I d been part of that. i look back on that with amazement, almost. then i was in vietnam, but then i read the pentagon papers. i knew, coming back from vietnam, as everyone knew coming back who d been involved in combat extent, because we were not going to win. we were not going to get these guys to quit. they were not going to quit. some of your critics, i m going to quote one of them. he s an academic called gabriel schoenfeld. he has written about your decision. and he said, there is a fundamental arrogance about what daniel ellsberg did because, he said, and i m going to quote him, he said, you know, we have a system for controlling critical national security secrets. very, very well controlled. yes. and he said, you know, this is established by the congress, by the executive branch, both of which are elected by the people. congress had nothing to do with it. congress has nothing to do with the classification system. it is an executive system ruled by regulations from the
And that we wouldn t be bombing, as his opponent, senator goldwater from the air force wanted to do. he says, no, we re not going north and we re not going south. we re not getting out, but we re not going to escalate. i d been working since the day i arrived as a full employee in the pentagon on the escalation of vietnam and on election day, we didn t have time to go vote. we were working on carrying out goldwater s plan. the man who went down by a sort of referendum on this issue that day. but what i m saying is, if you can t tolerate government lying, you can t be in any government at a high foreign policy staff position for a week. and i d been doing it almost ten years. in other words, i was very used to lying. this was rather egregious. but when i discovered from the early days of the pentagon papers that we ve been lying from our involvement in vietnam from the beginning. i understand that clearly you felt that was entirely wrong.