Part 34 (1/2)
On April 6, 1971, the American consulate in East Pakistan sent a horrified wire: ”Our government has failed to denounce atrocities.... The overworked term genocide genocide is applicable.” Nixon did nothing. The very next day, the American team competing in the World Table Tennis Champions.h.i.+ps in Nagoya, j.a.pan, convened a news conference: they had been invited to play exhibition matches that weekend in China-the first American group of any size to visit Red China since John Foster Dulles turned his back on Chou En-lai's outstretched hand at the Geneva Convention in 1954. China had just come through the Cultural Revolution, as ruthless a disruption of any civilization in history. Its society was so closed that the American media reported on it-when they could get inside the country-as if on another planet. is applicable.” Nixon did nothing. The very next day, the American team competing in the World Table Tennis Champions.h.i.+ps in Nagoya, j.a.pan, convened a news conference: they had been invited to play exhibition matches that weekend in China-the first American group of any size to visit Red China since John Foster Dulles turned his back on Chou En-lai's outstretched hand at the Geneva Convention in 1954. China had just come through the Cultural Revolution, as ruthless a disruption of any civilization in history. Its society was so closed that the American media reported on it-when they could get inside the country-as if on another planet. Time Time managed to get an Australian reporter to Canton in October of 1967. He saw mobs ”surround and beat an old man who dared look at an anti-Mao poster.” Then they surrounded the reporter: ”What are you doing here, white devil?” He observed, ”Practically no one smiles.” managed to get an Australian reporter to Canton in October of 1967. He saw mobs ”surround and beat an old man who dared look at an anti-Mao poster.” Then they surrounded the reporter: ”What are you doing here, white devil?” He observed, ”Practically no one smiles.”
Now, in 1971, team member Tim Boggan reported back in the New York Times New York Times of a China in which everyone smiled: ”sumptuous” nine-course meals, ”lush green paddy fields framed by pine-clad hills,” an arena ”grander than Madison Square Garden,” ”a large playground where perhaps 200 children of all ages were playing soccer, basketball, and other sports” (a twelve-year-old handed him his hat at a Ping-Pong table with a net made of bricks). The hospitality was so overwhelming, Boggan wrote, that one team member's wife started crying. He quoted his hippie teammate Glenn Cowan of Santa Monica, California, ”whose casual, outgoing manner has made him a favorite with photographers and reporters on the other side of the border”: ”I really believe life is simple. It's all the other people that make things complicated.” of a China in which everyone smiled: ”sumptuous” nine-course meals, ”lush green paddy fields framed by pine-clad hills,” an arena ”grander than Madison Square Garden,” ”a large playground where perhaps 200 children of all ages were playing soccer, basketball, and other sports” (a twelve-year-old handed him his hat at a Ping-Pong table with a net made of bricks). The hospitality was so overwhelming, Boggan wrote, that one team member's wife started crying. He quoted his hippie teammate Glenn Cowan of Santa Monica, California, ”whose casual, outgoing manner has made him a favorite with photographers and reporters on the other side of the border”: ”I really believe life is simple. It's all the other people that make things complicated.”
This was what Nixon had been dreaming of. ”You know, young people really like 'people to people,' they really do,” he p.r.o.nounced with satisfaction to Ehrlichman. ”Sure. Their ideal is to think everybody's good, pure.... That's why the China thing is so really really dis...o...b..bulating to these G.o.dd.a.m.ned liberals-really kills 'em! The China thing-must just kill 'em. For me to do it. Don't you think?” dis...o...b..bulating to these G.o.dd.a.m.ned liberals-really kills 'em! The China thing-must just kill 'em. For me to do it. Don't you think?”
Kissinger: ”Sure.”
”Because it's their their bag.” bag.”
”Sure.”
”Not supposed to be my my bag.” bag.”
”But you you went at it in a way that made it possible to do.” went at it in a way that made it possible to do.”
Editorialized the New York Times, New York Times, ”A ping pong ball has cracked the bamboo curtain,” not making altogether too much out of it. The most Scotty Reston could imagine coming of it was that Americans would be able to enjoy a visit from the Peking Opera. The vice president had no idea of the astonishments to come; to reporters at a Republican Governors' Conference, the man who fulminated in Lincoln Day speeches against progressive preachers who set as their ”goal on earth the recognition of Red China and the preservation of the Florida alligator” said ”Ping-Pong diplomacy” had handed Mao a propaganda victory. ”A ping pong ball has cracked the bamboo curtain,” not making altogether too much out of it. The most Scotty Reston could imagine coming of it was that Americans would be able to enjoy a visit from the Peking Opera. The vice president had no idea of the astonishments to come; to reporters at a Republican Governors' Conference, the man who fulminated in Lincoln Day speeches against progressive preachers who set as their ”goal on earth the recognition of Red China and the preservation of the Florida alligator” said ”Ping-Pong diplomacy” had handed Mao a propaganda victory.
At the end of April, as the senior signatory of the cable about genocide in Bangladesh was relieved of his duties, the latest breakthrough came in via the Pakistani amba.s.sador: ”The Chinese government reaffirms its willingness to receive publicly in Peking a special envoy of the President of the United States (for instance Mr. Kissinger) or the U.S. Secretary of State or even the President himself.” Kissinger relayed a message of thanks to the butcher of Bangladesh for his ”delicacy and tact.”
China was only one of the diplomatic b.a.l.l.s Nixon was juggling. Three weeks later, on May 18, as Nixon conferred with Haldeman and Colson about how they would get Edmund Muskie and Teddy Kennedy more closely tailed, Kissinger exploded into the room. ”The thing is okay!” he cried. Colson, puzzled, was ushered out; it was hard to communicate super-secret diplomatic breakthroughs in the presence of unauthorized individuals. ”The thing” was a back-channel agreement for a framework on antiballistic missiles-heralding, as the public statement put it (only hours after Secretary of State Rogers and the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency learned about the existence of the secret talks), ”more favorable conditions for further negotiations to limit all strategic arms.”
On May 31 Kissinger got word from the Pakistani amba.s.sador that ”a very encouraging and positive response to the last message” had come from China: ”Level of meeting will be as proposed by you.” In other words, Nixon was going to China-and hardly a soul in the world knew it.
The next night was that 1971 Last Press Conference, when Nixon had expected fascination with his breakthroughs, but the gnats swarmed over him instead for the dodgy arrests of the May demonstrators in the capital. Well, he had had enough of the gnats. He didn't need them anymore.
He'd attended the White House Correspondents' a.s.sociation Dinner in May: ”Every one of the recipients was receiving an award for a vicious attack on the administration,” he moaned. ”They are truly a third house supporting the Democratic candidates.” He told Kissinger and Colson during a Potomac River cruise celebrating the SALT breakthrough, ”We'll get them on the ground where we want them. And we'll stick our heels in, step on them hard and twist...no mercy.” Colson met with the president of NBC on June 8 for a nut-cutting session: the White House, like a Mafia outfit, ”suggested” they run a special on Tricia Nixon's June 12 wedding, even though all three networks would be covering it live. ”They couldn't oblige us fast enough,” Colson reported. ”Julian Goodman jumped out of his chair.”
Nixon had a theory about the media: the only thing they respected was force. Let them twist in the wind until he needed them-when it came time to announce the China trip.
This ”triangular diplomacy” was a paradoxical thing, a product of that complex transit between the raging, mercurial Nixon and the coolly rational Nixon, the riverboat gambler and the chess player, Nixons old and new. He was getting out of Vietnam in the most unhinged possible way: dribbling out American troops while stepping up the bombing for fear of showing America ”a pitiful, helpless giant” (according to one estimate, 350,000 civilians died in Laos from the bombing for Operation Dewey Canyon II and 600,000 in Cambodia for Operation Menu). But his backstage maneuvering was based in a pragmatic understanding few others were wise enough to reach: that America was no longer the world's eight-hundred-pound gorilla.
He had read the economic tea leaves: America's exports had grown by two-thirds over the past decade but Western Europe's had more than doubled. j.a.pan's had more than quadrupled, and doubled with the United States from 1965 to 1967 alone. The world trading system agreed to at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 set a gold standard: $35 of U.S. currency could always be exchanged for an ounce of gold. That was swell when the United States was the free world's unquestioned economic superpower. But this novelty-a trade deficit-was making it more worthwhile for a foreign country to exchange dollars for gold than to buy any U.S. goods, the ounce being worth more in real terms than the thirty-five bucks. America was becoming weaker vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
Nixon outlined all this in a strange and apocalyptic July 6, 1971, tour de horizon tour de horizon to a gathering of media executives at a Holiday Inn in Kansas City. The High Cold War was over, he explained; the last third of the twentieth century would be ”an era of negotiation rather than confrontation.” The real arms race was over trade and markets. ”Economic power will be the key to other kinds of power.” Thus the global chessboard became not a chessboard at all. The game was multipolar: ”When we think in economic terms and economic potentialities, there are five great power centers in the world today,” the United States, Western Europe, j.a.pan, the Soviet Union, and China-with j.a.pan and Western Europe the real potential rivals. to a gathering of media executives at a Holiday Inn in Kansas City. The High Cold War was over, he explained; the last third of the twentieth century would be ”an era of negotiation rather than confrontation.” The real arms race was over trade and markets. ”Economic power will be the key to other kinds of power.” Thus the global chessboard became not a chessboard at all. The game was multipolar: ”When we think in economic terms and economic potentialities, there are five great power centers in the world today,” the United States, Western Europe, j.a.pan, the Soviet Union, and China-with j.a.pan and Western Europe the real potential rivals.
Had they known where this was headed, the execs' media outlets might have given Nixon's speech more notice. But his diplomacy was so secret, it was hard to see why the speech was significant: that the tilt away from Europe and j.a.pan would be balanced by a lean toward Russia and China. The significance of Kansas City's Holiday Inn in the annals of world diplomacy was only recognized years after the fact. For all his listeners knew, when Henry Kissinger disappeared from the diplomatic press corps' radar the next day on an official visit to Pakistan, it was just as his handlers claimed: that he was indisposed with a stomachache. He had actually ducked inside the People's Republic of China to close the deal for a presidential visit.
The stakes for keeping secrets had never been higher. And yet it happened as the White House suffered one of the most dramatic leaks in the history of the republic-one that saw Richard Nixon revert to his most irrational self.
Thus, in the summer of '71, the doors were opened to Watergate.
The June 13 Sunday New York Times New York Times front page had one feature to delight the president: a picture of him arm in arm with his daughter, walking her down the aisle in her billowing white dress on her wedding day. front page had one feature to delight the president: a picture of him arm in arm with his daughter, walking her down the aisle in her billowing white dress on her wedding day.
The bad news was two columns to the right.
The headline read, ”Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of U.S. Involvement.” The lead paragraph began, ”A ma.s.sive study of how the United States went to war in Indochina, conducted by the Pentagon three years ago, demonstrates that four administrations progressively developed a sense of commitment to a non-Communist Vietnam, a readiness to fight the North to protect the South, and an ultimate frustration with this effort-to a much greater extent than their public statements acknowledged at the time.”
It was a polite way of saying Americans had been lied to for twenty-five years.
The lies went back to Harry Truman, the article explained. Military aid to France had ”directly involved” the United States in preserving a European colony; the Eisenhower administration played ”a direct role in the ultimate breakdown in the Geneva settlement” and the cancellation of free elections scheduled for 1956. (President Nixon always said honoring Geneva was the reason we had to continue the war.) Kennedy-this in the Pentagon study's words-transformed the ”limited-risk gamble” he inherited into a ”broad commitment.” Lyndon Johnson laid plans for full-fledged war as early as the spring of 1964-campaigning against Barry Goldwater with the line ”We seek no wider war.”
What became known as the Pentagon Papers-three thousand pages of historical narrative and four thousand pages of government doc.u.ments-was shocking to all but the most hardened antiwar cynics. The expansion into genuine warfare began, the Times Times summarized, ”despite the judgment of the government's intelligence community that the measures would not cause Hanoi to cease its support of the Viet Cong insurgency in the South.... The bombing was deemed militarily ineffective within a few months.” To catalog the number of times Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon looked the American people squarely in the eye and said the exact opposite would require another book. summarized, ”despite the judgment of the government's intelligence community that the measures would not cause Hanoi to cease its support of the Viet Cong insurgency in the South.... The bombing was deemed militarily ineffective within a few months.” To catalog the number of times Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon looked the American people squarely in the eye and said the exact opposite would require another book.
Astonishments popped from every column of six inside pages. The new Saigon government, Secretary McNamara had written December 21, 1963-sold to the American people as the first light at the end of the tunnel-was ”indecisive and drifting,” and ”Viet Cong progress has been great during the period since the coup.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended extending military operations to Laos and Cambodia at a time when, officially, they hadn't even started in Vietnam. Then there was the stunning revelation of 1964's ”OP PLAN 34-A”: American frogmen demolis.h.i.+ng bridges and piers, Special Forces kidnapping prisoners, planes bombing railroad tracks, ”cross-border penetration” into Laos, ”general hara.s.sing activities against Pathet Lao military installations,” ”Strikes on targets of opportunity,” a ”Corridor interdiction program.” This was what had inspired the North Vietnamese to hara.s.s our s.h.i.+ps at the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964-a response sold to Congress as unprovoked.
The next day's Times Times revealed the White House's ”general consensus” to bomb North Vietnam began the same day as LBJ's presidential campaign, and the paper quoted a memo on the ”need to design whatever actions were taken so as to achieve maximum public and Congressional support”-to lie, in other words. The third day revealed the smokingest gun of all-a memo from a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton breaking down, in Robert McNamara's preferred statistical terms, why we were persisting in Vietnam: revealed the White House's ”general consensus” to bomb North Vietnam began the same day as LBJ's presidential campaign, and the paper quoted a memo on the ”need to design whatever actions were taken so as to achieve maximum public and Congressional support”-to lie, in other words. The third day revealed the smokingest gun of all-a memo from a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton breaking down, in Robert McNamara's preferred statistical terms, why we were persisting in Vietnam: 70%-To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat....20%-To keep SVN (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.10%-To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.ALSO-To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.NOT-To ”help a friend.”
That was written two weeks before the nationally televised address in which President Johnson explained ”the principles for which our sons fight tonight in the jungles of Vietnam”-that they were the same ”for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania.” Thus it was that June of 1971 marked the deadline beyond which any morally aware American could believe anything the government told them about Vietnam.
On June 15 the Times Times headlined, ”Mitch.e.l.l Seeks to Halt Series on Vietnam but headlined, ”Mitch.e.l.l Seeks to Halt Series on Vietnam but Times Times Refuses.” There was no installment the next day nonetheless. In its customary spot was an article on the Justice Department's investigation into the ident.i.ty of the leaker, and the ruling of U.S. district judge Murray Gurfein temporarily enjoining further publication while he reviewed ”espionage charges against the Refuses.” There was no installment the next day nonetheless. In its customary spot was an article on the Justice Department's investigation into the ident.i.ty of the leaker, and the ruling of U.S. district judge Murray Gurfein temporarily enjoining further publication while he reviewed ”espionage charges against the Times Times and persons unknown.” and persons unknown.”
Then the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post started running the Pentagon Papers. Reported the started running the Pentagon Papers. Reported the Post, Post, ”There are 15 'legitimate' copies of the controversial Pentagon report on Vietnam, the administration disclosed yesterday, and a ma.s.sive hunt is on to identify the one in which the ”There are 15 'legitimate' copies of the controversial Pentagon report on Vietnam, the administration disclosed yesterday, and a ma.s.sive hunt is on to identify the one in which the New York Times New York Times”-and now, they didn't add, the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post-”was given access.”
The president was at first indifferent to the whodunit game. He had his suspects-Leslie Gelb, deputy director of the Defense Department's Office of Policy Planning under Johnson, now a fellow at the Brookings Inst.i.tution; or another one of those ”f.u.c.king Jews”-but he wasn't disposed to worry about a doc.u.ment completed before he was inaugurated and covering events only through 1968. ”Make sure we call them the Kennedy-Johnson papers,” he had told Haldeman at first, prepared to let the chips fall where they may.
Historians would debate the reasons for the president's subsequent change of heart. They agree Kissinger was crucial in changing his boss's mind. Some suspect Kissinger was terrified the study might tarnish him-Gelb had been Kissinger's student at Harvard; or perhaps the leaker was one of Kissinger's former staffers who'd quit after the Cambodian invasion. Others suspected that Nixon and Kissinger worried that another suspect had high-level access to the Single Integrated Operational Plan-the nation's nuclear secrets-and might be enough of a wild man to make releasing them his next act of bureaucratic terror.
But the reasons for panic weren't really that complicated. Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy made credibly guaranteeing discretion to negotiating partners the first, even sacred, priority. Nixon was reminded of this by Kissinger (pretending to be on vacation, but really firming up plans for a scouting trip to China): ”It could destroy our ability to conduct foreign policy. If other powers feel we cannot control internal leaks, they will not agree to secret negotiations.” Of course he also uttered a colorful Kissingerism that his boss never failed to find persuasive: ”It shows you're a weakling, Mr. President.” And so the panic burst forth.
Nixon had ten minutes scheduled on June 16 with a twenty-five-year-old former naval officer named John O'Neill, the spokesman for the front group Chuck Colson had set up to combat John Kerry, Veterans for a Just Peace, they called it. O'Neill had earned his time with the president with an appearance on CBS's Face the Nation Face the Nation that sent Colson over the moon-”I don't think he said 'we support the president' more than eighteen times,” he gushed, adding, ”O'Neill is a very attractive, dedicated young man-short hair, very square, very patriotic, very articulate.” that sent Colson over the moon-”I don't think he said 'we support the president' more than eighteen times,” he gushed, adding, ”O'Neill is a very attractive, dedicated young man-short hair, very square, very patriotic, very articulate.”
The president ended up spending half an hour with O'Neill and didn't want the meeting to end. O'Neill left pledging he would spend every waking moment campaigning for Richard Nixon-a welcome respite for the president, for whom every other meeting was ending in tirades about who was out to destroy him via the Pentagon Papers leaks.
By the next day, they had only one suspect-the one man who knew too much. His name was obscure to the public. It had only appeared in the New York Times New York Times five times. Once was for his 1950 wedding to a general's daughter: ”Mr. Ellsberg...is attending Harvard College, where he is president of the Harvard Advocate, a member of the editorial board of the five times. Once was for his 1950 wedding to a general's daughter: ”Mr. Ellsberg...is attending Harvard College, where he is president of the Harvard Advocate, a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson, Harvard Crimson, and a member of Signet Society.” The announcement of his second marriage in 1970 (to, Nixon noted, a millionaire's daughter) added more ornaments to his resume: ”The bridegroom was graduated summa c.u.m laude from Harvard College, where he was a member of the Society of Fellows and where he received a doctorate in economics. He served as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and worked as a strategic a.n.a.lyst with the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif.” In between, the and a member of Signet Society.” The announcement of his second marriage in 1970 (to, Nixon noted, a millionaire's daughter) added more ornaments to his resume: ”The bridegroom was graduated summa c.u.m laude from Harvard College, where he was a member of the Society of Fellows and where he received a doctorate in economics. He served as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and worked as a strategic a.n.a.lyst with the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif.” In between, the Times Times mentioned his argument in a 1969 anthology of essays on Vietnam that the war was so unmitigatedly horrifying because ”to paraphrase H. Rap Brown, bombing is as American as cherry pie.” Then, on October 9, 1969, the mentioned his argument in a 1969 anthology of essays on Vietnam that the war was so unmitigatedly horrifying because ”to paraphrase H. Rap Brown, bombing is as American as cherry pie.” Then, on October 9, 1969, the Times Times ran ”Six Rand Experts Support Pullout; Back Unilateral Steps Within One Year in Vietnam”; he was one of the experts-and the lead signatory of a November 1970 letter to the editor of the ran ”Six Rand Experts Support Pullout; Back Unilateral Steps Within One Year in Vietnam”; he was one of the experts-and the lead signatory of a November 1970 letter to the editor of the Times Times from MIT faculty accusing Nixon of ”vastly expanding this immoral, illegal, and unconst.i.tutional war...and the moral degradation of our country.” from MIT faculty accusing Nixon of ”vastly expanding this immoral, illegal, and unconst.i.tutional war...and the moral degradation of our country.”
Thus was limned an evolving ident.i.ty: one of the defense Establishment's best and brightest had by turns become its most dedicated critic.
Dan Ellsberg had been an obvious choice for Robert McNamara as lead author when he commissioned the Pentagon Papers in June of 1967. Ellsberg's combination of book smarts, policy experience, and time spent on the ground in the jungle was unique: he had volunteered for Vietnam in 1965, serving two years with General Edward Lansdale, one of the war's architects, and as a combat officer his commander called ”the best platoon leader I had.” McNamara had recruited the anonymous authors for their expertise, whatever their feelings about the war. And by then Ellsberg was a Vietnam critic, if a quiet one. After General Westmoreland came to the United States to preach to Congress about the ”light at the end of the tunnel,” Ellsberg lectured the Times Times's Vietnam correspondent, Neil Sheehan, and its Was.h.i.+ngton bureau chief, Tom Wicker, ”You guys have been conned.” Westmoreland's presentation, Ellsberg said, had been pure propaganda, though propaganda softened up at the last minute. ”You should have seen what they wanted wanted to tell you”-lies so exaggerated Westmoreland would have been laughed off the House floor. to tell you”-lies so exaggerated Westmoreland would have been laughed off the House floor.
The lying: it burned Daniel Ellsberg to the core. But there was nothing he could do about it: the cables proving it were top secret.
It was only natural that Henry Kissinger had called Ellsberg, one of his most brilliant students at Harvard, to Nixon transition headquarters at the Hotel Pierre in New York City to consult on policy options in Vietnam. But by that time, December 1968, Ellsberg was neck deep in primary doc.u.ments demonstrating that the wisest American policymakers had understood from the beginning that South Vietnam could never survive on its own as a viable political ent.i.ty, that it would take upward of a million troops or even atomic bombs to sustain it, that the reason the war was kept going was domestic politics. One of the options Ellsberg presented Kissinger at the Pierre was unilateral and total withdrawal. That didn't make it into Kissinger's report to the president-elect. Ellsberg realized then and there that the Nixon administration would be willing to sustain ma.s.sive carnage to end Vietnam the way it preferred.
Ellsberg had lectured Henry Kissinger in that hotel room, lectured him about the narcotic effect of secrets: ”It will become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have clearances. Because you're thinking as you listen to them: 'What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know?'.... You'll become something like a moron...incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have.” Lyndon Johnson, after all, did it: ”I'm just not in a position to know how much information each critic of my policy in Vietnam happens to have,” he'd say. ”It makes me wish that all this information was available to everybody who is a.s.suming responsibilities in this matter.” American Legion counterprotesters would say, ”All of the sudden, you guys on the streets, you know more than the secretary of state.”
Well, Daniel Ellsberg did did know more than the secretary of state. And by the time the Pentagon Papers were done at the beginning of 1969, it was driving him nearly insane. William Rogers and Melvin Laird had access to the Papers. But it hadn't seemed to affect any of their recommendations. know more than the secretary of state. And by the time the Pentagon Papers were done at the beginning of 1969, it was driving him nearly insane. William Rogers and Melvin Laird had access to the Papers. But it hadn't seemed to affect any of their recommendations.
Ellsberg had been given one of only fifteen existing copies to hold in his safe. He was lying in bed in September of 1969 when he read the army was dropping the charges against Green Berets alleged to have murdered a Vietnamese civilian, and that according to the White House press secretary, ”The president had not involved himself either in the original decision to prosecute the men or in the decision to drop the charges against them.” It was easy for Ellsberg to spot a Vietnam lie by then. This one was the straw that broke the camel's back. He called a colleague, Anthony Russo: ”Tony, can you get ahold of a Xerox machine?”
Ellsberg had seven thousand pages of photocopying to do.
He spent over a year trying to convince someone to take them public. But neither Senators Fulbright, McGovern, nor Goodell were willing. McGovern told him it wasn't the place of a lawmaker to break the law, but that the First Amendment made it altogether appropriate to make the doc.u.ments available to a newspaper. Neil Sheehan of the New York Times New York Times proved ready to take on the risk. Thus, the proved ready to take on the risk. Thus, the Times Times on June 13, 1971: ”Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of U.S. Involvement.” Now every Vietnam lie was public. on June 13, 1971: ”Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of U.S. Involvement.” Now every Vietnam lie was public.
Kissinger figured out by the seventeenth that Ellsberg was the culprit. Destroying him became a White House crusade. Something snapped in Richard Nixon. He seemed to think it was 1948. ”Go back and read the chapter on the Hiss case in Six Crises Six Crises and you'll see how it was done,” he would say. ”This takes eighteen hours a day. It takes devotion and dedication, a loyalty and diligence such as you've never seen, Bob. I've never worked as hard in my life and I'll never work as hard again because I don't have the energy. But this thing is a h.e.l.l of a great opportunity.” The theory was that, once upon a time, another Harvard-educated traitor, Alger Hiss, had been taken down at what appeared to be his moment of maximum vindication-not only establis.h.i.+ng Congressman Nixon's career, but r.e.t.a.r.ding half a generation of progress for the Democrats as they tore each other's eyeb.a.l.l.s out debating Hiss's guilt or innocence. and you'll see how it was done,” he would say. ”This takes eighteen hours a day. It takes devotion and dedication, a loyalty and diligence such as you've never seen, Bob. I've never worked as hard in my life and I'll never work as hard again because I don't have the energy. But this thing is a h.e.l.l of a great opportunity.” The theory was that, once upon a time, another Harvard-educated traitor, Alger Hiss, had been taken down at what appeared to be his moment of maximum vindication-not only establis.h.i.+ng Congressman Nixon's career, but r.e.t.a.r.ding half a generation of progress for the Democrats as they tore each other's eyeb.a.l.l.s out debating Hiss's guilt or innocence.
Chuck Colson-who had defiantly turned down a full scholars.h.i.+p to Harvard because it was too liberal, and to snub the administrators who told him, ”No one has ever turned down a full scholars.h.i.+p at Harvard”-was so eager to please his boss that he read the Hiss chapter fourteen times. Ellsberg, he told Haldeman he now understood, was ”a natural villain to the extent that he can be painted evil. We can very effectively make the point of why we [had] to do what we did with the New York Times New York Times”-to take down a conspiracy as vast and perfidious as the one Alger Hiss had joined. Some in the White House even believed it; the Justice Department's Robert Mardian, tapped by Nixon to run the federal prosecution of Ellsberg, claimed that days before the Pentagon Papers were delivered to the Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Was.h.i.+ngton Post, they pa.s.sed through the Soviet emba.s.sy. they pa.s.sed through the Soviet emba.s.sy.