Sunday, June 13, 7:30 p.m. ET
The 50th anniversary of the release of the Pentagon Papers
The video of the webinar can be seen by clicking here
The Q & A and Chat can be seen by clicking here
https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2021/06/pentagon-papers-webinar-q-and-chat.html
Program
The Pentagon Papers destroyed the government's case for war in Vietnam and convulsed the Nixon White House.
Daniel Ellsberg, the man who revealed them, will be our featured webinar speaker. Join us to honor and celebrate him, Anthony Russo, Senator Mike Gravel and the newspapers that dared to publish on the 50th anniversary of the June 13, 1971 public release of these top-secret documents.
- Why did Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger call Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America," who "had to be stopped at all costs"?
- Why did the government's espionage trial of Ellsberg and his co-defendant Anthony Russo collapse?
- How did the trial end up intensifying Nixon's Watergate scandal?
- What was the key role played by Ellsberg's co-defendant Anthony Russo?
- What was so explosive about what was in the Pentagon Papers?
Speakers
* Dan Ellsberg
* Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman
* Gar Alperovitz
* Barbara Myers
* Jay Craven, Moderator
* Terry Provance, Organizer
Daniel Ellsberg is a lecturer, writer, activist, and whistleblower. A former analyst at the RAND corporation, he was also an official in the Defense and State Departments under President Lyndon Johnson. From 1965-1967 he served in Vietnam studying pacification programs. By 1969, believing the Vietnam War unjust, Ellsberg photocopied a top-secret 7,000-page study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam (the Pentagon Papers). In 1971, he leaked them to the New York Times and eighteen other newspapers. The government charged Ellsberg with twelve felony counts with a possible sentence of 115 years. The case was dismissed in 1973 when Watergate inquiries exposed criminal misconduct against Ellsberg by the Nixon White House. In the decades since, he has been arrested scores of times for acts of civil disobedience in opposition to U.S nuclear and foreign policy. His books include The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (2017) and Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002).
Elizabeth Holtzman served four terms in the House of Representatives and was the first woman elected District Attorney in New York City and NYC Comptroller. In Congress, she was a plaintiff in the landmark lawsuit to stop the bombing of Cambodia, and served on the Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon, where she drafted the impeachment resolution (that failed) for his secret bombing of Cambodia. Holtzman also authored the extension of the ratification deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment and uncovered the presence of Nazi war criminals in the US. A graduate of Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School, Holtzman practices law in New York City.
Gar Alperovitz, former Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is Co-Chair of The Next System Project (with James Gustav Speth) and Co-Founder of The Democracy Collaborative, an organization devoted to developing community wealth-building approaches to local and national democratic reconstruction.
A former Fellow of King's College, Cambridge University, and a founding Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard, he has served as a Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and as a Special Assistant working on United Nations matters in the Department of State. He was Chief Economic Adviser to a coalition of 135 Members of Congress led by Rep. Richard Ottinger. He has also served as President of the Center for Community Economic Development, and of the Center for the Study of Public Policy.
Dr. Alperovitz lectures widely and has testified before numerous Congressional Committees. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, The Atlantic, and many other popular and academic publications. He has been profiled by The New York Times, The Associated Press, People Magazine, UPI, and Mother Jones and has appeared on numerous network television news programs including (among many others): “Meet the Press,” “Larry King Live,” “The Charlie Rose Show,” “Cross-Fire,” and “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Alperovitz’s most recent books are his 2017 Principles of a Pluralist Commonwealth; his 2013 What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution; and a 2011 second edition of his 2005 America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty and Our Democracy. Two related books are Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance (with Lew Daly) and Making a Place for Community (with Thad Williamson and David Imbroscio.) He is author (with Jeff Faux) of Rebuilding America and (with Staughton Lynd) of Strategy and Program (Beacon). Alperovitz is also a historian of nuclear weapons; his most well-known works in this field are The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (Knopf) and Atomic Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster).
Barbara Myers is an independent journalist and the first to explore the historical significance of the Pentagon Papers’ other protagonist, Anthony J. (Tony) Russo. Russo’s involvement in a case of Vietnam intelligence gone terribly wrong could serve as an unpublished chapter of the Pentagon Papers. Though finally in the public domain, the story of the RAND Corporation’s Motivation and Morale Study and Russo’s effort to expose it (see The OtherConspirator) is a cautionary tale that still deserves scrutiny and its own place in Vietnam historiography.
Myers’ anti-war and social justice work ranges from 1970s participation in the Indochina Peace Campaign, where she first met Tony Russo and Dan Ellsberg and attended their trial, to work mentoring young Rwandans in their quest for higher education. She is an Associate Producer and Contributing Writer on the recent documentary, The Boys Who Said No!, Draft Resistance and the Vietnam War.
Award-winning filmmaker, teacher and impresario Jay Craven participated in the December 1970 Peoples Peace treaty delegation to Vietnam – and subsequently helped organize the May Day 1971 antiwar civil disobedience demonstrations in Washington, D.C. where nearly 13,000 people were arrested. He has also been active on issues of civil rights, nuclear power and U.S. interventions in Central America. His 1980 documentary film, “Dawn of the People,” chronicles Nicaragua’s National Literacy Campaign and his most recent narrative picture, “Martin Eden” (2021) is based on Jack London’s autobiographical novel of the same name.
Terry Provance After graduating from college in 1969, I became involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement first organizing locally in Pittsburgh and then eventually with national groups like Harrisburg Defense Committee for Dan and Phil Berrigan, Pentagon Papers Trial and Medical Aid for Indochina. I began working with the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia in 1973 to oppose US nuclear weapons until 1983 when I went to graduate school in Berkeley, California. I received a fellowship and then studied two years in South America and worked with human rights groups in Chile. I returned to Pittsburgh where I pastored a local United Church of Christ congregation for 5 years and then worked in its national office on peace and justice issues for 10 years. I then worked 12 years with Oikocredit, an international anti-poverty organization, as its Executive Director in the United States. I retired in 2012. I currently staff the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee.
Resources
"50 years ago, the Pentagon Papers’ success hinged on a personal conversion to nonviolence"
Without the friendships he forged in the antiwar movement, Daniel Ellsberg might not have found the courage and support he needed to help end the Vietnam War.
by Robert Levering in Waging Nonviolence
"The Pentagon Papers’ Missing Chapter
Tony Russo and the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study"
by Barbara Myers on Medium
"Linda Amster, researcher for the Pentagon Papers, gets her due"
Opinion by Erik Wemple, Media critic, The Washington Post
"‘We’re Going to Publish’ An Oral History of the Pentagon Papers"
New York Times Interactive
"How Richard Nixon’s obsession with Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers sowed the seeds for the president’s downfall" by Christian Appy in The Conversation
"Truth, Dissent & the Legacy of Daniel Ellsberg"
A 50th Anniversary Conference at UMass-Amherst Commemorating for two days the Release of the Pentagon Papers https://www.umass.edu/ellsberg/conference/schedule/
Reflections by Defense Counsel Leonard Boudin on the significance of the trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Tony Russo are posted here https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-significance-of-ellsberg-russo.html
"The Deceit and Conflict Behind the Leak of the Pentagon Papers"
Fifty years on, Daniel Ellsberg praises the Times journalist who misled him.
By Ben Bradlee, Jr. The New Yorker
"The Pentagon Papers at 50: What’s Left Out is Crucial" by Paul Ryder Counterpunch
Beyond the Pentagon Papers:
The Pathology of Power by Fredric Branfman, in Volume 5 of the Gravel
Edition, Critical Essays edited by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. This
culminating essay of the 5th Volume, sets the reader squarely in the
early 1970’s as the war continued to rage under Nixon and Ellsberg and Russo
faced federal charges of theft and espionage.
A
Concise History of the Vietnam War, in Teaching the Vietnam War, by Griffen
and Marciano, 1979. This relatively quick read has ample footnotes drawn from
the Pentagon Papers. A great source for gauging the significance of the
documents.
For Reasons of State,
Noam Chomsky. Includes articles on the war in Vietnam and the “wider war” in
Laos and Cambodia and an extensive dissection of the Pentagon
Papers.
Causes,
Origins and Lessons of the Vietnam War, Chomsky’s testimony at the 1972
Fulbright Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
The Other Conspirator, by Barbara Myers. The story of Tony Russo, Pentagon Papers Trial co-defendant and a whistleblower in his own right, who exposed an intelligence debacle at the center of Vietnam decision-making. He called it the RAND Papers.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
“Some
Observations about Bombing North Vietnam,” by John McNaughton, Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and chief adviser to
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, January 18, 1966.
The word “Pause” refers to a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam by the U.S. Air Force.
First publicly revealed in the Pentagon Papers, volume VI-C-7-a, “The Air War in North Vietnam.”
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