Historian Gar Alperovitz has revealed for the first time the key role he and a handful of other activists played in helping whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leak to journalists the Pentagon Papers — a 7,000-page classified history outlining the true extent of US involvement in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg told The New Yorker the secret role this group played was so crucial in releasing the Pentagon Papers that he gave them a code name: “The Lavender Hill Mob.” Alperovitz went by the alias “Mr. Boston.” Ellsberg told The New Yorker, “Gar took care of all the cloak-and-dagger stuff.” We speak to historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz about why he is going public now.
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at a decades-old mystery behind who helped Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 leak the Pentagon Papers, the 7,000-page classified history outlining the true extent of US involvement in Vietnam. At the time, the Pentagon Papers represented the biggest leak of classified documents in history. Ellsberg once faced espionage charges and possibly life in prison for leaking the documents, which he photocopied while working as an analyst at the RANDCorporation. The Nixon administration even made attempts to ruin Ellsberg’s life, going so far as to break into his psychiatrist’s office with the hope of uncovering incriminating information. Henry Kissinger dubbed Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America.” That description later became the title of a documentary about Dan Ellsberg.
DANIEL ELLSBERG: It was the evening of October 1st, 1969, when I first smuggled several hundred pages of top-secret documents out of my safe at the RAND Corporation. The study contained 47 volumes, 7,000 pages. My plan was to xerox the study and reveal the secret history of the Vietnam War to the American people.
NEWSCASTER: The FBI was trying to find out who gave The New York Times a copy of a Pentagon secret study.
MIKE GRAVEL: Pow!, like a thunderclap, you get The New York…