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Daniel Ellsberg Thesis

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Born in Chicago in 1931, military strategist Daniel Ellsberg helped strengthen public opposition to the Vietnam War in 1971 by leaking secret documents known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. The documents contained evidence that the U.S. government had misled the public regarding U.S. involvement in the war.
On June of 1967, the secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, ordered officials in the headquarters of the U.S. military to gather a history of U.S. policy toward Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg, one of the officials hired by McNamara, helped compile a 7,000-page, 47-volume document that Ellsberg called "evidence of a quarter century of aggression, broken treaties, deceptions, stolen elections, lies and murder." Daniel Ellsberg began …show more content…

According to John T. Correll who states that in 1964 "Johnson and McNamara said that the central U.S. aim was to secure an 'independent, non-Communist South Vietnam. '" but on March 24, 1965 McNaughton says that the United States main priorities are: "70 percent- to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat, 20 percent- to keep South Vietnam territory from Chinese hands, and 10 percent- to permit the people of South Vietnam to enjoy a better, freer way of life." The reason the Pentagon Papers was so shocking to the public was because people began to realize that the government hasn 't been telling the whole truth about the Vietnam War. Also, of the main focuses was on the freedom of press issues. The Pentagon Papers didn 't cause a national security problem other than the fact that the Vietnam War wasn 't over yet. The articles would have given the North Vietnamese people an early understanding of the U.S. 's "objectives, strategies, uncertainties, and degrees of commitment" had the documents not been several years old by the time of …show more content…

Conclusion
The U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War led to the revolutionary change of American society in how they chose to view their country’s government and how they choose to abide by its wishes. The war created an entire new movement of young adults who weren’t afraid to question what they viewed as injustice; they stood for peace and love, and protested for it. Draft evasion showed that the American people didn’t have to fight for a war that they didn’t believe in. The revelation of the Pentagon Papers showed that citizens had a right to know what their country was doing. This left millions of Americans wondering; when does loyalty to one’s state end? Does following a separate set of morals, that of which contradict your government, make

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