The Pentagon Papers 50 Years Later: America's Most Famous Whistleblower Still Fighting Militarism
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2021
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the publication by The New York Times of excerpts of the Pentagon Papers — 7,000 pages of top-secret documents. These documents proved that the government of the United States had been lying to the people of this country for decades about a war that eventually ended with a U.S. withdrawal -- but only after millions of Vietnamese had been killed, 58,000 U.S. troops were killed with hundreds of thousands more suffered from physical and psychological injuries.
Brian is joined by Daniel Ellsberg. He is one of the most important whistleblowers in modern American history and the author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Daniel Ellsberg is also the author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.
Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | 50 years ago this week, the New York Times published excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, |
| 0:07.6 | 7,000 pages of top secret documents. |
| 0:11.5 | These documents proved that the government of the United States had been lying to the people |
| 0:16.6 | of this country for decades about the war in Vietnam. |
| 0:21.6 | Eventually, the United States left Vietnam, but not before millions of Vietnamese people died. |
| 0:28.6 | 58,000 U.S. troops were also killed, with hundreds of thousands more suffering from physical |
| 0:35.6 | and psychological injuries. |
| 0:40.9 | Today we talk with whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who along with Anthony Russo, was responsible for smuggling these secret documents from |
| 0:47.7 | government offices and releasing them to the public. We need a new system. We need a new society. |
| 0:56.0 | We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, |
| 1:01.0 | but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. Welcome to the real story segment of the Socialist Program. |
| 1:31.5 | I'm your host, Brian Becker. |
| 1:33.6 | We are joined today by Daniel Ellsberg. |
| 1:36.7 | Daniel is one of the most important and most well-known whistleblowers in modern American history. |
| 1:42.8 | He is the author of the Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a Nuclear |
| 1:46.9 | War Planner. Daniel Ellsberg is also the author of Secrets, a memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. |
| 1:55.6 | Daniel Ellsberg, welcome. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you for joining. I know, as I mentioned earlier, |
| 2:02.8 | you have to be exhausted. This is the 50th anniversary of the release of the Pentagon paper, |
| 2:08.4 | something that really changed America, helped contribute to the demise of the Nixon administration. |
| 2:14.7 | It's just an amazing story. There's so many twists and turns. And as I had mentioned to you, |
| 2:19.9 | a great number of our listeners are younger people. They're people who are under the age of 35. That would be |
| 2:27.0 | 85% of our listeners. And most of them are under the age of 25. I want to read for them a little passage from a special |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Socialist Program, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Socialist Program and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.