Credibility gap is a term that came into wide use with
journalism, political and public discourse in the United States during
the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, it was most frequently used to
describe public skepticism about the Lyndon B. Johnson administration's statements and policies on the Vietnam War.
It was used in journalism as a euphemism for recognized lies told to
the public by politicians. Today, it is used more generally to describe
almost any "gap" between an actual situation and what politicians and
government agencies say about it.
History
The term "credibility gap" came against a background of the use of the term "missile gap", which the Oxford English Dictionary lists as first being used by then-Senator John F. Kennedy
on 14 August 1958, when he stated: "Our Nation could have afforded, and
can afford now, the steps necessary to close the missile gap."
"Doomsday gap" and "mineshaft gap" were the imagined post-apocalyptic
continuations of this paranoia in the 1964 Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove.
The term "credibility gap" was widely in use as early as 1963, according to Timetables of History.
Prior to its association with the Vietnam War, in December 1962, at the
annual meeting of the U.S. Inter-American Council, Senator Kenneth B. Keating (R-N.Y.) praised President John F. Kennedy's prompt action in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he said there was an urgent need for the United States to plug the "credibility gap" in U.S. policy on Cuba. It was popularized in 1966 by J. William Fulbright,
a Democratic Senator from Arkansas, when he could not get a straight
answer from President Johnson's Administration regarding the war in
Vietnam.
"Credibility gap" was first used in association with the Vietnam War in the New York Herald Tribune
in March 1965, to describe then-president Lyndon Johnson's handling of
the escalation of American involvement in the war. A number of
events—particularly the surprise Tet Offensive, and later the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers—helped
to confirm public suspicion that there was a significant "gap" between
the administration's declarations of controlled military and political
resolution, and the reality. These were viewed as examples of Johnson's
and later Richard Nixon's
duplicity. Throughout the war, Johnson worked with his officials to
ensure that his public addresses would only disclose bare details of the
war to the American public. During the war the country grew more and
more aware of the credibility gap especially after Johnson's speech at Johns Hopkins University in April 1965. An example of public opinion appeared in The New York Times
concerning the war. "The time has come to call a spade a bloody shovel.
This country is in an undeclared and unexplained war in Vietnam. Our
masters have a lot of long and fancy names for it, like escalation and
retaliation, but it is a war just the same."
The advent of the presence of television journalists allowed by
the military to report and photograph events of the war within hours or
days of their actual occurrence in an uncensored manner drove the
discrepancy widely referred to as "the credibility gap".
Later usage
After
the Vietnam War, the term "credibility gap" came to be used by
political opponents in cases where an actual, perceived or implied
discrepancy existed between a politician's public pronouncements and the
actual, perceived or implied reality. For example, in the 1970s the
term was applied to Nixon's own handling of the Vietnam War and subsequently to the discrepancy between evidence of Richard Nixon's complicity in the Watergate break-in and his repeated claims of innocence.
A CIA map of dissident activities in Indochina, published as part of the Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study; they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress."
The Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with coastal raids on North Vietnam and Marine Corps attacks—none of which were reported in the mainstream media. For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers,
Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of
government property; charges were later dismissed, after prosecutors
investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
In June 2011, the documents forming the Pentagon Papers were declassified and publicly released.
Contents
Shortly after their release in June 1971, the Pentagon Papers were featured on the cover of Time magazine for revealing "The Secret War" of the United States in Vietnam.
Secretary of DefenseRobert McNamara created the Vietnam Study Task Force on June 17, 1967, for the purpose of writing an "encyclopedic history of the Vietnam War". McNamara claimed that he wanted to leave a written record for historians, to prevent policy errors in future administrations, although Les Gelb,
then director of Policy Planning at the Pentagon, has said that the
notion that they were commissioned as a "cautionary tale" is a motive
that McNamara only used in retrospect. McNamara told others, such as Dean Rusk, that he only asked for a collection of documents rather than the studies he received. Motives aside, McNamara neglected to inform either President Lyndon Johnson or Secretary of State Dean Rusk about the study. One report claimed that McNamara had planned to give the work to his friend, Robert F. Kennedy, who was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. which he later denied, though admitting that he should have informed Johnson and Rusk.
Instead of using existing Defense Department historians, McNamara assigned his close aide and Assistant Secretary of DefenseJohn T. McNaughton to collect the papers. McNaughton died in a plane crash one month after work began in June 1967, but the project continued under the direction of Defense Department official Leslie H. Gelb.
Thirty-six analysts—half of them active-duty military officers, the
rest academics and civilian federal employees—worked on the study. The analysts largely used existing files in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In order to keep the study secret from others, including National Security AdvisorWalt W. Rostow, they conducted no interviews or consultations with the armed forces, with the White House, or with other federal agencies.
McNamara left the Defense Department in February 1968, and his successor Clark M. Clifford received the finished study on January 15, 1969, five days before Richard Nixon's
inauguration, although Clifford claimed he never read it. The study
consisted of 3,000 pages of historical analysis and 4,000 pages of
original government documents in 47 volumes, and was classified as "Top
Secret – Sensitive". ("Sensitive" is not an official security designation; it meant that access to the study should be controlled.) The task force published 15 copies; the think tank RAND Corporation received two of the copies from Gelb, Morton Halperin and Paul Warnke, with access granted if at least two of the three approved.
Organization and content of the documents
The 47 volumes of the papers were organized as follows:
I. Vietnam and the U.S., 1940–1950 (1 Vol.)
A. U.S. Policy, 1940–50
B. The Character and Power of the Viet Minh
C. Ho Chi Minh: Asian Tito?
II. U.S. Involvement in the Franco–Viet Minh War, 1950–1954 (1 Vol.)
A. U.S., France and Vietnamese Nationalism
B. Toward a Negotiated Settlement
III. The Geneva Accords (1 Vol.)
A. U.S. Military Planning and Diplomatic Maneuver
B. Role and Obligations of State of Vietnam
C. Viet Minh Position and Sino–Soviet Strategy
D. The Intent of the Geneva Accords
IV. Evolution of the War (26 Vols.)
A. U.S. MAP for Diem: The Eisenhower Commitments, 1954–1960 (5 Vols.)
1. NATO and SEATO: A Comparison
2. Aid for France in Indochina, 1950–54
3. U.S. and France's Withdrawal from Vietnam, 1954–56
4. U.S. Training of Vietnamese National Army, 1954–59
5. Origins of the Insurgency
B. Counterinsurgency: The Kennedy Commitments, 1961–1963 (5 Vols.)
1. The Kennedy Commitments and Programs, 1961
2. Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961–63
3. The Advisory Build-up, 1961–67
4. Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces in Vietnam, 1962–64
5. The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, May–Nov. 1963
C. Direct Action: The Johnson Commitments, 1964–1968 (16 Vols.)
1. U.S. Programs in South Vietnam, November 1963–April 1965: NSAM 273 - NSAM 288 - Honolulu
2. Military Pressures Against NVN (3 Vols.)
a. February – June 1964
b. July – October 1964
c. November – December 1964
3. ROLLING THUNDER Program Begins: January – June 1965
4. Marine Combat Units Go to DaNang, March 1965
5. Phase I in the Build-Up of U.S. Forces: March – July 1965
6. U.S. Ground Strategy and Force Deployments: 1965 – 1967 (3 Vols.)
a. Volume I: Phase II, Program 3, Program 4
b. Volume II: Program 5
c. Volume III: Program 6
7. Air War in the North: 1965 – 1968 (2 Vols)
a. Volume I
b. Volume II
8. Re-emphasis on Pacification: 1965–1967
9. U.S.–GVN Relations (2 Vols.)
a. Volume 1: December 1963 – June 1965
b. Volume 2: July 1965 – December 1967
10. Statistical Survey of the War, North and South: 1965 – 1967
V. Justification of the War (11 Vols.)
A. Public Statements (2 Vols.)
Volume I: A--The Truman Administration
B--The Eisenhower Administration
C--The Kennedy Administration
Volume II: D--The Johnson Administration
B. Internal Documents (9 Vols.)
1. The Roosevelt Administration
2. The Truman Administration: (2 Vols.)
a. Volume I: 1945–1949
b. Volume II: 1950–1952
3. The Eisenhower Administration: (4 Vols.)
a. Volume I: 1953
b. Volume II: 1954–Geneva
c. Volume III: Geneva Accords – 15 March 1956
d. Volume IV: 1956 French Withdrawal – 1960
4. The Kennedy Administration (2 Vols.)
Book I
Book II
VI. Settlement of the Conflict (6 Vols.)
A. Negotiations, 1965–67: The Public Record
B. Negotiations, 1965–67: Announced Position Statements
C. Histories of Contacts (4 Vols.)
1. 1965–1966
2. Polish Track
3. Moscow–London Track
4. 1967–1968
Actual objective of the Vietnam War: Containment of China
Although President Johnson stated that the aim of the Vietnam War was to secure an "independent, non-Communist South Vietnam", a January 1965 memorandum by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton stated that an underlying justification was "not to help friend, but to contain China".
On November 3, 1965, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
sent a memorandum to President Johnson, in which he explained the
"major policy decisions with respect to our course of action in
Vietnam". The memorandum begins by disclosing the rationale behind the
bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965:
The February decision to bomb North
Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if
they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.
McNamara accused China of harboring imperial aspirations like those of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. According to McNamara, the Chinese were conspiring to "organize all of Asia" against the United States:
China—like Germany in 1917, like
Germany in the West and Japan in the East in the late 30s, and like the
USSR in 1947—looms as a major power threatening to undercut our
importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more
menacingly, to organize all of Asia against us.
To encircle the Chinese, the United States aimed to establish "three fronts" as part of a "long-run effort to contain China":
There are three fronts to a
long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR "contains"
China on the north and northwest):
However, McNamara admitted that the containment of China would ultimately sacrifice a significant amount of America's time, money and lives.
Internal affairs of Vietnam
Years before the Gulf of Tonkin incident
occurred on August 2, 1964, the U.S. government was indirectly involved
in Vietnam's affairs by sending advisors or (military personnel) to
train the South Vietnamese soldiers:
Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the U.S. government played a "direct role in the ultimate breakdown of the Geneva settlement" in 1954 by supporting the fledgling South Vietnam and covertly undermining the communist country of North Vietnam.
Under President John F. Kennedy, the U.S. government transformed its policy towards Vietnam from a limited "gamble" to a broad "commitment".
Under President Johnson, the U.S. government began waging covert
military operations against communist North Vietnam in defense of South
Vietnam.
Role of the United States in the rise of President Diem
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower greets South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem, whose rise to power was backed by the United States, according to the Pentagon Papers
In a section of the Pentagon Papers titled "Kennedy
Commitments and Programs", America's commitment to South Vietnam was
attributed to the creation of the country by the United States. As
acknowledged by the papers:
We must note that South Vietnam
(unlike any of the other countries in Southeast Asia) was essentially
the creation of the United States.
In a sub-section titled "Special American Commitment to Vietnam", the
papers emphasized once again the role played by the United States:
Without U.S. support [Ngo Dinh] Diem almost certainly could not have consolidated his hold on the South during 1955 and 1956.
Without the threat of U.S. intervention, South Vietnam could not
have refused to even discuss the elections called for in 1956 under the
Geneva settlement without being immediately overrun by the Viet Minh
armies.
Without U.S. aid in the years following, the Diem regime certainly,
and an independent South Vietnam almost as certainly, could not have
survived.
More specifically, the United States sent US$28.4 million worth of
equipment and supplies to help the Diem regime strengthen its army. In
addition, 32,000 men from South Vietnam's Civil Guard
were trained by the United States at a cost of US$12.7 million. It was
hoped that Diem's regime, after receiving a significant amount of U.S.
assistance, would be able to withstand the Viet Cong.
The papers identified General Edward Lansdale, who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), as a "key figure" in the establishment of Diem as the President
of South Vietnam, and the backing of Diem's regime thereafter. As
written by Lansdale in a 1961 memorandum: "We (the U.S.) must support
Ngo Dinh Diem until another strong executive can replace him legally."
Role of the United States in the overthrow of Diem's regime
The body of President Diệm after he was assassinated in the 1963 South Vietnamese coup, which was backed by the United States government
According to the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. government played a key role in the 1963 South Vietnamese coup,
in which Diem was assassinated. While maintaining "clandestine contact"
with Vietnamese generals planning a coup, the U.S. cut off its aid to
President Diem and openly supported a successor government in what the
authors called an "essentially leaderless Vietnam":
For the military coup d'etat
against Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. must accept its full share of
responsibility. Beginning in August 1963 we variously authorized,
sanctioned and encouraged the coup efforts of the Vietnamese generals
and offered full support for a successor government.
In October we cut off aid to Diem in a direct rebuff, giving a
green light to the generals. We maintained clandestine contact with them
throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review
their operational plans and proposed new government.
Thus, as the nine-year rule of Diem came to a bloody end, our complicity
in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities and our commitment in
an essentially leaderless Vietnam.
As early as August 23, 1963, an unnamed U.S. representative had met with Vietnamese generals planning a coup against Diem. According to The New York Times, this U.S. representative was later identified to be CIA officer Lucien Conein.
Category 1 – Air raids on major Viet Cong supply centers, conducted simultaneously by the Republic of Vietnam Air Force and the United States Air Force (codenamed Farmgate)
Category 2 – Cross-border raids on major Viet Cong supply centers, conducted by South Vietnamese units and US military advisors.
Category 3 – Limited air strikes on North Vietnamese targets by unmarked planes flown exclusively by non-US aircrews.
However, McCone did not believe these military actions alone could
lead to an escalation of the situation because the "fear of escalation
would probably restrain the Communists". In a memorandum addressed to President Johnson on July 28, 1964, McCone explained:
In response to the first or second
categories of action, local Communist military forces in the areas of
actual attack would react vigorously, but we believe that none of the
Communist powers involved would respond with major military moves
designed to change the nature of the conflict ...
Air strikes on North Vietnam itself (Category 3) would evoke sharper
Communist reactions than air strikes confined to targets in Laos, but
even in this case fear of escalation would probably restrain the
Communists from a major military response ...
Barely a month after the Gulf of Tonkin incident on August 2, 1964, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy
warned that further provocations should not be undertaken until
October, when the government of South Vietnam (GVN) would become fully
prepared for a full-scale war against North Vietnam. In a memorandum
addressed to President Johnson on September 8, 1964, Bundy wrote:
The main further question is the
extent to which we should add elements to the above actions that would
tend deliberately to provoke a DRV reaction, and consequent retaliation by us.
Examples of actions to be considered were running US naval patrols increasingly close to the North Vietnamese coast and/or [sic] associating them with 34A operations.
We believe such deliberately provocative elements should not be added in
the immediate future while the GVN is still struggling to its feet. By
early October, however, we may recommend such actions depending on GVN
progress and Communist reaction in the meantime, especially to US naval
patrols.
While maritime operations played a key role in the provocation of
North Vietnam, U.S. military officials had initially proposed to fly a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over the country, but this was to be replaced by other plans.
Leak
Daniel
Ellsberg knew the leaders of the task force well. He had worked as an
aide to McNaughton from 1964 to 1965, had worked on the study for
several months in 1967, and Gelb and Halperin approved his access to the
work at RAND in 1969. Now opposing the war, Ellsberg and his friend Anthony Russo photocopied the study in October 1969 intending to disclose it. Ellsberg approached Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Senators William Fulbright and George McGovern, and others, but none were interested.
In February 1971, Ellsberg discussed the study with The New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, and gave 43 of the volumes to him in March. Before publication, The New York Times sought legal advice. The paper's regular outside counsel, Lord Day & Lord, advised against publication, but in-house counsel James Goodale prevailed with his argument that the press had a First Amendment right to publish information significant to the people's understanding of their government's policy.
The New York Times began publishing excerpts on June 13,
1971; the first article in the series was titled "Vietnam Archive:
Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Involvement". The
study was dubbed The Pentagon Papers during the resulting media publicity. Street protests, political controversy, and lawsuits followed.
To ensure the possibility of public debate about the papers' content, on June 29, US SenatorMike Gravel,
an Alaska Democrat, entered 4,100 pages of the papers into the record
of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds. These portions of
the papers, which were edited for Gravel by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, were subsequently published by Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. A federal grand jury
was subsequently empaneled to investigate possible violations of
federal law in the release of the report. Leonard Rodberg, a Gravel
aide, was subpoenaed to testify about his role in obtaining and arranging for publication of the Pentagon Papers. Gravel asked the court (in Gravel v. United States) to quash the subpoena on the basis of the Speech or Debate Clause in Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution.
That clause provides that "for any Speech or Debate in either
House, [a Senator or Representative] shall not be questioned in any
other Place", meaning that Gravel could not be prosecuted for anything
said on the Senate floor, and, by extension, for anything entered to the
Congressional Record, allowing the papers to be publicly read without threat of a treason
trial and conviction. When Gravel's request was reviewed by the U.S.
Supreme Court, the Court denied the request to extend this protection to
Gravel or Rodberg because the grand jury subpoena served on them
related to a third party rather than any act they themselves committed
for the preparation of materials later entered into the Congressional
Record. Nevertheless, the grand jury investigation was halted, and the
publication of the papers was never prosecuted.
Later, Ellsberg said the documents "demonstrated unconstitutional
behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and
the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates." He added that he leaked the Papers to end what he perceived to be "a wrongful war".
The Nixon administration's restraint of the media
President
Nixon at first planned to do nothing about publication of the study
since it embarrassed the Johnson and Kennedy administrations rather than
his. But Henry Kissinger convinced the president that not opposing the
publication set a negative precedent for future secrets. The administration argued Ellsberg and Russo were guilty of a felony under the Espionage Act of 1917, because they had no authority to publish classified documents. After failing to persuade The New York Times to voluntarily cease publication on June 14, Attorney GeneralJohn N. Mitchell and Nixon obtained a federal court injunction forcing The New York Times to cease publication after three articles. The New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger said:
These papers, as our editorial said
this morning, were really a part of history that should have been made
available considerably longer ago. I just didn't feel there was any
breach of national security, in the sense that we were giving secrets to
the enemy.
On June 18, 1971, The Washington Post began publishing its own series of articles based upon the Pentagon Papers; Ellsberg had given portions to The Washington Post reporter Ben Bagdikian. Bagdikian brought the information to editor Ben Bradlee. That day, Assistant U.S. Attorney General William Rehnquist asked The Washington Post to cease publication. After the paper refused, Rehnquist sought an injunction in U.S. district court. Judge Murray Gurfein
declined to issue such an injunction, writing that "[t]he security of
the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value
of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a
ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the
even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people
to know." The government appealed that decision, and on June 26 the Supreme Court agreed to hear it jointly with The New York Times case. Fifteen other newspapers received copies of the study and began publishing it.
On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court decided, 6–3, that the government failed to meet the heavy burden of proof required for prior restraint injunction. The nine justices wrote nine opinions disagreeing on significant, substantive matters.
Only a free and unrestrained press
can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the
responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the
government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant
lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
— Justice Black
Thomas Tedford and Dale Herbeck summarized the reaction of editors and journalists at the time:
As the press rooms of the Times and the Post
began to hum to the lifting of the censorship order, the journalists of
America pondered with grave concern the fact that for fifteen days the
'free press' of the nation had been prevented from publishing an
important document and for their troubles had been given an inconclusive
and uninspiring 'burden-of-proof' decision by a sharply divided Supreme
Court. There was relief, but no great rejoicing, in the editorial
offices of America's publishers and broadcasters.
— Tedford and Herbeck, pp. 225–226.
Legal charges against Ellsberg
Ellsberg
surrendered to authorities in Boston, and admitted that he had given
the papers to the press: "I felt that as an American citizen, as a
responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this
information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own
jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this
decision". He was indicted by a grand jury in Los Angeles on charges of stealing and holding secret documents. Federal District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr. declared a mistrial
and dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo on May 11, 1973,
after it was revealed that agents acting on the orders of the Nixon
administration illegally broke into the office of Ellsberg's
psychiatrist and attempted to steal files; representatives of the Nixon
administration approached the Ellsberg trial judge with an offer of the
job of FBI directorship; several irregularities appeared in the
government's case including its claim that it had lost records of
illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg conducted by the White House Plumbers in the contemporaneous Watergate scandal.
Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I
have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events
have incurably infected the prosecution of this case." Ellsberg and
Russo were freed due to the mistrial; they were not acquitted of
violating the Espionage Act.
In March 1972, political scientist Samuel L. Popkin, then assistant professor of Government at Harvard University,
was jailed for a week for his refusal to answer questions before a
grand jury investigating the Pentagon Papers case, during a hearing
before the BostonFederal District Court.
The Faculty Council later passed a resolution condemning the
government's interrogation of scholars on the grounds that "an unlimited
right of grand juries to ask any question and to expose a witness to
citations for contempt could easily threaten scholarly research".
Gelb estimated that The New York Times only published
about five percent of the study's 7,000 pages. The Beacon Press edition
was also incomplete. Halperin, who had originally classified the study
as secret, obtained most of the unpublished portions under the Freedom of Information Act and the University of Texas published them in 1983. The National Security Archive published the remaining portions in 2002. The study itself remained formally classified until 2011.
Impact
The Pentagon Papers
revealed that the United States had expanded its war with the bombing
of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps
attacks, none of which had been reported by the American media.
The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four
administrations (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson) had misled
the public regarding their intentions. For example, the Eisenhower
administration actively worked against the Geneva Accords. The John F. Kennedy administration knew of plans to overthrow South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem before his death in a November 1963 coup. President Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign, including plans to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 Election. President Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.
In another example, a memo from the Defense Department under the
Johnson Administration listed the reasons for American persistence:
70% – To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).
20% – To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
10% – To permit the people [of South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
ALSO – To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
NOT – To help a friend, although it would be hard to stay in if asked out.
Another controversy was that President Johnson sent combat troops to Vietnam by July 17, 1965, before pretending to consult his advisors on July 21–27, per the cable stating that "Deputy Secretary of DefenseCyrus Vance informs McNamara that President had approved 34 Battalion Plan and will try to push through reserve call-up."
In 1988, when that cable was declassified, it revealed "there was
a continuing uncertainty as to [Johnson's] final decision, which would
have to await Secretary McNamara's recommendation and the views of
Congressional leaders, particularly the views of Senator[Richard] Russell."
Nixon's Solicitor GeneralErwin N. Griswold later called the Pentagon Papers an example of "massive overclassification" with "no trace of a threat to the national security". The Pentagon Papers' publication had little or no effect on the ongoing war because they dealt with documents written years before publication.
After the release of the Pentagon Papers, Goldwater said:
During the campaign, President
Johnson kept reiterating that he would never send American boys to fight
in Vietnam. As I say, he knew at the time that American boys were going
to be sent. In fact, I knew about ten days before the Republican
Convention. You see I was being called a trigger-happy, warmonger, bomb
happy, and all the time Johnson was saying, he would never send American
boys, I knew damn well he would.
Senator Birch Bayh, who thought the publishing of the Pentagon Papers was justified, said:
The existence of these documents,
and the fact that they said one thing and the people were led to believe
something else, is a reason we have a credibility gap today, the reason
people don't believe the government. This is the same thing that's been
going on over the last two-and-a-half years of this administration.
There is a difference between what the President says and what the
government actually does, and I have confidence that they are going to
make the right decision, if they have all the facts.
Les Gelb reflected in 2018 that many people have misunderstood the most important lessons of the Pentagon Papers:
... my first instinct was that if
they just hit the papers, people would think this was the definitive
history of the war, which they were not, and that people would, would
think it was all about lying, rather than beliefs. And look, because
we'd never learned that darn lesson about believing our way into these
wars, we went into Afghanistan and we went into Iraq...
You know, we get involved in these wars and we don't know a damn thing
about those countries, the culture, the history, the politics, people on
top and even down below. And, my heavens, these are not wars like World
War II and World War I, where you have battalions fighting battalions.
These are wars that depend on knowledge of who the people are, with the
culture is like. And we jumped into them without knowing. That's the
damned essential message of the Pentagon Papers.
The full release was coordinated by the Archives's National Declassification Center (NDC) as a special project to mark the anniversary of the report. There were still eleven words that the agencies having classification control over the material wanted to redact, and the NDC worked with them, successfully, to prevent that redaction.
It is unknown which 11 words were at issue and the government has
declined requests to identify them, but the issue was made moot when it
was pointed out that those words had already been made public, in a
version of the documents released by the House Armed Services Committee
in 1972.
The Archives released each volume of the Pentagon Papers as a separate PDF file, available on their website.
The Post (2017) is a historical drama film directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg from a script written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer about a pair of The Washington Post employees who battle the federal government over their right to publish the Pentagon Papers. The film stars Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham. Daniel Ellsberg is played by Matthew Rhys.
Television
The Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg and The Times. PBS. October 4, 2010. Archived from the original on August 28, 2008. "On September 13, 2010, The New York Times Community Affairs Department and POV presented a panel discussion on the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, and the Times. The conversation, featuring Daniel Ellsberg, Max Frankel, former The New York Times executive editor, and Adam Liptak, The New York Times Supreme Court reporter, was moderated by Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times" and former Washington bureau chief, marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling.
Daniel Ellsberg: Secrets – Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. University of California Television (UCTV). August 7, 2008. Archived from the original on November 14, 2021. "In 1971 Defense Department analyst, former U.S. Marine company commander and anti-Communist Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media. In this talk, Ellsberg presents an explosive inside account of how and why he helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon's
presidency. He also talks about the current potential for war with Iraq
and why he feels that would be a major mistake for the United States."
Series: Voices [1/2003] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 7033]"
In the Thirteen Colonies before the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
the media was subject to a series of regulations. British authorities
attempted to prohibit the publication and circulation of information of
which they did not approve.
One of the earliest cases concerning freedom of the press occurred in 1734. In a libel case against The New York Weekly Journal publisher John Peter Zenger by British governor William Cosby, Zenger was acquitted and the publication continued until 1751. At that time, there were only two newspapers in New York City and the second was not critical of Cosby's government.
U.S. Constitution
The First Amendment permits information, ideas and opinions without interference, constraint or prosecution by the government. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
Early federal laws
In 1798, eleven years after adoption of the Constitution and seven years after ratification of the First Amendment, the governing Federalist Party attempted to stifle criticism with the Alien and Sedition Acts. According to the Sedition Act, criticism of Congress or the president (but not the vice-president) was a crime; Thomas Jefferson,
a Democratic-Republican, was vice-president when the act was passed.
These restrictions on the press were very unpopular, leading to the
party's reduction to minority status after 1801, and eventual
dissolution in 1824. Jefferson, who vehemently opposed the acts, was
elected president in 1800
and pardoned most of those convicted under them. In his March 4, 1801
inaugural address, he reiterated his longstanding commitment to freedom
of speech and of the press: "If there be any among us who would wish to
dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand
undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may
be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
19th century
In mid-August 1861, four New York City newspapers (the New York Daily News, The Journal of Commerce, the Day Book and the New York Freeman’s Journal) were given a presentment by a U.S. Circuit Court grand jury
for "frequently encouraging the rebels by expressions of sympathy and
agreement". This began a series of federal prosecutions during the Civil
War of northern U.S. newspapers which expressed sympathy for Southern
causes or criticized the Lincoln administration. Lists of "peace
newspapers", published in protest by the New York Daily News, were used to plan retributions. The Bangor Democrat
in Maine, was one of these newspapers; assailants believed part of a
covert Federal raid destroyed the press and set the building ablaze. These actions followed executive orders issued by President Abraham Lincoln;
his August 7, 1861 order made it illegal (punishable by death) to
conduct "correspondence with" or give "intelligence to the enemy, either
directly or indirectly".
20th century
World War I
The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918,
which amended it, imposed restrictions on the press during wartime. The
acts imposed a fine of $10,000 and up to 20 years' imprisonment for
those publishing "... disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language
about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution
of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United
States, or the flag ..." In Schenck v. United States (1919) the Supreme Court upheld the laws, setting the "clear and present danger" standard. Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) revised the clear-and-present-danger test to the significantly less-restrictive "imminent lawless action" test.
Freedom of the press was described in 1972's Branzburg v. Hayes as "a fundamental personal right", not confined to newspapers and periodicals. In Lovell v. City of Griffin (1938), Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes defined the press as "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." This right has been extended to newspapers, books, plays, movies, and video games.
Associated Press v. United States
Associated Press v. United States (1945) dealt with media cooperation and consolidation. The court held that the AP violated the Sherman Antitrust Act
by prohibiting the sale or proliferation of news to nonmember
organizations and keeping nonmembers from joining; the AP bylaws
constituted restraint of trade, and the fact that AP had not achieved a
monopoly was irrelevant. The First Amendment did not excuse newspapers
from the Sherman Antitrust Act. News, traded between states, counts as interstate commerce
and is subject to the act. Freedom of the press from governmental
interference under the First Amendment does not sanction repression of
that freedom by private interests (326 U.S. 20). Justice Hugo Black
wrote, "The First Amendment ... rests on the assumption that the widest
possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic
sources is essential to the welfare of the public ... Freedom to publish
is guaranteed by the Constitution, but freedom to combine to keep
others from publishing is not".
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court ruled that when a publication involves a public figure, to support a suit for libel
the plaintiff bears the burden of proving that the publisher acted with
actual malice: knew of the inaccuracy of the statement or acted with
reckless disregard of its truth.
Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Association, Inc. v. Bresler
In 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that a news organization couldn't be sued over the use of
"rhetorical hyperbole". The usage in question was when quoting
eyewitnesses, but the court ruled that, even if it hadn't, to call it libel "would subvert the most fundamental meaning of a free press".
In 1971, the Supreme Court upheld the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier
In Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier
(1988), the Supreme Court upheld the right of a school principal to
review (and suppress) controversial articles in a school newspaper
funded by the school and published in its name.
21st century
Although it had been uncertain whether people who blog or use other social media are journalists entitled to protection by media shield laws, they are protected by the Free Speech and Free Press Clauses (neither of which differentiates between media businesses and nonprofessional speakers).
This is further supported by the Supreme Court, which has refused to
grant increased First Amendment protection to institutional media over
other speakers; In a case involving campaign finance
laws, the court rejected the "suggestion that communication by
corporate members of the institutional press is entitled to greater
constitutional protection than the same communication by"
non-institutional-press businesses.
On October 26, 2011 the Stop Online Piracy Act, which opponents said would threaten free speech and censor the Internet, was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives. White House Press SecretaryJay Carney said that PresidentObama "[would] not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression." The bill was shelved in 2012 after widespread protests.
On 2014, blogger Crystal Cox accused Obsidian and Kevin D. Padrick of
corrupt and fraudulent conduct. Although the court dismissed most of
Cox's blog posts as opinion, it found one post to be more factual in its
assertions (and, therefore, defamatory).
It was ruled for the first time, by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, that a blogger
is entitled to the same free speech protection as a journalist and
cannot be liable for defamation unless the blogger acted negligently. In the decision, journalists and bloggers are equally protected under the First Amendment
because the "protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether
the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with
traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure,
went beyond just assembling others' writings, or tried to get both sides
of a story."
Ranking of United States press freedom
In 2018, the U.S. ranked 45th in the Reporters Without BordersPress Freedom Index.
This is an overall measure of freedom available to the press, including
a range of factors including government censorship, control over
journalistic access, and whistleblower protections. The U.S.'s ranking fell from 20th in 2010 to 49th in 2015, before recovering to 41st in 2016.
According to Reporters Without Borders
the United States ranks behind most other Western nations for press
freedom, but ahead of most Asian, African and South American countries.
Freedom House, a US-based independent watchdog organization, ranked the United States 30th out of 197 countries in press freedom in 2014.
Its report praised the constitutional protections given American
journalists and criticized authorities for placing undue limits on
investigative reporting in the name of national security. Freedom House
gives countries a score out of 100, with 0 the most free and 100 the
least free. The score is broken down into three separately-weighted
categories: legal (out of 30), political (out of 40) and economic (out
of 30). The United States scored 6, 10, and 5, respectively, that year
for a cumulative score of 21.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documents press freedom violations in the United States.
The tracker was founded in 2017 and was developed from funds donated by the Committee to Protect Journalists. It is led by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and a group of
organizations. Its purpose is "to provide reliable, easy-to-access
information on the number of press freedom violations in the United
States - from journalists facing chargers to reporters stopped at the
U.S. border or asked to hand over their electronics."
The database is supported by a steering committee of Committee to
Protect Journalists and twenty press freedom groups. It was developed
to document the increasing rate of assaults, seizures of equipment,
arrests, and stops at the border. It tracks the type of law enforcement—local, state, and the National Guard—and the nationality of the journalists. The tracker is maintained and findings are published by Bellingcat.
US climate envoy John Kerry warned us that we have only nine years
left to avert most of "catastrophic" global warming.
AP Photo/Michel Euler
The recent UN climate summit in Glasgow was predictably branded our “last chance” to tackle the “climate catastrophe”
and “save humanity.” Like many others, US climate envoy John Kerry
warned us that we have only nine years left to avert most of
“catastrophic” global warming.
But almost every climate summit has been branded the last chance.
Setting artificial deadlines to get attention is one of the most common
environmental tactics. We have actually been told for the past
half-century that time has just about run out.
This message is not only spectacularly wrong but leads to panic and poor policies.
Two years ago, Britain’s Prince Charles announced that we had just 18
months left to fix climate change. This wasn’t his first attempt at
deadline-setting. Ten years earlier, he told an audience that he “had
calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world.”
In 2004, a major UK newspaper told us that without drastic action,
climate change would destroy civilization by 2020. By that time, it
foretold, major European cities would be sunk beneath rising seas,
Britain would be plunged into a “Siberian” climate as the Gulf Stream
shut down and mega-droughts and famines would lead to widespread rioting
and nuclear war. Not quite what happened last year.
And these predictions have been failing for decades. In 1989, the
head of the UN’s Environment Program declared we had just three years to
“win — or lose — the climate struggle.” In 1982, the UN was predicting
planetary “devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear
holocaust” by the year 2000. Indeed, at the very first UN environment
summit in Stockholm in 1972, almost 50 years ago, the organizer and
later first UN Environment Program director warned that we had just 10
years to avoid catastrophe.
In 1972, the world was also rocked by the first global environmental
scare, the so-called “Limits to Growth” report. The authors predicted
with great confidence that most natural resources would run out within a
few decades while pollution would overpower humanity. At the time, Time
magazine described the future as a desolate world with few gaunt
survivors tilling freeway center strips, hoping to raise a subsistence
crop. Life magazine expected “urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks
to survive air pollution” by the mid-1980s.
The scares were, of course, spectacularly misguided on both counts.
They got it wrong because they overlooked the greatest resource of all,
human ingenuity. We don’t just use up resources but innovate
ever-smarter ways of making resources more available. At the same time,
technology solves many of the most persistent pollution problems, as did
the catalytic converter. This is why air pollution in rich countries
has been declining for decades.
Nonetheless, after 50 years of stunningly incorrect predictions,
climate campaigners, journalists and politicians still hawk an immediate
apocalypse to great acclaim.
They do so by repeatedly ignoring adaptation. Headlines telling you
that sea-level rise could drown 187 million people by the end of the
century are foolishly ignorant. They imagine that hundreds of millions
of people will remain stationary while the waters lap over their calves,
hips, chests and eventually mouths. More seriously, they absurdly
assume that no nation will build any sea defenses. In the real world,
ever-wealthier nations will adapt and protect their citizens ever
better, leading to less flooding, while surprisingly spending an
ever-lower share of their GDP on flood and protection costs.
Likewise, when activists tell you that climate change will make
children face twice as much fire, they rely on computer models that
include temperature but ignore humans. Real societies adapt and reduce
fire because fires are costly. That is why global fire statistics show
less burned area, not more, over the past 120 years. Perhaps not too
surprisingly, the activists’ models even get the past wrong, but when
has that ever stopped the righteous?
These unsubstantiated scares have real-world consequences. An
academic study of young people around the world found that most suffer
from “eco-anxiety,” with two-thirds scared and sad, while almost half
say their worries affect their daily lives. It is irresponsible to scare
youths witless when in reality the UN Climate Panel finds that even if
we do nothing to mitigate climate change, the impact by the end of the
century will be a reduction of an average income increase from 450
percent to 438 percent — a problem but hardly the end of the world.
Moreover, panic is a terrible policy-adviser.
Activist politicians in the rich world are tinkering around the edges
of addressing climate change, showering subsidies over expensive vanity
projects such as electric cars, solar and wind, while the UN finds that
it can’t identify an actual impact on emissions from the last decade of
climate promulgations. Despite their grandiose statements of saving the
world, 78 percent of rich countries’ energy still comes from fossil
fuels. And as the Glasgow climate summit showed (for the 26th time),
developing nations — whose emissions over the rest of this century
matter most — cannot afford to similarly spend trillions on ineffective
climate policies as they help their populations escape poverty.
Fifty years of panic clearly haven’t brought us anywhere near solving
climate change. We need a smarter approach: one that stops scaring
everyone and focuses on realistic solutions such as adaptation and
innovation. Adaptation won’t make the entire cost of climate change
vanish, but it will reduce it dramatically. And by funding the
innovation needed to eventually make clean energy cheaper than fossil
fuels, we can allow everyone — including developing countries — to
sustainably go green.
