Also, at http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=NC&pubid=2604
Mar 23 2010
by Peter Osnos
On June 13, 1971, The New York Times published the first explosive
stories based on Pentagon studies of the decision-making that led the
United States to war in Vietnam. After the Times was enjoined from
publishing further, The Washington Post obtained much of the same
material and produced its own stories. The Nixon administration,
claiming a massive breach of national security, fought for restraint
all the way to the Supreme Court, which on June 30, in the last
opinion by Justice Hugo Black, decided 6-3 in favor of the
newspapers. The outcome was a glorious victory for a robust press and
launched an era of aggressive reporting about Washington. What a time it was.
While the excitement of what became known as the Pentagon Papers case
was unfolding, I was on the other side of the world as a
correspondent for The Washington Post based in Saigon. The high drama
on the home front did not, as I recall, resonate on the fighting
itself. Like so much about the conflict, the political and social
turmoil in the United States operated on rhythms that meant little to
the Vietnamese combatants and not a lot more to the GIs risking their
lives on the battlefield. By 1971, the war in Vietnam had become so
discredited in the minds of Americans that the country's leaders were
determined to get out, recognizing that in all likelihood a "decent
interval" was the best that could be achieved before the Communists prevailed.
The 47 volumes of documents and reports known as the Pentagon Papers
were prepared on the orders of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara,
whose own gloomy judgments on Vietnam in that era were not publicly
revealed until decades later in his memoirs. It has been so long
since Vietnam entered American consciousness that the arrival
off-Broadway of Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers by
Geoffrey Cowan and the late Leroy Aarons definitely feels like a
historical artifact. Cowan, dean emeritus of the University of
Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and
Journalism, and Aarons, who was a reporter at The Washington Post at
the time of the case, wrote a version of the play in the early 1990s
that was presented on National Public Radio. As revised by Cowan, a
lawyer, writer, former director of the Voice of America, and cultural
entrepreneur, a staged version of the drama has now toured the
country and been featured at universities as well as theaters in Los
Angeles and Washington.
For performances at the New York Theater Workshop (it runs until
March 28), Cowan arranged for twelve benefit evenings on behalf of
organizations such as Human Rights Watch, the Center for Public
Integrity, and the Columbia Journalism Review, where panelists
discussed the impact of the case and, significantly, its relevance to
the issues of today. At the CJR evening (which was taped by C-SPAN
for airing sometime in the near future), the panel had an all-star cast.
Daniel Ellsberg was a former Pentagon official who, having turned
against the war, gave the papers to the The New York Times and The
Washington Post in the belief that the revelations they contained
would undermine the conflict. Ellsberg was the subject last year of
an Oscar-nominated documentary called The Most Dangerous Man in
America, which is what National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger once
said of him on a Nixon White House tape. He clearly has never lost
his outraged edge, calling the war against the Taliban "Vietnamistan"
and insisting that officials critical of American policies in the
region should publicly renounce them.
Leslie Gelb was project director for the Pentagon Papers and later
gained eminence as a journalist at the Times and as president of the
Council on Foreign Relations. He revealed that in 1969, when he
brought the finished papers to McNamara, then president of the World
Bank, the former defense secretary sent them back. Gelb never asked
McNamara why he rejected his own report and, to Gelb's personal
relief, he was never asked to defend the papers.
James Goodale was, as general counsel of The New York Times,
instrumental in the decision to publish the contents of the papers,
despite warnings from outside counsel to the newspaper of dire
consequences. Goodale, who is a commentator on media issues, focused
on the resources and time the newspaper had devoted to the
publication, clearly raising the question of whether any publication
today would match that commitment.
Nicholas Lemann was a young reporter at The Washington Post in the
years when the Post was still riding the crest of its role in the
Pentagon Papers and Watergate. He is dean of Columbia's Graduate
School of Journalism. Nowadays, he observed, classified documents
would be posted on the Internet by an Ellsberg-like whistleblower,
sidestepping the epic free press issues or at least raising different
ones. But the great challenge now, Lemann said, is to maintain
news-gathering enterprises with a zeal for old-school investigative reporting.
Ultimately, the contents of the Pentagon Papers mattered less to
events than the great confrontation over whether the press could
override government's objections to their release. So if you get a
chance to see Top Secret or watch the panel on C-SPAN, here's what to
remember: important decisions being made today by proprietors and
journalists will be judged by history. Let's hope they meet the test.
--
Peter Osnos is Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation.
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