Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War

Ellsberg was a ninth grader when the Cold War began. He was a “shy and quiet” student who “seemed obsessed with absorbing information” (7). However, he was also unafraid to try new activities like bowling and soccer. As a young man, Ellsberg was “riveted by the rise of the Cold War” and “admired” President Truman’s “commitment to supporting democracies” around the world (8). As the war continued to escalate, Ellsberg “wanted in.” He graduated from Harvard and applied for officer training with the Marine Corps. Even though his “interests were almost entirely intellectual” (9), he “willed his way” through the training program and became a lieutenant (9). After completing his service, Ellsberg returned to Harvard, where he received a PhD in economics, writing a thesis that focused on “risk and decision making” (10). He especially considered how one should “act when consequences are uncertain” (10), which was a question he would return to throughout his life.

Ellsberg began working for the think tank known as the Rand Corporation and spent the summer of 1964 researching at the Pentagon. One afternoon, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton approached Ellsberg to discuss the “increasing concern” surrounding Vietnam. To Ellsberg, the situation was “a clear-cut Cold War showdown” (11). Although not yet in a state of open war, the communist government of North Vietnam was trying to take control of the non-communist South, so the US supported the South’s government with approximately 20,000 troops. McNaughton wanted Ellsberg to be his assistant, telling him it was his “chance to see a real international crisis unfold as it happened” (11).

In the weeks before Ellsberg accepted his new job, tension continued to build in Vietnam. On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese boats fired torpedoes at the American destroyer Maddox while it cruised in the Tonkin Gulf, off the coast of North Vietnam. The ship wasn’t hit, but President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a second destroyer, the Turner Joy, to join it in case of further escalation. On August 4, the sun went down on a stormy night in the Tonkin Gulf, and Captain Herrick of the Maddox “expected to come under attack at any moment” (12). Meanwhile, it was morning in the US, and Ellsberg was arriving for his first day as McNaughton’s assistant.

Just after 11 o’clock in the morning, McNaughton’s office received word that the Maddox and Turner Joy were “under continuous torpedo attack” (14), and fighter pilots were deployed to defend against the enemy boats. With the heavy storm, it was a “lousy night for flying” (17), and fighter pilot James Stockade could see no sign of enemy fire. There were no boats, no sparks, and no flashes of gunfire, so Stockade returned to his carrier. As the reports continued coming in from the Maddox, the ship’s captain “began expressing hints of doubt” that the attack was real (18). He suggested that the sounds and sensations they took for enemy fire could result from something else. He emphasized that there had been no visual confirmation of enemy boats and suggested making a “complete evaluation” of the situation before taking further action.

Back in Washington, President Johnson sat down with the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and CIA Director. President Johnson wanted to launch a retaliatory airstrike on North Vietnam as soon as possible, and the group selected possible targets to attack while the press officer arranged for President Johnson to make a statement about Vietnam later in the evening.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara returned to the Pentagon after the meeting, where he read Captain Herrick’s message suggesting a “complete evaluation” before further action. Hoping for confirmation, McNamara spoke with the commander of the US Pacific fleet, who told him there was a “slight possibility” that no attack took place. Despite the lingering doubt, President Johnson pressed on with plans to attack the North Vietnamese.

Ellsberg’s first day as McNaughton’s assistant stretched into the night, and staff members gathered to watch the television broadcast of President Johnson telling the American public about the attack in the Tonkin Gulf and announcing that retaliation was being carried out as he spoke. However, President Johnson assured the public that “the strikes would be limited” (24). He repeated the promise, stating: “We seek no wider war” (24).

The next morning, President Johnson claimed that the US destroyers had experienced “deliberate,” “unprovoked” attacks by the Vietnamese, and he said that retaliation was a necessary response. He also drafted a resolution that would allow him to expand US military presence in Vietnam “without asking Congress for a formal declaration of war” (28). The next day, the resolution went before the House, but one senator had doubts. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon had received a call from a contact at the Pentagon who told him that ships like the Maddox were in the Gulf of Tonkin to support South Vietnamese forces, so the attacks could hardly be considered “unprovoked.” Morse tried to confer with other senators, but they thought it unpatriotic to challenge the president during a crisis. Secretary McNamara denied Morse’s concerns. He insisted the Maddox was on a routine patrol and made no mention of the doubts surrounding the validity of the attack. McNamara was “blatantly misleading Congress” (29); however, most senators saw it as their duty to support the president and uphold “national honor.” Morse was the only senator to oppose the resolution in a 31-1 vote.

Meanwhile, Ellsberg had an insider view of what was happening in Vietnam. He learned that South Vietnam’s raids on the North were “entirely US operations” that were planned, supplied, and paid for by the CIA and the US Navy (30). He knew that President Johnson and Secretary McNamara’s claims to the public were false. However, Ellsberg also knew that “secrecy was an essential element of military operations” (31), and he believed that winning the Cold War was what “truly mattered.”

From the perspective of the US, the impending war in Vietnam was “a distant battlefield of the Cold War” (32), but to the revolutionaries in North Vietnam, it continued a decades-long battle for freedom. Nguyen Tat Than, better known as Ho Chi Minh, was born in French-controlled Vietnam in 1890. He spent his teenage years and young adulthood participating in anti-French protests and learning about communism, which seemed like “an attractive alternative” to the abuse and exploitation of French colonists (32).

During World War II, Japan occupied Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh organized a guerrilla force to challenge the Japanese. The US supported this effort and sent troops to help Ho Chi Minh train his fighters. When the US ended World War II by bombing Japan, Ho Chi Minh sought independence for Vietnam. Addressing a crowd of more than half a million in Hanoi, he quoted the Declaration of Independence, arguing that all men have the right to life, liberty, and happiness. However, President Truman refused to acknowledge Vietnam as an independent nation. Ho Chi Minh was still a communist, and the US chose to support France’s attempt to regain control of its former colony instead of backing Vietnam’s independence. With Ho Chi Minh funded by the Soviet Union and France funded by the US, war broke out in Vietnam. On May 7, 1954, France was forced to surrender.

The Geneva Accords temporarily established North and South Vietnam, with the condition that a national election would unite the two countries in 1956. In the North, Ho Chi Minh took control, enforcing his regime with violence and intimidation. In the South, corruption ruled instead of communism, and Ngo Dinh Diem supposedly won power with “a ludicrous 98.2 percent of the vote” (36). The US was certain that the communist Ho Chi Minh would win a country-wide election, so it “worked in secret to prevent elections in Vietnam” to avoid losing Vietnam to communism (37).

Meanwhile, North Vietnamese communist forces, referred to as the Viet Cong, remained in the South and began to wage a guerrilla war to unite the country without elections. President Eisenhower supported South Vietnam with weapons and military advisors, and President John F. Kennedy increased the US military presence in Vietnam. When Lyndon B. Johnson became president in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination, he was determined not to “[go] down as the president who lost Vietnam” (37).

Ellsberg worked long hours at the Pentagon, and he missed his two children who lived with his ex-wife in California. However, his work kept him busy. He spent most of his days reading top-secret documents meant for his boss McNaughton or Secretary of Defense McNamara. After McNaughton nearly fired him for discussing one of the documents, Ellsberg “learned the hard way” that he must tell no one that he had read classified reports (39).

President Johnson was preparing for the 1964 presidential election and continued to insist that there would be no war in Vietnam despite the continually increasing aggression of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. The American public overwhelmingly opposed the war, and Johnson won by a huge margin with his continual promise that there would be no war. However, thousands of officials in the government knew that the government of South Vietnam would not survive without US support, and on election day, they met “secretly” to plan the war that Johnson was promising would never happen.

In January of 1965, Secretary of Defense McNamara and National Security Advisor Bundy advised President Johnson that “[i]t was time […] to begin bombing North Vietnam” (43). President Johnson did not want to escalate the war but felt he had no choice. The Viet Cong forces were “getting increasingly vicious” and attacked several American bases in South Vietnam (44). President Johnson responded with a new round of airstrikes, and McNaughton instructed Ellsberg to gather “grisly details” of recent Viet Cong attacks so that Secretary McNamara could persuade President Johnson “to begin a sustained bombing campaign” (44). Ellsberg had “a moment of doubt” as he thought of bombs falling on innocent people (44), but he did as he was told.

Ellsberg contacted the US military headquarters in Saigon and asked for “blood.” He spent the entire night gathering horrific details of Viet Cong attacks and delivered his report to McNaughton in time for McNamara’s morning meeting at the White House. Later, Ellsberg called the work he did that night “the worst thing [he’d] ever done” (47).

In his “first major escalation of the war” (47), President Johnson approved a sustained bombing campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder. He did not tell the American public “that the bombing would continue indefinitely” (47). The North Vietnamese forces used a network of forested paths called the Ho Chi Minh Trail to move troops and supplies from the North to the South, and the bombing had little effect on this movement. In March of 1965, President Johnson approved the first deployment of US ground troops when he agreed to send 3,500 Marines to guard the Da Nang airfield.

Antiwar protesters responded “almost immediately” with a demonstration in front of the White House. In attendance was Patricia Marx, a young reporter and radio show host. Patricia had met Ellsberg on a previous trip to Washington. He asked her on a date, which she declined, but this time, she decided to invite him to a dinner party she was attending. As soon as they saw one another, they were “smitten.” The following day, Ellsberg wanted to see Patricia again. She told him she was covering the peace rally, but he could join her. Ellsberg agreed, although he felt “absurdly out of place” at the demonstration (54). Although he and Patricia had starkly different views on the war, they began falling in love.