ELLSBERG CONTINUED READING all summer, with the door of his office closed.
And as he dug deeper into the Papers, another form of deception began to emerge, one even more troubling than the lies. It was something he had begun to sense in 1967, when he’d worked briefly on the study after returning from Vietnam.
Now it hit him full force. In over twenty years of war, the United States had never actually tried to win.
Each president, of course, had hoped to win, and had wanted to win. And yet what the Pentagon Papers showed was that each president made decisions to escalate American involvement in Vietnam knowing that what he was doing had little chance of success. Time and time again, military leaders told presidents what it would take to win. Time and time again, presidents escalated—but stopped short of giving the generals what they said they needed.
“The same sets of alternatives began to appear to each president,” Ellsberg realized, “and ultimately the choice was neither to go for broke and adopt military recommendations, nor negotiate a settlement to get out. The decisions year after year were to continue the war, although all predictions pointed to a continued stalemate with this kind of approach.”
It was most obvious in the Johnson years. Johnson knew that the North Vietnamese were matching his escalations step for step. He knew the morale of the communist forces was high and that they were prepared to fight indefinitely. “Only atomic bombs could really knock them out,” McGeorge Bundy cautioned Johnson in a 1967 memo. That, Bundy said, or an all-out invasion of North Vietnam, which would probably draw in the Chinese army and turn into an even bigger calamity.
So … why? Why continue to send Americans to Vietnam?
* * *
The missing piece of the puzzle, Ellsberg decided, was domestic politics.
Lyndon Johnson had repeatedly said, “I’m not going to be the first American president to lose a war.”
That was a clue.
“No American president, Republican or Democrat, wanted to be the president who lost the war or who lost Saigon,” Ellsberg realized. “They were willing to send men and women to death to avoid being called losers. They would rather keep going, no matter how many people died, to save face. In Vietnam, the crucial thing was, don’t lose.”
Each president had done just enough to avoid “losing” South Vietnam before the next election. This sickening deduction changed the way Ellsberg saw the Vietnam War. He had been against the war for a while, but had always seen it as an essentially noble struggle. “A worthy effort gone wrong,” he had believed, “a case of good intentions that failed.”
“Now I realized that it was not just the continuation of the locally devastating, hopelessly stalemated war that was unjustified—it had been wrong from the start.”
He had often heard antiwar protestors shouting that Americans were fighting on the wrong side of the Vietnam War. They were missing the point.
“It wasn’t that we were on the wrong side,” Ellsberg concluded, “We were the wrong side.”
* * *
The pattern was repeating itself. Nixon knew there was no realistic military path to victory in Vietnam—not at a cost that would be acceptable to the American people. The challenge, as he saw it, was to somehow convince North Vietnam to make concessions at the bargaining table. That would allow the president to gain the “peace with honor” he had promised Americans.
In June, Nixon made a bold move, announcing that he would begin withdrawing American troops from Vietnam, starting with twenty-five thousand men. His approval rating soared above 70 percent.
This move, Nixon hoped, would nudge Ho Chi Minh into offering a concession of his own. Kissinger traveled to Paris to make the president’s position clear to North Vietnamese negotiators: Nixon had not resumed the bombing of North Vietnam and had begun pulling out American troops. He expected this would lead to a peace deal.
“But at the same time,” Kissinger warned, “I have been asked to tell you in all solemnity, that if by November 1 no major progress has been made toward a solution, we will be compelled—with great reluctance—to take measures of the greatest consequences.”
The North Vietnamese refused to budge. Ho Chi Minh died on September 3. Other North Vietnamese leaders vowed to continue the struggle.
That put the ball back in Nixon and Kissinger’s court. They had tried concessions; they had tried threats. Remaining options were severely limited.
“I refuse to believe that a little fourth-rate power like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point,” Kissinger told his staff. “You are to sit down and map out what would be a savage blow.”
Nixon decided to give the North until November 1 to make a concession. If not, a “savage blow”—code-named Operation Duck Hook—would be ready.
In private talks with Republican congressional leaders, Nixon hinted at his military plans. He declined to give details, but assured them: “I will not be the first president of the United States to lose a war.”
* * *
Ellsberg stood on the sidewalk outside of a Philadelphia courthouse, feeling like an absolute fool. In front of him marched a group of antiwar demonstrators. They were carrying signs, chanting slogans, passing out leaflets.
Cast your whole vote, Ellsberg thought, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
He couldn’t get the words out of his head. They were from Henry David Thoreau’s famous essay, “Civil Disobedience,” written in 1849. Thoreau, to protest slavery and what he saw as America’s unjust war in Mexico, had refused to pay taxes. He’d been arrested and jailed, but had no regrets.
Cast your whole vote … your whole influence …
It was an inspiring idea. But Ellsberg still felt like a fool.
He had flown across the country to attend the War Resisters’ International Conference, held at a college near Philadelphia. He thought he’d be going to lectures and discussions. Instead, everyone had trooped to the courthouse to demonstrate—inside, a fellow activist named Bob Eaton was being sentenced to prison for resisting the draft. Ellsberg had tried to think of an excuse to duck out. Could he say he was sick? And then do what, hide in his room all weekend?
His only previous peace march had been the one with Patricia Marx in 1965, and he’d only gone to that one hoping for a date. He felt the same fear now that he had then. What if his picture showed up in the newspaper? He could hear the mocking laughter of colleagues in Washington and at Rand.
But he knew how he felt about the war. He looked around. There were no TV cameras or reporters. No police in sight. People hurried past on their way to work, hardly seeming to notice the demonstrators.
Ellsberg stepped out to join the rally.
Why are we doing this? he thought at first. What am I doing here? It seemed a preposterous way to confront the colossal power of the United States government. He watched the other protestors marching, waving signs. He picked up a stack of antiwar leaflets and held them out to people passing by.
And suddenly, to his surprise, he began to enjoy himself.
The threat of being cut off, of being thrust out from the club of insiders, had always terrified Ellsberg. And the club had very definite rules. “You could not have the confidence of powerful men, and be trusted with their confidences, if there was any prospect that you would challenge their policies in public,” he later explained. “It was the sacred code of the insider.”
He had lived by that code his entire adult life. This was the moment he crossed the line. He held out leaflets to people passing by. Most didn’t take them. It didn’t matter.
“I was no longer held in line by that fear. I was about to become a dangerous person to know.”
* * *
The day after the courthouse demonstration, Ellsberg sat in the back row of a packed auditorium at the War Resisters’ conference. A young activist named Randy Kehler stood in front of the group.
“Yesterday our friend Bob went to jail,” Kehler began. “Last month David Harris went to jail. Our friends Warren and John and Terry and many others are already in jail.”
Kehler stopped to clear his throat. From his seat in the back, Ellsberg could see the tears in the speaker’s eyes.
“I’m not really as sad about that as it may seem,” Kehler said. “There’s something really beautiful about it, and I’m very excited that I’ll be invited to join them very soon.”
The audience knew that Kehler was facing jail time himself for refusing to cooperate with the draft. A few people began to clap. Then a few more, then everyone stood and clapped.
“I can look forward to jail without any remorse or fear,” Kehler continued, “and that’s because I know that everyone here, and lots of people around the world like you, will carry on.”
Everyone was clapping and cheering, many were crying. Ellsberg fell back into his seat, suddenly dizzy, short of breath. He had to get out, he needed space. He pushed out of the row and ran into the hall to the men’s room. He turned on the light, stumbled to the far wall, slid down to the tile floor and sobbed.
“We are eating our young,” he said to himself.
Those young men and women in the auditorium were just like the friends he’d known in the marines—patriots, fighting for their country. The best young Americans were going to war or going to jail. What about his own son, Robert, now thirteen? Would the war still be raging in five years, when Robert hit draft age?
Ellsberg sat on the floor. He could not stop shaking.
Finally gaining control, he took a few deep breaths. He stood and stepped to a sink and splashed water on his face. He looked at himself in the mirror.
“Now,” he asked, “what can I do to help end this war?”