both published excerpts, then Senator Mike Gravel who read the papers into the Congressional Record, forever preventing them from being suppressed.
 

Roxxsmom

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I'd want to check this out, as I know less about the Pentagon Papers than I should. I know this issue contributed to my own parents' deep mistrust of Nixon prior to Watergate (though some of their feelings about him dated back to the McCarthy era, long before I was born).