In 1971, the "Top Secret Documents of the Vietnam War" of the US Department of Defense were leaked to the New York Times by expert Daniel Esperger. This incident caused a global shock and became an important fuse for the United States to stop the Vietnam War and Nixon** was forced to resign.
As a result, Asperger was hailed as an "anti-war hero" and was revered as "the most dangerous American."
Let's review the full picture of the Pentagon Papers. You may ask: what is a "classified document of the Department of Defense"? In fact, "Pentagon Papers" is an abbreviation of "The Pentagon**s", which refers to classified documents produced in the Pentagon, the seat of the U.S. Department of Defense.
The U.S. Department of Defense is located in this building called the "Pentagon", hence the name "Department of Defense Documents". In 1967, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense McNamara hired 36 experts and scholars to form a special committee to study how the United States was involved in the Vietnam War.
These experts include civilian and military experts from the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Defense, as well as experts and academics from specialized research institutes funded by the Ministry of Defense. It took them a year and a half to complete this daunting task, which was collected in 47 volumes.
However, the New York Times received only 45 volumes, and the remaining two volumes were not given to The Times because they were considered by experts to be truly confidential information.
This is the whole course of the Pentagon Papers.
The New York Times building houses 45 volumes of 2.5 million words detailing the role and mission of the United States in the wars in Vietnam and Indochina. These reports span the period from World War II to the 1968 Paris Peace Talks, and cover the gradual involvement of the United States in the wars in Vietnam and Indochina, as well as the political and military decisions on the Vietnam War during the four U.S. tenures since Truman.
These 36 "Vietnam War historians" have touched on all the documents of this period. However, these reports do not include all the documents of **, and many of the plans are only "contingency plans" prepared for contingencies.
These documents are classified as "the most classified documents" by the Ministry of Defense and are considered to be the richest source of information on the Vietnam War.
In late March 1971, The New York Times obtained classified documents from Daniel Esperger, who was involved in researching one of the Vietnam War reports.
Asperger was a trusted man with a wealth of experience in the Vietnam War, having held senior positions in the U.S. Department of Defense and the Embassy in Saigon. As a fellow at the Rand Institute in California, he was involved in the Vietnam War program from 1967 to the spring of 1969 and was a well-known hawkish spokesman.
In 1970, Daniel Esperger began to speak openly about the "moral conscience" of the Vietnam War, and resigned from his job at the research institute funded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to become a veritable "** person" and actively participate in the anti-war movement.
Later, he was accused of being the "provider" of the private documents and publicly admitted that he had leaked them to the press, but he did not specify which newspapers. Asperger said he did it to "atone for his sins" because he had been involved in the planning of the Vietnam War, a great "sin" he could not bear.
He was convinced that his actions would contribute to the early end of the Vietnam War, and even if he was imprisoned for it, he was willing.
Eisperger had expressed his willingness to hand over the secret documents of the Vietnam War to Democratic Senator McCarwin for publication, but McGallin believed that as a federal senator, he could not illegally leak secret documents, and he was seeking the Democratic nomination, so it was inconvenient to accept the document.
He suggested that Mr. Asperger's hand over the documents to a newspaper in charge, and The New York Times became Mr. Asperger's choice.
At the end of March 1971, Rosenthau, the editor-in-chief of the New York Times, approached Jerry Gold, deputy director of the foreign press department, and told him about a major plan related to the Vietnam War.
Gord was immediately assigned to work with the Washington bureau commissioner, Sheehan. Gold, who was flying from New York to Washington, D.C., stayed in a two-bedroom suite at the Jefferson Hotel, which he had booked just for him.
He worked with Sheehan to begin the initial preparations for the reporting plan. They collected 45 books and magazines about the Vietnam War to determine what material had been made public and what had not.
Their most important discovery in two weeks was the sheer scale of the project. The plan includes 7,000 pages of documents with a total word count of 2.5 million words, only"Text digestion"It's a huge task.
Coupled with the comparison and combing of public information, the scale of this project is simply too large.
After their reports were approved by the editor-in-chief of Rosenso and the director of Griffinfeld's foreign information department, the secret document processing and reporting program was formalized. For the sake of secrecy, the plan was moved to New York and carried out in a rented house outside the New York Times building.
Room 6 at the Hilton Hotel became their headquarters, and the staff gradually grew, including Aaron Seeger, deputy director of the foreign press department, and a dozen editors. They formed a special editorial team, co-led by Golder and Seeger.
For the sake of secrecy, all rooms are registered in God's name.
In reporting on the Vietnam War, The New York Times staff worked closely together to write, edit, organize and proofread for 12 to 15 hours a day.
The main editorial and writing staff were staying in hotels, and despite the physical and mental exhaustion, the nature of their work, the atmosphere, and the anticipation of social impact filled their spirits.
These staff members have been "disappearing" from the impression of their colleagues for a long time, and no one knows whether they are going on vacation or transferred. Eventually, they were revealed to be working on a special news story, but no one knew exactly what it was.
These staff members were strictly forbidden to appear at the Times office during the preparation phase to prevent colleagues from questioning. Until Sunday, June 13, 1971, when The New York Times first published the "Top Secret Document of the Department of Defense on the Vietnam War," there was little outside knowledge about it.
When these documents were released, they shocked the world like an atomic bomb.
When The New York Times decided to release classified documents from the U.S. military involved in the Vietnam War, how did their decision-making and weighing process go? The publisher of The Times, Peng District Salzberg, did not hesitate to tell Rosensoe to "just do it" after listening to the report of Rosenso's editor-in-chief.
However, it wasn't until three or four weeks before the Times was about to publish the documents that the Peng District publishers actually saw them. However, these documents have been carefully organized and edited.
Rosenso and his lead editors and writers asked the publisher to make the final decision. This decision was not an easy one, as the release of confidential documents is a great responsibility and cannot be taken lightly.
Pengqu Salzberg and his senior aides, including Rosenthau, editor-in-chief of the editorial section Otts, editor-in-chief of the weekly edition of Weekly News, Reston, vice president for news and political columniston, Bankeroff, executive vice president, Godell, vice president for legal affairs, and Gruson, vice president for public relations and spokesman for the Times, met to deliberate and weigh the Times' position and responsibilities before making the final decision.
Peng District Salzberg said in an interview with the New York Post that they did not hesitate to make the documents public in the first place. He explained that once the documents were in their hands, they had no choice but to make them public.
The only controversy is how it should be made public, what information should be used and what should not be used, whether it should be based on the narrative analysis in the report, or whether it should be a comparative analysis by journalists.
Should the document be made public in its entirety at once, or in multiple disclosures? After reviewing all the documents, the New York Times considered most of the documents to be history, in which there was no information about the movement of the army.
The New York Times believes that making these documents public would be a major contribution to helping the American people understand how to get involved in the Vietnam War, even if it might embarrass policymakers back then.
But in the end, the New York Times decided that it was more important for the people to understand the process of making national policy decisions than to embarrass ***.
During the Vietnam War, the handling of sensitive information by Times staff within Times demonstrated maturity, prudence and accountability. The editors and reporters carefully and repeatedly reviewed and weighed all potentially sensitive information in order to avoid giving the enemy favorable information or undermining the Paris peace talks.
They decided to remove all the "time factor" to protect the time required for the exchange of telegrams, and to treat all the information on "army movements" as "absolute military aircraft" that would not be revealed.
The Times also voluntarily decided not to publish more than 400 pages of documents, but hoped to make them available to scholars. These measures fully demonstrate the maturity, prudence and responsibility of the Times in handling "classified documents".
Pengqu Salzberg stressed that the "classified documents" obtained by The New York Times were of a very different nature from the 1961 intelligence obtained by the United States in support of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba.
In that year, his brother-in-law De Fors received an urgent telegram from Kennedy** asking not to publish the news because it was at stake for many lives and *** feared that the Soviet Union would intervene by force.
Peng said that even today, he would make the same decision because it involves the safety of the lives of the landers. In the past and present, Peng District Salisberg has emphasized the importance of protecting public safety and lives.
Headline: The New York Times Reveals the Double Standard of 'Classified Documents': Leaks Are the Culprits Content: Daniel Esperger's view of "classified documents" from a unique perspective is that he believes they are not really secrets, as information leaks automatically almost every day.
The purpose of such a leak is usually for some kind of benefit, and the excessive secrecy of the documents and the misuse of the "confidential" stamp actually make these documents lose the meaning of secrecy.
The New York Times is convinced that this behavior of ** has deprived the so-called "classified documents" of their true secrecy, and the revelation of these documents is actually a warning to **.
These revelations can teach politicians a lesson and can also make them more vigilant, so the biggest beneficiaries of exposing the Vietnam War documents are actually the American people and national interests.
Speaking at the site of Nixon's resignation, Mr. Sheehan said the New York Times' goal had always been to provide as accurate and comprehensive coverage of the Vietnam War as possible. However, given the sheer volume of documents, The Times decided that it would be impossible to publish all of them at once, so it was decided to release them in stages.
Some journalists, such as Wexler, the editor-in-chief of the New York Post, have expressed a different opinion. He believes that if they get their hands on these documents, they will choose to release them all at once to avoid interference.
Actually, he may have a point. If the New York Times had published all the documents in one day, there might not have been any court intervention.
And if The New York Times could release all the documents at once within the 15 days required by the court, they could avoid a lot of attorney fees and losses.
1.Nixon** resigned, not only because of leaks, but also because of the American people's demand for an end to the Vietnam War. As a result, Asperger became a hero in the anti-war movement and was hailed"The most dangerous Americans"。
2.Eisperger's leaks eventually prompted Nixon** to be forced to resign and led to an end to the Vietnam War in the United States. This incident made Esperger, an anti-war hero, also hailed"The most dangerous Americans"。
3.Nixon's resignation stemmed from leaks and popular calls for an end to the Vietnam War. As a result, Eisperger became a representative of the anti-war movement and was hailed as:"The most dangerous Americans"。
4.Eisperger's leaks were a key factor in pushing the United States to end the Vietnam War and Nixon** was forced to resign. As a result, Eisperger became an iconic figure in the anti-war movement and was hailed as"The most dangerous Americans"。
5.Although there were a variety of reasons for Nixon's resignation, the leak was undoubtedly a key factor. As a result, Eisperger became an important figure in the anti-war movement and was hailed as:"The most dangerous Americans"。