screeria -- nigeria. -

they did it. they said throughout that we're not considering costs. thank you, your honor. >> thank you counsel, the case is submitted. with congress out this week for the spring recess we're featuring american history tv in primetime. up next, part one of a two-part interview with daniel ellsberg. while working at the rand corporation in 1967, mr. ellsberg became consultant to the white house and defense department on matters concerning the vietnam war. giving him access to classified and top secret documents. he photocopied a 7,000-page study that later became known as the pentagon papers. in 1971 he gave those documents to the "new york times." the richard nixon presidential library conducted this interview as part of a project to document the 37th president's administration. mr. ellsberg talks about his motivations in leaking is pentagon papers as well as his opinions on the vietnam war.

this portion is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> right from the beginning and until late in '71 when they came out, so for, what is that, two years, a couple of years, i always thought for the pentagon papers to have any effect, they should be the basis for congressional hearings. precisely because i knew they didn't tell the whole story or an adequate story. i knew what was -- a lot of what was excluded from them. and what you needed was oral testimony, preferably under oath of people who really knew the decision-making at the time and could explain what was the implications of these papers where the documents themselves didn't tell the whole story. i knew that very well. for example, they gave a very miss-leading impression of what john m'naghten ever thought, my

boss, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. when he wrote anything down, it was a briefing paper for mcnamara to use to argue with other people, to present mcnamara's preferred policy. it didn't usually express what m'naghten thought was appropriate policy or what he thought to expect or considerations. he was writing lawyers' briefs for mcnamara to present. that was just one example. but i knew that many -- in many other cases it didn't answer many of the questions. so what you wanted was testimony. and to keep people honest and to job their memories you needed to be able to show them, read these documents and tell us now why you wrote this or what is not said in this document. so forth. so i always wanted congressional hearings. and i had the mistaken belief then that congress was more likely to hold those hearings if they had the documents in the

first instance and were not scooped by the press. that they could present dramatic material. in retrospect 40 years later, that's not the way congress works. in the end, it was very important that they appear in the newspapers. congress reacts to what the public is concerned with. and if you don't have a public concern, they don't investigate. and they don't press things. and neil sheehan later in urging me not to give it to a congressman first but to let the "times" do it, which i was skeptical about. i thought, well, they just want a pulitzer prize. i didn't really think that was the way to do it. but he was right. the "times" had a greater potential for getting those hearings done than simply giving the documents to congress in the first place. i was wrong about that. i might note the "times" didn't do it either.

the hearings never took place. both fulbright and mansfield, when the pentagon papers came out, said, ah we must hold public hearings on this subject. they both said that publicly right away. they were in charge. no hearings happened. and nixon wanted them. nixon wanted them. and they didn't happen. they both understood each other. the hearings would mainly have incriminated the democrats. and fulbright and mansfield and the other democrats had no interest in pulling mcnamara in front and confronting him with lies that he'd made to the public and mistakes that he's made and the democrats had made. so the democrats held no hearings even when there was public interest in the thing. nixon, on the other hand was very anxious. he on the tape says, oh we can't wait to get mcnamara answering these questions it will drive him crazy so forth. didn't happen. because the democrats were in control. if the republicans had controlled congress there would

have been hearings. and i would have been happy with that. i wanted the truth out. but in short both of '71 and '69, what i believe hubert humphrey said -- i keep forgetting whether it was humphrey or wall rosstow one or the other -- both speaking to halderman and hague and nixon's people about the pentagon papers. one of them made the comment, no good democrat could have released these. now, i was a democrat. and i am a democrat. but i wasn't a good democrat. nor am i now, i must say. i'm kind of a self-hating democrat at the moment. in '69 i wasn't a good democrat. i was prepared to see the democrats get the blame which they richly deserved. i didn't want to punish them or do anything but in terms of ending the war, i thought it

will only happen if the democrats accept the blame that is rightfully theirs. early on before nixon has planted his flag on this war. quickly. and i say the democrats i talked to were democrats and they rejected that idea. they would not have wanted to put out the pentagon papers. and so in answer to your question, my thought on the pentagon papers was this. that if they are the basis for hearings before fulbright they may -- fulbright's initial reaction was very favorable, to put them out till he thought better of it. but at first he promised me that he would put them out. and my thought was that if he gets them out in time, then nixon will perceive that he has the option of blaming this war on democratic deception democratic incompetence

democratic lily-liveredness, from his point of view, and say, all right, the war is hopeless. i have to get out. my mistake was to imagine that nixon would have picked up that opportunity. nixon -- mansfield did give him that opportunity privately and nixon rejected it. he was determined not to get out. and on the other hand, fulbright it turned out was much more -- when he thought about it when he saw what the pentagon papers were, could see that there were real dangers in it for the democrats. >> now, dan, you tried this in the fall of 1969. >> '69. so i gave them -- >> so -- but you don't -- what do you do for the next two years? because nothing -- what you wanted to have happen doesn't happen. in fact what you'd feared would

happen does happen. >> yeah. now, here's where my mistake about nixon's policy was -- had an effect. had i realized that as i was copying the pentagon papers, nixon was directing the duck hook planning in connection with his november ultimatum. in other words, that the war had the potential for exploding very quickly, even that very fall or perhaps later. a little later. i would have felt more urgent about what i was doing. there's a number of what-ifs. as it was, i didn't know about duck hook because he didn't carry it out. the reason he did not carry out the escalation was i believe

strongly, because 2 million people walked in the streets and were in demonstrations on october 15th 1969. the october moratorium effort. and another demonstration was scheduled for november 15th. again was extremely large. and that led him to give up his escalation planning because he knew that there would be perhaps ten times as many people out if he escalated. so it was not the right time for that. i didn't know any of that at the time. the reason was hell principle had been kept in the dark on that, working for kissinger. it was what i was talking about compartmenttation. hell principle had been identified by kissinger as somebody who was working for him but thought we ought to get out in the interests of the country and nixon who he was working for. he wasn't sabotaging anything he believed we should get out.

therefore, he wasn't told. people he was working closely next to, tony leek roger morris others, didn't tell him any of that. even though they were working side by side, essentially. then hell principle left for related reasons in late august, early september. i believe if he'd stayed in the white house aneven a couple more months he probably would have learned of the planning that was going on. if he'd told me, i would have made every effort to get at that planning and release with some hope of doing it. i knew all the people. i was trusted by them. i'd worked with them earlier. if i'd had the duck hook planning or the november eliminate mate actual i would not have copied the pentagon papers. that was only history. it ened in '68. i knew from the beginning that it didn't show what nixon's

planning was. and had only a small chance, a small chance of affecting nixon policy. i described what i thought the chance was. but if i'd had documents or information on his current planning, i would have put that out. ten pages of that or 30 pages would have been worth more than 7,000 pages of history of the democrats. i copied the pentagon papers only because it was all i had. it was the best i had. and i hoped that people would see that a history that showed four presidents in a row to some extent as early as fdr but then truman eisenhower, kennedy, and johnson, you could say five presidents -- had all planned escalation or involvement in vietnam. different from what they'd told

the public. made secret threats. secret operations. with costs much higher than they ever admitted to the public. and with prospects much dimmer, much less promising than they ever admitted to the public. all of them had done that as a pattern. perhaps the public could believe what i was told by hell rin, that another president, the latest president, was doing the same. that's what my hope was with the pentagon papers. it didn't happen. my hopes were not fulfilled. the public was inpressed by how much lying had been going on by all these earlier presidents. they still wanted to believe that our current president was telling the truth that there was a new nixon, that he was getting out -- which was after all very plausible, how could he not want to get out? in '68, '69 everyone gave him the benefit of the doubt because

it was hard to imagine a sane person wanting to do anything else other than get out. if he wasn't burdened with it like humphrey or johnson. but if he was a new person coming in. now, so the pentagon papers did not reveal to them what nixon's -- or even make them inquisitive about what nixon's real policy was. at the time and for a generation later, nixon's policy has been supped up about i nearly everyone journalists, academics, public, he was trying to get us out as fast as he could. and that was an extremely miss-leading description. although not entirely false. he was trying to get us -- get u.s. troops out. but not by allowing the communists to achieve any kind of success. except to control the parts of the country they were already controlling.

but not to control saigon. not to have a coalition government. nixon as i understand it and did in '69 never intended for saigon to become ho chi minh city while he was in office. that is, through '76. if ever. he hoped to leave his successor, republican or democrat with a strategy that could be persisted, could be prolonged, with enough will. and i think had a good pacebasis. it turned out he had a good basis for doing that. he hoped even more to make it easily sustainable. a cheap sustainable war. because the north vietnamese troops would not be there anymore. >> let me ask you, tell us about 1970. what effect did kent state have on you? what effect did the escalation into cambodia have on your sense of urgency? >> there i thought -- that did have a big effect. because it told me the

escalation is happening sooner than i expected. let me go back now to '69. i did not foresee it happening in '69 where we came very close. as close as 2 million people. if the moratorium had not occurred, i believe we would have escalated and probably used nuclear weapons. in the fall of '69. nixon intended, had plans done for nuclear attacks as march morris informed me a mile and a half from the chinese border. in a relatively unpopulated area. i won't go into all the details. the intention was not -- was actually to kill very few civilians but to send a very large signal to the chinese and to the north vietnamese. i think he wanted to use nuclear weapons. and actually an aide to hague who was later chief of staff

told sy hirsch that hague was amazed '69 had ended without the nuclear weapons being used. robert ellsworth, later nato ambassador under nixon, was also amazed there had been no use of nuclear weapons by the end of '69. but that was because of the moratorium. i didn't know that. i thought escalation was likely to occur. nixon didn't. and kissinger didn't. they thought the threats would succeed. i thought their threats would not succeed. and therefore there would be escalation, eventually. the north would launch an offensive. so i thought the escalation would come when the north launched an offensive. which i thought was pretty sure to happen no later than '72. probably not 1970. a little more likely '71. probably not till '72. but probably just as ted was

intended to affect our election in '68, probably '72 was a good year. maybe '71. so there would not be an escalation till then. so there was kind of a year coming where there would not -- where things would go on as they were. a stalemate at a relatively low level. and so when you say when nixon didn't -- when my hearings didn't take place in '69 i sort of gave up on the pentagon papers being very important. i continued to copy them for a while and give them to fulbright until i'd given them all. i thought he should have them all for his -- maybe he would eventually use them. but i didn't feel a great sense of urgency. and weeks would go by when i didn't copy. and then something would come up and i would copy some more. then cambodia happened. and that said to me, wait a minute.

he's prepared to escalate -- actually, what i interpreted that was still part of the threat. he wants to make clear that if they have an offensive, he will blow north vietnam to pieces. what he really was trying to make clear was what the threat he'd made in '69. if you don't get the northern troops out i'll blow you to pieces. but in either case i saw it as a demonstration that would lead to further escalation. it would not be effective, in my opinion, and i was right about that. the north vietnamese did not ever concede what he was asking. so at that point i did become quite urgent. fulbright's people told me, and norvil jones they would hold haerts. i began looking at the papers and saying, here's the witnesses you should call. i worked in the foreign relations committee offices for a while. trying to prepare for hearings.

and actually unfortunately the pressure instead of going from mcgovern-hatfield type bill of getting all the troops out of indochina, the pressure -- the political strategy by the democrats was to press the church-cooper bill to get them out of cambodia only. and nixon did agree to that and did get them out of cambodia. and the air went out of the large movement that responded to kent state. i think the war could have been ended in april may of 1970. if the -- what was it 200,000 people, i think, in washington then, for demonstrations after kent state, had closed down washington. it was the one time -- this is a what-if that i think is of some

interest. congress was for once furious at the executive because they felt they'd been totally misled by the escalation in cambodia. they hadn't been briefed on it. i think the one person that's come out that they briefed was ford. the person they expected to forget what he'd been told. at any rate would not tell anybody, and he didn't tell anyone. so congress felt totally blind-sided on that. they were very angry. and had -- i think if people had shut down washington, which you could do with 200,000 people congress for once would not have been against the anti-war movement. they would have been sympathetic. and what you could have gotten possibly -- no guarantee -- but there was a chance of cutting off funds for continuing the war. what finally happened, this is 1970, what finally happened three years later in 1973, when they cut off funds for combat

operations in indochina. instead of just in cambodia. i think that could have been done. if i look back at what i could have done, it would have been a good time to put out the pentagon papers. to make an all-out push. the war was illegitimate in the beginning. look at the papers of 45, 46, 47, 48. that's what made the greatest impression on me. but it was history that never did get published too much. nobody read it very much. and what influenced me really never got to the public. the fact that we had begun the war in support of a french imperial reconquest of a colony that had declared its independence. that went from american values and american anti-imperialist ideals -- it had no legitimacy from the beginning. it was not clearly illegal, by the way, i found. because the u.n. charter does

allow for colonies. and even for internal policing. and it wasn't clearly illegal for france to continue to claim ownership of indochina, even though they'd declared independence. but from the point of view of american policy you know and what fdr was secretly agreeing to do, let the french back in, and harry truman did do, and eisenhower did do, all of these had to be very much obscured from the american people because sustaining the french empire was not part of american ideals. or to me -- so it was illegitimate from the beginning. to me that meant in '69, when i read these documents, that it was unjustified homicide, which i saw as murder. not just an error. not just bad, incompetent policy. it was mass murder. to be killing people who wanted

to be independent in order to sustain an imperial control of them. whether it was the french or ours. i didn't think we had any more legitimate right to run vietnam than the japanese or the chinese for 1,000 years before them or the french. and we had no more prospect of doing it. >> dan you men when you went to vietnam in the '60s -- >> '69. i had a different perception in '64, '65. >> everyone knew that indochina was a french colony. i mean, that wasn't a secret. >> you know, as a historian -- how old are you? >> 46. >> 46. so you have to be in your 50s to remember, i found, even the pentagon papers. and i think -- make a generalization that obviously doesn't apply to you personally. i think historians -- it's very hard for historians to get a feel for what people's understanding was at the time. how they saw things at the time.

you can get it from newspapers to some extent. the public was almost entirely ignorant of the u.s. role in sustaining the french from '45 to '54. so they didn't think of it as a u.s./french war. all vote vietnamese saw that not as a french war, but as a french/u.s. war. i talked to a man who later worked -- still alive, he'd be very interesting to interview. he's in your area by the way. or he's in the southern california area. he was at that time a vietminh regimental political officer. he'd been a battalion commander. he was telling me how all the --

this was after the war. he said, every french president knew that the americans were supplying 80% of the funding for the french war by the end of it. i said chow, how can you tell me illit lat vietnamese presidents knew something that essentially no americans knew? the fact is that the time of nixon's speech in november 3rd when he made it nixon's war, the possibility of the pentagon papers having an effect didn't go down to zero but it went close to zero, in my mind. very low. from then on, i thought that it was a small chance that the pentagon papers could affect nixon because showing what the democrats had done didn't have much bearing on nixon. i didn't think it would affect

his policy. leaping ahead i would say it didn't affect his policy. when it did come out in '71, his immediate perception was that it affected mainly the democrats and as kissinger put it, if anything, it helps us a little bit. and nixon saw it the same. in fact, he wanted it out faster even before it came out. and other parts out faster. why did i put it out at all? because by the spring of 1971, i was feeling that with the attack -- actually from the fall of 1970, with the sun te raid, i saw the escalation which had been foreshadowed in cambodia as speeding up and moving toward probably an all-out escalation, which i wanted to avoid at all costs.

and that in a smallest chance of having some effect on the war was worth my going to prison for the rest of my life. i probably -- i was urged to do that by mark russkin and dirk barnett of the institute of policy studies to whom i'd given about 1,000 pages of the pentagon papers a year earlier for a historical project they were putting out, a book project. they suged it give to it the newspapers. by that time i had just given up on fulbright. not till then. till then i hoped he would put it out in hearings. i had that high hope in cambodia but it went away with the lapsing of political pressure to get out after he took the troops out of cambodia. so -- but in the fall i became desperate. i was working in every way possible. i could go into a lot of activities i was doing.

all of which seemed morrell than the pentagon papers. but i thought, all right the pentagon papers, might as well throw them into the pot too and get them out. and for what it's worth maybe it will have some effect in discrediting the war. and that was especially true after the laos invasion. and so i approached senator bathias, i approached senator mcgovern. this was in the spring now after i gave up on fulbright. i did give them to neil sheehan but without the expectation that the "times" would put them out. and he didn't tell me they were working on them. he for reasons still not clear to me entirely chose not to tell me that the "times" was moving ahead very rapidly, though it took them several months. as they saw it to get it in order. during that time i continued to

see pete mccluskey, representative, in hopes he would put them out. senator mathias. i tried out senator gay lord nelson, senator mcgovern. they were very favorable to putting them out at first. but then thought better of it. and just delayed or -- i think in retrospect they all thought let ellsberg put it out and whatever negative facts will come out. what people think of as watergate, generally, like the dirty tricks the campaign contributions, the enemies list the entry into the watergate itself. these are things none of which has ever been traced conclusively, directly, to nixon himself. partly because people like mitchell and holderman did not talk, basically. or liddy. about about what they knew. essentially took the blame for these moves. and whether nixon actually knew of them in advance or actually

directed them is still not clear. certainly was not proven against nixon. none of that would have forced him to resign. or could have led to his impeachment. if i understand it, what made him vulnerable to impeachment and even to prosecution and to conviction were actions that were directed -- that were known to be directed directly from the oval office. and those were in particular actions that involved me. a little more generally the anti-war movement. but in particularly against me. and it's often been understood that those actions were impulsive somehow or somehow reflected his psychology, personal psychology in some way. were essentially irrational or overreactions of some sort. and certainly it's not understood that they were related to vietnam. to say that is to say that watergate is not usually seen as related to vietnam.

in fact, i would say that what brought nixon to the point of resignation or impeachment was very much closely related to his vietnam policy his secret policy and particularly to how i fit in or i related to that policy. so the pentagon papers was related to it. but it wasn't really so much the pentagon papers themselves which dealt almost entirely with the democrats except for the eisenhower period of which nixon had been part. what i think worried nixon about me was what i might or what he thought i knew about his secret policy in vietnam and what i could reveal with documents. in other words, my understanding is that he became very concerned about what i might reveal beyond the pentagon papers about his

own administration and that i might well have documents to back that up. that would very much undermine his ongoing vietnam policy. from that point of view, the actions he took or directed which were, in fact illegal, even criminal actions in many respect s respects, were, i believe in his mind and with some reason, seen as national security matters. when he wanted to attribute his motivation to national security, i don't think that was just a cover story, in hi mind. that he really did think of me as threatening national security. as he understood it. obviously in going after me with the plumbers, with my doctor's office obviously that had nothing to do with his campaign. like so many other matters of watergate. clearly wasn't the campaign. i wasn't political in general.

it was i think as he saw it national security was dependent as he saw it, and most presidents would, on his success, his ability to be successful in carrying out his policy his vietnam policy. he understandably saw that as best for the country and best for our national security. and i threatened that by threatening to make it public. he understood and kissinger understood from the beginning that his aims in vietnam called for tactics that the public would be scared of they would see as reckless and perhaps as totally wrong. and there would be, if not majority opposition there would at least be major minority controversy and opposition which he wanted to avoid. that would increase the political cost, make it harder to achieve at best reserve it might make it impossible. very specifically.

he had reason to believe that i new of his nuclear threats to north vietnam in as early as the spring of 1969 and the fall of 1969. and later. and of his threats to escalate in terms of the dikes and other matters. in other words, his threats to escalate. in fact, i did know of them to some extent. i didn't have documents to demonstrate them. but i could have. the documents were available to people like roger morris who wrote a number of them or tony lake or bill watts or larry lynn. all of whom resigned at the time of cambodia. so he had strong reason to fear that in resigning they might well have shared those documents with me. and passed them on. and that i might turn them up at some point. what i did do was to give national security study memorandum 1, the notes on that

to senator mathias. who was unlike the others i dealt with a republican senator. and who wanted to keep his credentials to some extent with the republicans even though he was a dissenter on the vietnam war. what i learned in '73 and '74 was that on june 13th the day that the pentagon papers came out in the "times" or possibly june 14th mathias called up his colleague john mitchell acquaintance, and said -- who was then no longer attorney general, he was the head of committee to re-elect the president. let's see, '71? perhaps still attorney general. >> early '72. >> he was still attorney

general. and he called him up and said, john there's something you ought to know. and revealed to mitchell that he had top-secret documents from me, from daniel ellsberg, in his office. and all of this turned out to be critical. he didn't agree immediately to turn them over. just informed them that he had them and say that they could look at them in his office, which they didn't do right away. in retrospect then, there was a period when nixon and kissinger understood that mathias had documents. i should say that i had documents that i had not yet released. they were on vietnam. they were on nixon's policy in vietnam. and they were from the national security council. that's what mathias told mitchell. that gave them -- but they didn't know exactly what they were. if they had known exactly what they were kissinger would have

said oh that's 1, perhaps that's all he has. i had actually written the questions for 1. i had gone over the answers. i had helped write the summary. it was plausible i had all the documents on that and that was all i had. that was the only project i worked on for nixon. and it was all i had from nixon. as it was, they didn't know what it was mathias had. they had every reason to believe that there was a mole in the national security council who was providing me with who knows what. it could have been anything. and as they discuss on the tapes, tony lake essentially knew everything. and he'd resigned at the time of cambodia. helprin knew a lot but didn't know everything. morris knew somewhat less.

any one of them could have given me documents. even bill watts or larry lynn who also left. so i could turn up with documents on nuclear threats, on mining, on invasions, on any kind of thing. all of which was still totally secret from the american public and from congress. and from most people in the government. the tapes show nixon showing a great deal of concern about this. what do they know what did helprin know what i might come out with. now, all of this is coming out at the end of june, beginning of july, in the tapes. which is after of course the supreme court decision. after they've gone on with the pentagon papers. which nixon is basically fine to have out. in fact, he wants hearings on them. incriminating the public.

but now he says to kissinger, this changes the picture. we thought all he had was on the democrats. this shows that he could -- there was a lot of discussion. how closely is this held, could leherer have this stuff all this stuff. and so forth. which hadn't yet happened. these were threats for plans that had been laid as early as '69. but hadn't yet been carried out. they weren't carried out till '72, a year later. to show them actually when they were carried out, '72 they were presented as an ad hoc response to the north vietnamese offensive which had just taken place. to have it come out even that late that these things had been laid in motion -- in process and been planned out, targets picked and everything as early as '69 would put in schedule his whole

strategy and also what his aims were. in other words, things that implied howl is this going to go on? how big can this get? in fact, let me go ahead to '72. i'd been on trial now, under indictment for a year at that point. i called up with the mining of hifong i called mort helprin. well, mort what you revealed to me in '69 has now been played out. what's next? is it over? what's going on next? mort said no no. he hasn't bombed hanoi yet. said, mort had said to me in '69, it was his judgment, this administration will not leave office after its first term without having bombed hanoi. they will have tried that. tried that in order, in other

words, to get his maximum objective which was to get north vietnamese troops out of vietnam. if he hasn't tried that, he won't -- he will try it. if he hasn't done it yet. and that's what actually did happen. so i actually went to the nixon convention, the republican convention in miami, in '72. at a press conference sponsored by pete mccluskey, who was running against nixon and got one vote that week in miami. mccluskey sponsored me at a press conference. in which i could reveal, i said, what nixon's secret plan was. i said to the convention i should say to the journalists, all of whom were present because they had very little news to report from that convention. nixon was unopposed, essentially, except for mccluskey. and there was very little news

coming out of it. so they all appeared for daniel ellsberg's press conference. and i said, four years ago, nixon implied he didn't use the word secret plan but he implied that he had a secret plan. it's been widely believed since then of that he did not have a secret plan. most histories say that to this day. but he did. i said he did have a secret plan. essentially for winning the war or at least stabilizing it at a level that would represent an american success. and i don't think you should vote that he should be voted for again by the republicans and the public without knowing what his secret plan was. by this time i did have the outlines of it better. so i proceeded to tell. and i said, part of this plan involves threatening and if necessary, carrying out the bombing of hanoi, which hadn't happened yet. i was reported on respectfully

for one day. but essentially no one believed me. i didn't have documents proving that. as i said earlier, if i'd had such documents in '69 or '70 i would have put them out then. but i still didn't have them. and without documents people weren't willing to believe that nixon had a plan, had a strategy, they just couldn't imagine a strategy that would make any sense. if i can -- so they just didn't credit, they thought that he actually had a strategy. and that the escalations that had actually occurred by that time, they still couldn't believe reflected prior planning. they saw them as impulsive, as reactions to escalations by the other side. or they just didn't have an explanation. generally, they couldn't -- i think there were very few people in the country who could have answered the question, why are we still in vietnam?

starting from a starting point that they all accepted, nixon's trying to get us out. well, why hasn't he? they didn't -- no one had an answer, most people don't have an answer to this day, why it took this long. when nixon died his obituaries in the "post" and the "times" nixon's intention was to get us out as fast as possible nixon ended the war. then they went on to other things. with very little attention to the fact that nixon dropped much more bomb tonnage on indochina than johnson or kennedy had altogether. johnson and kennedy, 3.2 million tons of bombs. nixon, 4.5 million tons of bombs. two world war twos plus korea. we dropped 2 million tons in all of world war ii. nixon dropped 4.5 million tons

on indochina. about 30,000 people died. somewhat less. under johnson. close to that died, 58,000 died in the end. about 28,000 under nixon. if his policy was to get us out as quickly as possible what went wrong? why did it take these extra years? so long. essentially almost nobody has an answer. the answer i would give is this. their initial hopes were that the threats would cause the other -- would cause the north to get neutral withdrawal and with mutual withdrawal you would able to control the situation with continued u.s. air support. that that was his objective.mutual withdrawal you would able to control the situation with continued u.s. air support. that that was his objective.with mutual withdrawal you would able to control the situation with continued u.s. air support. that that was his objective. when tuck hook was not carried out because of the moratorium they then went into a different gear that over time their

threats would erode the other side and eventually they would get mutual withdrawal. that was a very unrealistic belief. but by now they were quite invested in this approach. it was nixon's war by this time. so they should have just, from an american point of view, even their own point of view, they should have turned around to an extrication strategy. but they were still hoping to get mutual withdrawal. they never did get it. by '72, however they had had -- they'd got the demonstration that american b-52s, close air support of arvin the saigon army, could in fact hold off the north vietnamese regime. that was an experiment that had never been done in history. it was a duel between high-altitude strategic bombers at 30,000 feet, and ground armies. there had never been anything remotely like that before. i couldn't predict how that would come out at the time.

the thought of actually putting out the pentagon papers did not come to me until essentially almost the day that i did it. tony russo who did not know that i had the pentagon papers, or that i'd worked on them, when i mentioned that i was working on some studies that revealed a lot of lying, had said to me toward the end of september, you ought to put those out. which was a very amazing thing to say. it's not somebody who'd had a clearance, and he no longer had one. didn't make such a suggestion to anybody, or if he thought of putting anything out, wouldn't tell anybody else. but he was gone from rand and was relatively radical. but that didn't mean to me that i would do it. up till that point i was now as you may know from my book, i had come to a point by the example of randy keeler and bob who were

going to prison, i was ready to do anything that would -- in terms of self-success ra fies going to prison or whatever, to help end the war. putting out the pentagon papers did not look to me like a very plausible way of doing that. because they dealt with the democrats. then a week later or so when i became very struck by the lies that were occurring over the special forces this goes into my immediate motivations for putting them out at the moment. which is a long story. but when i became aware that so much lying had gone on i thought that whether it has a big effect or not, it may have some effect as i've described to you on blaming all this on the democrats. that may be helpful. and anyway, this history deserves -- i was sick of the lying, in part. and i was ready to see those documents put out. along with the other things i was doing in terms of trying to end the war. but in terms of putting them out

through the newspapers, that didn't come to me -- well, first, i didn't even think of copying them until this point. then i was going to give them to the congress. here's what i now understand happened. nixon, pursuing a policy in 1971, which now -- which involved the possibility of continuing to escalate the war in terms of bombing >> it would be quite obstructive and undermining if the public understood the ambitiousness of his aims which would keep him in office indefinitely and to keep

the major cities under his control indefinitely. had to shut me out and keep me from revealing and saying i might still have would reveal his plan. earlier, to undermine ted kennedy and various things, now i think had the task of neutralizing ellisburg, not simply in terms of my credibility. i was already on trial. i was accused already of being guilty of 12 felony counts which challenges my credibility, you might say, already. >> i had to be influenced,

coerced. basically, the first step was to try to get information from my pharmo psychoanalyst that i would not want out. it was not information in the main to be given out immediately to discredit me. but to threaten me with being put out if i didn't co-op rate by shutting up by ceasing to describe what nixon's policy was and by not putting out anymore documents. so they wanted to get information they could blackmail me with.

when they were planning that in 19d 72 they knewives mutt putting out more documents and all that i had. they knew that because the senator atechbted to put into the congressional record which i had given him and was blocked by doing that by republican senators and there were two sessions, close sessions in the senate to consider whether e whether they could legitimate receive such documents and publish them or whatever. meanwhile, i had arranged for gravelle who represented ron dellums, these 500 pages of secret and top secret documents. they knew then at the end of april and early may that i was now apparently forseeing the mining which i was openly predicting.

they wanted to stop me from that. and, again this was not a matter of peak on his part, though, again, a fairly rational, criminal attempt to silence me or to put me in the hospital, at least, or as the prosecutor thought to kill me. these were orders passed on to

the cubans with colson telling the recruiting that the orders came from the man upstairs in the oval office. i think it was from nixon, in fact. so these were orders to assault me, at least, if not to kill me. they didn't do it for reasons we could go into. they thought they were being set up to be caught as one of them put it, like oswald. and, instead, they blew the attempt. and we spent that night with their next objective, which was the water gate.

they went into the water gate three weeks later and then, on a second attempt, for reasons, by the way, we still don't know. anyone who feels confident that they know exactly what the raid into the water gate offices were -- or what the second raid was for, does not have an adequate consequence as far as i know yet. as far as any documents we know. that remains something of a mystery. but the people who did it did know of the physical attempt to assault me weeks earlier on the capitol.

both of those had a very rational motive. i believe any president we've seen wo had that policy which was threatened to that extent by an insider who was threatening to release new documents would have done pretty much the same. this administration put it down in a mip it. but i think johnson and possibly kennedy would have done the same. certainly i was overheard on wiretaps, countless wiretaps during this period. the use of the cia against me. the sort of thing that johnson had done before nixon. the use -- as i say -- the f.b.i. wiretaps. break ins certainly done under earlier presidents and later presidents. in other words, i don't see it as nixon's pathology. it was nixon's political white

house reaction to a threat to his potentially controversial foreign policy up at that point. and they had to be kept from talking. first, before the election and then after the election. they were successfully kept by vairs bribes during the election under dean's direction. but as dean pointed out, more and more people were learning about it. hunt was demanding large amounts of money to keep quiet about the other crimes, the ellisburg affair, as nixon put it. and he had to be paid off. again, any of the presidents in this situation would have done this. these were new crimes of obstruction of justice.

the more people knew, the more people had to be kept quiet and paid off. and these were new crimes. so it's me tast sizing. in the end, it was dean himself who, trying to avoid having the entire responsibility for the cover up bloated on him which was the nixon haldeman ericman plan to blame dean for the cover up. dean was willing, he said to go to prison for the president but not for haldeman. also, he was not willing to perjure himself. he was a fairly unprincipled person at that time. he's learned a lot of principles since then. i like him a lot now. dean is a friend of mine. and i believe he's a great truth teller. at that time, he was still a white houseman, as he put it. blind ambition. but he was not willing to perjure himself. and he revealed in the course of plea bargaining with the

prosecutors, the break-in to the doctor's office. that, i'm going to condense here very greatly. nixon did his best to keep that from going to my trial. nixon kept the knowledge of the break-in from going to my trial where it clearly was his responsibility to inform the judge of this break-in. and, also of the f.b.i. wiretaps against me. he ordered the material not go. finally, peterson, on i believe, april 25th 24th or 25th went into him and implied they would have to resign because they would be guilty of obstruction of justice if they didn't pass that material on. nixon, on the 25th then authorized to give the

information to my judge to tell the judge that it was national security, which i think he believed, meaning he doesn't have to give it to the defendant. it should be kept under wraps, if possible. he hoped the june would obey that hint because he was offering at that time, judge matthew burn, another obstruction of justice. he was offering the head of the f.b.i. something that judge burn had wanted since he was a little boy. it was his boyhood ambition. some day, to replace jay ed gar hoover as head of the f.b.i. he was offered that on may 4th i believe it was and, again, on april 5th and april 7 thd, in meetings. during my tril which was -- burn was going on and was discussing possibly the coming head of the f.b.i. without telling us. that leaked out. the washington star, i think it

was, aparentally by some f.b.i. man who didn't want burn to be head of the f.b.i. almost surely mark felt we now know as deep throat, was the one who leaked that to the washington star. so gradually, now, you had a whole lot of leaks coming out first from dean -- oh burn did have to give it to us in court. on april 26th, i think. and -- how was your reaction? >> well, tremendous. i mean, there was -- burn offered to keep it secret. he looked at me for the first time, he looked me in the eyes for two years. the first time he addressed me in court, for two years he always talked to my lawyers, the prosecution or whatever. and he said mr. ellisburg, i don't have to put this out. meaning, i don't have to reveal to the world that you had a psychoanalyst. which was not a real stigma in

los angeles, actually, at that point. and, anyway, the white house had done a burglary of my doctor's office. i said to him, are you kidding? put it out. and he announced it in open court and there was a rush from the journalists both for the first time, a front page scene where they dashed to the phones to get out the word that as they put it water gate meets the pent gone papers trial. they'd been having a very dull trial most of the time for months at this point. and, suddenly, they were all envying their colleagues there washington who were covering water gate. and, suddenly, they were covering water gate. and so they were very excited by it. and it was -- that led, now to a wonderful ten days for us. because, if you want to know my mood, the rest of the trial is extremely a combination of boring and