October 1, 2002
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
Daniel Ellsberg, whistle-blower who helped bring an
end to the Vietnam War and the Nixon presidency,
lectures at UCSB Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall
Summary Facts:
- Daniel Ellsberg
- Secrets: Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
- An inside account of smuggling out and releasing the Pentagon Papers, the top secret study of U.S. policy in Vietnam
- Friday, October 25
- 8 pm / UCSB Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall
- General public $12, UCSB students $8
- Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who made public the Pentagon Papers and thereby risked life imprisonment trying to stop the Vietnam War, will present the lecture Secrets: Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers on Friday, October 25 at 8 pm in UCSB Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. It’s been thirty years since Ellsberg smuggled the Pentagon Papers out of his office, setting in motion actions that would eventually topple a presidency and end a war. Now he has written Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (Viking), the definitive account of how and why he revealed this top-secret history of American involvement in South East Asia. Noted historian Howard Zinn writes that Ellsberg’s “trajectory is the stuff of high drama. Secrets offers its readers a profound education in politics and morality—sobering but also inspiring. If our nation could absorb its lessons, we might all face a better future.”
Arguably the most famous of government whistleblowers, Ellsberg grew up a staunch anti-Communist, serving as a company commander in the Marine Corps and then joining the national security think tank the Rand Corporation. It was at Rand that he gained access to more and more evidence that continually changed his opinion about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He claims he saw the war “first as a problem, next as a stalemate, then as a moral and political disaster, a crime.” Despite his high security clearance and ability to brief the upper echelons of government, including Henry Kissinger, Ellsberg grew frustrated in his attempts to help bring an end to the war. That led him to photocopy and leak to Congress the Pentagon Papers—a 7,000-page study of U.S. decision making in Vietnam that took place under five presidents. When Congress didn’t act, he released the documents to the press, and was soon labeled a traitor by President Richard Nixon’s White House. When Nixon couldn’t block publication of the papers, he set out to ruin Ellsberg, leading to the break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office by the group of “plumbers” who would become more infamous in connection with Watergate. Ellsberg’s lecture will be an insider’s exposé of all these events, including his trial on 12 federal felony charges and his subsequent life as an anti-nuclear activist.
In a recent interview, Ellsberg explained why he waited three decades to write his memoir. “For years after my trial, my highest priority was to build a movement against the arms race of the kind that helped bring about the end of the Vietnam War,” he said. “If I’d written Secrets ten years ago, or twenty years ago, I think people would have seen it as history, maybe an interesting story, but not even I would have seen any immediate relevance to it then...I don’t think there’s been a time in the last thirty years that has so reproduced the events I was writing about, such as the assertions of presidential power to make war.”
National Public Radio senior news analyst Daniel Schorr asserts, “This is an honestly and lucidly told narrative by someone who single-handedly changed the course of history. Its message of the menace of secrets rings true today.”
Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, Daniel Ellsberg’s book will be available for purchase and signing. This lecture by Daniel Ellsberg is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by KEYT 1250 Radio.
Tickets for Secrets: Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers are $12 for the general public and $8 for UCSB students.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.