Post by Ken on Jan 12, 2021 14:23:31 GMT
Another recent death was the American journalist Neil Sheehan who was behind the Pentagon Papers scoop in The New York Times, exposing classified secrets about the Vietnam War which the US government tried to suppress in 1971.
Having reported from Saigon since 1963, Sheehan had come to realise that the deceptive conduct of the Vietnam War could amount to a crime against humanity and that senior US political and military leaders could be put on trial.
Discharged from the Army, Sheehan spent two years covering the war in Vietnam as UPI’s Saigon bureau chief. In 1964 he joined The New York Times, and by the time he returned to Vietnam for a further year the war had become his obsession. During this assignment Sheehan became friendly with Daniel Ellsberg, who was in the country working for the State Department.
The New York Times began publishing excerpts and articles on June 13 1971. The exposé would earn the newspaper the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
The material revealed the duplicity of American leaders, who had consistently lied about many aspects of the war in the Kennedy and Johnson years. Although President Richard Nixon was content to heap the blame on previous administrations, his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, flew into a rage about the leak. “It’s treasonable,” he said, “there’s no question.”
After releasing a summary in an “instant” book, The Pentagon Papers as Published by the New York Times (1971), Sheehan spent the next 15 years working on an epic book about the Vietnam War. Alongside the history of deception revealed by the Pentagon Papers he wove a biography, that of one of the most charismatic military figures in Vietnam, the maverick Lt-Col John Paul Vann, who was killed in a helicopter crash in June 1972.
Having reported from Saigon since 1963, Sheehan had come to realise that the deceptive conduct of the Vietnam War could amount to a crime against humanity and that senior US political and military leaders could be put on trial.
Discharged from the Army, Sheehan spent two years covering the war in Vietnam as UPI’s Saigon bureau chief. In 1964 he joined The New York Times, and by the time he returned to Vietnam for a further year the war had become his obsession. During this assignment Sheehan became friendly with Daniel Ellsberg, who was in the country working for the State Department.
The New York Times began publishing excerpts and articles on June 13 1971. The exposé would earn the newspaper the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
The material revealed the duplicity of American leaders, who had consistently lied about many aspects of the war in the Kennedy and Johnson years. Although President Richard Nixon was content to heap the blame on previous administrations, his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, flew into a rage about the leak. “It’s treasonable,” he said, “there’s no question.”
After releasing a summary in an “instant” book, The Pentagon Papers as Published by the New York Times (1971), Sheehan spent the next 15 years working on an epic book about the Vietnam War. Alongside the history of deception revealed by the Pentagon Papers he wove a biography, that of one of the most charismatic military figures in Vietnam, the maverick Lt-Col John Paul Vann, who was killed in a helicopter crash in June 1972.
