Free Speech Legacies: The Pentagon Papers Revisited

February 16, 2017
7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. EST
Location: Intercultural Center (ICC) ICC Auditorium Map

During the last years of President Lyndon Johnson's administration, defense secretary Robert McNamara launched the compilation of a classified review of the United States' involvement in Southeast Asia. He hoped it would remain secret for decades but eventually serve as a valued source for the study of American foreign policy in the Cold War era. But Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon employee who had become skeptical of the Vietnam War and related military operations, in part as a result of serving on the task force that wrote the study, felt it should become public much sooner. When his efforts to get the documents released through official channels failed, he made them available to the New York Times and, eventually, the Washington Post and other media.

The Georgetown symposium included a public conversation with Daniel Ellsberg on Thursday evening, and three panels the following day (in Copley Formal Lounge) on the legal legacy of the Pentagon Papers case; the shift it brought about in media relations with the government on national security matters; and the climate today, in the fast-paced Internet era, for publication of classified government information and the investigation and prosecution of those who disclose it.

A full schedule of events can be found on the symposium's website.

This event was co-sponsored by the President's Office, the Journalism Program, and the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.

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Daniel Ellsberg Toggle

About Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg is an author, lecturer, and whistleblower best known for the leak of what became known as the Pentagon Papers in 1969. Additionally, he serves as a senior fellow of the Nuclear Peace Foundation. Previously, Ellsberg served for three years in the U.S. Marine Corps before becoming a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and a U.S. Defense Department and White House consultant on nuclear issues in 1959. He joined the Defense Department in 1964 as special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense before returning to the RAND Corporation in 1967, where he worked on the McNamara study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam—what would come to be known as the Pentagon Papers. Since then, Ellsberg has written three books, including Papers and the War (1971) and Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002). Ellsberg obtained a B.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Daniel Ellsberg's Profile

Sanford Ungar Toggle

About Sanford Ungar

Sanford J. "Sandy" Ungar currently serves as a distinguished scholar in residence at Georgetown University. Ungar also serves as a member of the Public Interest Declassification Board, to which he was reappointed in 2014. A journalist and author, Ungar previously served as the tenth president of Goucher College from 2001 to 2014. Before this, he was the director of the Voice of America, the U.S. government’s principal international broadcasting agency under the Clinton administration. Additionally, Ungar served as dean of American University's School of Communications from 1986 to 1999. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ungar is an international journalist with experience at media outlets including Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic, and he was previously the host of NPR’s flagship show, All Things Considered. Ungar obtained his B.A. in government from Harvard University and a M.A. in international history from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sanford Ungar's Profile

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