Secrets : A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

In 1971 former Cold War hard-liner Daniel Ellsberg made history by releasing the Pentagon Papers-a 7,000-page top-secret study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam-to the New York Timesand Washington Post. The document set in motion a chain of events that ended not only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War. In this remarkable memoir, Ellsberg describes in dramatic detail the two years he spent in Vietnam as a U.S. State Department observer, and how he came to risk his career and freedom to expose the deceptions and delusions that shaped three decades of American foreign policy. The story of one man's exploration of conscience, Secretsis also a portrait of America at a perilous crossroad.

Daniel Ellsberg is a former U.S. Marine commander and Rand analyst, and was one of the "whiz kids" recruited by Robert McNamara as a Pentagon war analyst in the Johnson administration. He is a prominent speaker and activist on behalf of antinuclear and environmental causes.