Secrets : a memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon papers / Daniel Ellsberg.

Daniel Ellsberg began his career as a U. S. Marine company commander, a Pentagon official, and a staunch supporter of America's battle against Communistexpansion. But in October 1969, Ellsberg--fully expecting to spend the rest of his life in prison--set out to turn around American foreign policy by smuggling out of his office the seven-thousand-page top-secret study, known as the Pentagon Papers, of U.S. decision making in Vietnam. Ellsberg tells the full story of how and why he became one of the nation's most impassioned and influential antiwar activists--and how his actions helped alter the course of U.S. history. Covering the decade between his entry into the Pentagon and Nixon's resignation, Secrets is Ellsberg's meticulously detailed insider's account of the secrets and lies that shaped American foreign policy during the Vietnam era. Ellsberg provides a vivid eyewitness account of the two years he spent behind the lines in Vietnamas a State Department observer--an experience that convinced him of the