What the Heck are the “Pentagon Papers?”

Full Pentagon Papers: https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers

What’s happening with Julian Assange and his Wikileaks revelations (even though they’re covering it up by saying he’s being charge with conspiracy to hack a government computer in 2010) is being compared ad nauseam to what Daniel Ellsberg did with the pentagon papers back in the 70s when he gave top secret information about U.S. involvement in Vietnam to the New York Times. Ellsberg himself notes the similarities. (clip)

Since so much is being said ABOUT the pentagon papers and since a lot of people might not be clued in to what that actually is, here is a whirlwind tour.

The Pentagon Papers has an official, less memorable title: It’s called the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force. And it’s a United States Department of Defense history of the United States’ political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by U.S. Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study. Ellsberg is basically the 1970s version of Julian Assange in terms of the fact that he could not sit on information he believed the public needed to know about regarding government operations in foreign lands.

The Pentagon Papers were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971.[1][2] A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress”.[3]

It’s vital that we keep something in mind. Government lies and deceptions are not isolated occurrences. Lies and deception are the fundamental basis upon which all governments operate. War is a dirty, dangerous and costly undertaking. Not only costly in terms of monetary expenditures, but also in the unbelievable toll of human lives. But wars make money. Obscene amounts of money. And banker, political and military agents who want a war understand that truth is the first thing that must be extinguished in order to secure the national indignation and backing of the population it’s going to take to bring that war about. Most people don’t want war…they want peace…but they can be brought to call for war if they’re led to believe that cause is just or their security is being threatened.

Even Herman Goering revealed that he understood this simple truth at the Nuremberg trials. He said,

“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”