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From the Center for Investigative Reporting

0:29

and PRX, this is Reveal.

0:32

I'm Al Edson. I was at

0:34

a friend's place, and... Okay,

0:38

I heard a laugh there. What's the laugh? What

0:41

was going on at the friend's place? It was so hot, I got smoked in a

0:43

joint. That's Robert Rosie Rosenthal, our

0:46

CEO and editor-in-chief. He's

0:48

talking to our former colleague, Mike Corey. Rosie's

0:51

a born storyteller, and the story we're

0:53

about to bring you has become one of our

0:55

favorites. I guess I love it

0:57

so much because it intersects with history,

0:59

free speech, and the power of the press,

1:01

and of course, Rosie. The

1:04

story begins in 1971, and

1:06

Rosie is about six months into

1:09

an entry-level job at the New York Times.

1:12

And the phone rings, and you know, we didn't pay any attention, but

1:14

then I hear his mother's voice saying, Robert, she

1:16

called me Robert, Robert, it's for you. So

1:18

I'm going, who knows I'm here? It

1:23

was one of the top editors at the Times. He

1:25

told Rosie, don't come into the newsroom

1:27

in the morning. Go to room 1111 of the Hilton

1:29

Hotel. Don't

1:32

tell anyone where you're going, and bring

1:34

enough clothes for at least a month. You

1:37

know, I was like, what? So

1:39

Rosie showed up the next day, and the Times

1:41

had set up a whole mini-newsroom in

1:43

the middle of this giant hotel, where

1:45

they figured no one would notice them if

1:47

they were careful.

1:49

You're going to be working on a

1:51

really incredible story that is

1:53

top secret. It

1:55

involves the U.S. government, and it's going to be risky.

1:58

And I remember saying, risky?

3:59

repeat 7,000 times. Page

4:04

by page. And finally, it

4:06

was just too slow. So I would put

4:08

it in without putting the heavy cover on and wondering

4:11

what this was going to do to my eyes. You know, it was possibly

4:13

going to go blind, eventually. I remember the

4:16

green light, the green ray, thinking, is this

4:18

going to sterilize me? Oh, so you

4:20

had the same concern.

4:23

Before

4:23

Jeffrey Wigand blew the whistle

4:26

on the tobacco industry and before

4:28

Edward Snowden showed us the NSA could

4:30

spy on us all, there was Daniel

4:32

Ellsberg. History generally

4:35

remembers Ellsberg as a hero, a

4:37

champion of free speech. On

4:39

the other hand, Snowden's in exile

4:42

in Russia. So what's

4:44

the difference? Not as much as you

4:46

might think. At the time of the leak,

4:48

all the same things people say about Snowden is

4:51

a traitor threatening national security. People

4:53

said about Ellsberg too. He

4:56

was charged with espionage. He expected

4:58

to go to prison, but somehow he got

5:00

away with leaking classified government

5:03

documents. You can draw a straight

5:05

line from what happened in the 70s to today

5:08

and the debate over government secrets and

5:10

what happens to people who expose them. Here's

5:13

Michael Corey with a story we first brought you

5:15

in May of 2016.

5:21

Most of us have at least heard of the Pentagon

5:24

Papers. What I remember from high school

5:26

is that they're about Vietnam, they got leaked to

5:28

the press by some guy named Daniel Ellsberg

5:31

and it was a big deal. The Pentagon Papers were

5:33

a thing, then Watergate happened. But

5:35

if that's what you learned in school, you missed the important

5:38

part. I never learned it this way, but

5:40

without the Pentagon Papers, there would probably

5:42

be no Watergate

5:44

and maybe no Nixon resignation.

5:46

And that's the story I'm gonna tell today.

5:49

First off, who is this guy Ellsberg? Well,

5:52

my early life was spent entirely playing the

5:54

piano because my mother's ambition

5:57

for me was that I should become a concert pianist.

5:59

That didn't happen. When Ellsberg was 15,

6:02

his mother and sister were killed in a car crash.

6:05

He and his father survived, but he wasn't

6:07

destined to be a pianist. And

6:10

Ellsberg didn't start out a radical. Like

6:12

many young Americans in the 1950s, he

6:14

was deeply patriotic.

6:16

He graduated from Harvard, did a fellowship

6:18

in England. Then, in 1954, he ditched the

6:22

pacifism of his Christian science parents

6:24

and joined the military. And he didn't

6:26

mess around. Ellsberg signed up with

6:28

the Marines. I

6:31

wanted to see if I was up to it. There

6:33

was a Marine poster that said, Are you man

6:35

enough to be a Marine? And like a lot of people,

6:37

I wanted to find that out.

6:43

Ellsberg was up to it. And

6:45

he even re-upped and served on a ship

6:47

during the Suez Crisis. For

6:50

a while, his life was basically the Marines,

6:52

Harvard, the Marines, Harvard. Who does

6:54

that? Finally, he got a Ph.D.

6:57

in what's called decision theory. It's

6:59

a dry-sounding corner of academia

7:02

that asks, How should people make rational

7:04

choices when confronted with uncertainty?

7:07

But in 1958, this wasn't a theoretical

7:09

question. It was a question about

7:11

nuclear weapons, specifically

7:14

the big scare of the time,

7:15

intercontinental ballistic missiles.

7:18

So that was the period of the so-called missile

7:21

gap, where it was understood that the Soviets would

7:24

have a large force of ICBMs

7:26

before we did.

7:29

By 1961, Ellsberg had

7:31

started consulting for the Kennedy administration,

7:34

and was now directly involved in planning

7:36

America's nuclear war strategy.

7:39

In this era, that strategy was called first

7:42

strike, meaning we launch our

7:44

nuclear weapons before the other guy does.

7:48

Suddenly, instead of abstract research,

7:51

Ellsberg was deeply engrossed in some of the

7:53

nation's greatest secrets. And

7:55

he found that in nuclear war, there was plenty

7:58

of uncertainty.

7:59

how could the president decide quickly

8:02

if an incoming attack was a false alarm? If

8:04

he waits too long, he won't have anything

8:06

to respond with. So the incentive

8:09

to get planes off the ground in particular,

8:12

and even perhaps to commit missiles, is

8:15

very strong, and yet there's a possibility of

8:17

a false alarm. And that

8:20

could have meant a war

8:23

being triggered by these warnings

8:25

on either side. If that sounds like a

8:27

movie you've seen, you're right. I went

8:29

with

8:29

my boss, Harry Rohn, to see Dr.

8:32

Strangelove in the afternoon in DC because

8:35

it was a working problem for us. If

8:38

you haven't seen Dr. Strangelove, after

8:40

you finish listening to this episode, drop whatever

8:42

you're going to do next and watch it.

8:44

It's a comedy about nuclear war. Hilarious,

8:47

right? If we were to

8:49

immediately launch an all-out and coordinated

8:52

attack on all their airfields and missile bases,

8:54

we'd stand a damn good chance of catching them with their pants

8:56

down. In this scene, a rogue commander

8:58

has launched American planes carrying nuclear bombs,

9:01

and a general, played by George C. Scott,

9:03

is arguing that maybe the president

9:06

should let the planes drop him. But it is necessary

9:08

now to make a choice, to choose between

9:11

two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless

9:14

distinguishable post-war environments.

9:16

One, where you got 20 million people

9:18

killed, and the other where you got 150 million

9:20

people killed. You're talking about mass

9:22

murder, General, not war? Mr.

9:25

President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair

9:27

must, but I do say no

9:29

more than 10 to 20 million

9:31

killed, tops. And I remember we came out of that

9:33

movie and we both said, that's

9:35

a documentary. It was a documentary.

9:38

Everything in that thing, aside from the laughs,

9:41

everything could have happened just the way as in

9:44

the movie. For example,

9:46

the fact that they had no way to call

9:49

the planes back once they had given

9:51

a go-order.

9:53

Ellsberg wondered if the Joint Chiefs of Staff

9:56

had ever even totaled up how

9:58

many people would be killed.

9:59

if the U.S. carried out its first strike

10:02

plan against the Soviet Union and

10:04

China. He asked.

10:06

He figured he'd embarrass them because there was no

10:08

way they had done that.

10:11

But as he told me in Rosie, it turned

10:13

out they had. So that was a total

10:15

of 600 million, which was 100 holocausts. And

10:20

this was from our first

10:22

strike. So any fighting with Soviet

10:25

troops, we carry out this attack

10:27

first right away and kill 600 million

10:30

people. So you're 30 years old.

10:32

You're getting access to

10:34

documents that say top secretizer the president

10:36

only. And you have this number in your head. At

10:38

that moment, if you go back to that, what was your reaction?

10:42

I remember my reaction very, very well. I

10:44

thought this is the most evil plan

10:46

that has existed in

10:47

the history of the human species.

10:51

This is an evil piece of paper. It shouldn't

10:53

exist.

10:59

But Ellsberg knew better than most people

11:01

that this wasn't just a piece of paper. He

11:04

knew because he wasn't the kind of analyst who stayed

11:06

in his office. He had visited the

11:08

airfields and actually touched one of the bombs.

11:11

I had seen the planes on alert, 10 minute

11:13

alert. I'd felt one of the bombs,

11:15

actually. I remember it had to be lying

11:18

there on a trolley. And

11:20

it was warm from radioactivity.

11:23

Ellsberg says he tried to push the Kennedy

11:25

administration to make the war plan less rigid.

11:28

But he didn't really

11:29

get anywhere. I don't think I had any

11:31

effect. So if he couldn't get Washington's

11:33

hand off the nuclear hair trigger, the

11:36

only hope he saw was to keep any small

11:38

conflict from escalating. And

11:40

it just so happened there was a small

11:42

conflict that was about to explode

11:45

in Vietnam.

11:50

When we come back, we pick up the story of the

11:52

Pentagon Papers, next on Reveal

11:54

from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.

12:15

I may sound biased here, but I

12:17

think our stories are pretty great.

12:20

And if you're listening to this, I have a feeling that, well,

12:23

you might agree. But have you

12:25

ever been left wanting even more? Reveal's

12:28

newsletter goes behind the scenes. Reporters

12:32

describe how they first found out about these

12:34

stories and the challenges they face

12:36

reporting them. Plus, recommended

12:38

reads and more. Subscribe

12:40

now at revealnews.org slash

12:42

newsletter.

12:46

From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX,

12:49

this is Reveal. I'm Al Etzion.

12:53

On August 4th, 1964,

12:56

panicked telegrams started pouring

12:59

into the Pentagon. One of the people

13:01

reading them was Daniel Ellsberg, the

13:03

focus of our show today. He's the guy

13:05

who leaked the Pentagon Papers, those

13:07

classified documents that revealed how

13:09

the government lied to the American people and

13:12

Congress about the Vietnam War.

13:15

Daniel passed away in June at

13:17

the age of 92.

13:18

Back in 1964, Ellsberg

13:21

was a war analyst at the Pentagon. It

13:24

was actually his first day on the job.

13:26

And those telegram messages were coming from

13:28

a Navy captain off the coast of Vietnam

13:31

in the Tonkin Gulf. The captain

13:33

said North Vietnamese PT boats, super

13:36

fast, armed with torpedoes, were

13:38

firing at him.

13:39

That's what Ellsberg told Michael Corey

13:41

and Reveal CEO Robert Rosenthal.

13:44

One torpedo, four torpedoes.

13:47

We're taking evasive action, ten torpedoes.

13:50

Eventually, 22 torpedoes had been fired.

13:53

And then,

13:54

after an hour and a half, a message comes through

13:57

saying, in effect, hold everything.

14:00

An overeager sonar man has

14:02

been mistaking the beat of our ship's propeller

14:05

against our wake as we take evasive

14:07

action, as Torpedo reports.

14:12

So all of this might have been for nothing.

14:15

There might not have been any torpedoes, but

14:17

you wouldn't know it from what happened next. Michael

14:20

Corrie picks up the story. That

14:22

night, President Lyndon Johnson went on TV

14:25

to tell the nation that he had ordered airstrikes.

14:28

And Defense Secretary Robert McNamara briefed

14:30

reporters in a midnight press conference. Earlier

14:33

tonight, the president told the nation the

14:36

United States would take appropriate action to

14:41

respond to the unprovoked attacks on U.S.

14:43

naval vessels by torpedo boats of North

14:45

Vietnam. I can tell

14:47

you that some of that action has already taken

14:49

place. U.S. naval

14:51

aircraft have already conducted airstrikes

14:55

against the North Vietnamese bases from which

14:57

these P.T. boats have operated. By

14:59

the time McNamara made that statement, he

15:02

already had good reasons to question

15:04

what had happened. It took him decades,

15:07

but he would eventually acknowledge the whole

15:09

attack had never happened in the first

15:11

place. But on this night, if

15:14

he had any doubts, he wasn't showing them. Furthermore,

15:17

the United States has taken the precaution

15:19

of

15:19

moving substantial military

15:22

reinforcements to Southeast Asia

15:25

from our Pacific bases. We

15:27

are also sending reinforcements to the Western

15:29

Pacific from bases

15:32

in the United States. Does

15:34

that mean ground forces are being put into Vietnam?

15:37

No, it does not.

15:39

Mr. Secretary, have you... It means that we are reinforcing

15:42

our forces there with such additional forces

15:44

as we think may be required. And

15:47

we have placed on alert for

15:49

a movement such forces as might be necessary.

15:51

Could you repeat that first part about no

15:53

troops in Vietnam? But this, right

15:55

here, this was the tipping point

15:58

that mired America in Vietnam.

15:59

In

16:03

response to the Tonkin Gulf incident, Congress

16:06

authorized the president to do whatever

16:08

was necessary, order bombing raids,

16:10

send ground troops. Within a year,

16:13

there were more than 200,000 American troops on the ground.

16:17

Here's Rosie again. So as you see

16:19

this sort of political escalation and you're

16:21

inside the Pentagon and you're aware that

16:24

this is

16:24

equivocal at best. Yeah, and that they're

16:27

lying about it. Did you ever think then

16:29

I'm trapped

16:31

here? How do I get the truth out? Did that begin

16:33

the process? No, because really

16:36

not at all on that point.

16:38

What happened next changed

16:40

Daniel Ellsberg in ways that would make him

16:42

the person who would leak the Pentagon papers. In 1965,

16:46

Ellsberg was invited to go to Vietnam as

16:49

part of a State Department study. Just

16:51

going to Vietnam sets him apart from a

16:53

lot of Pentagon colleagues. But this

16:56

wasn't some junket. This was Ellsberg,

16:58

the former Marine. He stayed in

17:00

Vietnam for two years and

17:02

he did some pretty crazy stuff. He

17:04

drove around on back roads no one thought

17:07

were safe. He

17:08

went out on patrol with combat units.

17:10

He got shelled, got caught in an ambush,

17:13

and he learned that much of what war commanders

17:16

were telling Washington was a lie.

17:22

The Pentagon was getting inflated body counts

17:25

of how many soldiers we killed. And

17:27

there were glowing reports, complete with

17:29

tables and charts, reporting statistics

17:31

on patrols that never happened.

17:36

Ellsberg also talked with the Vietnamese people,

17:39

saw their fear and rage. Thousands

17:42

of civilians were dying, hundreds of thousands.

17:45

American and South Vietnamese soldiers

17:47

were burning villages, bombing towns,

17:50

spraying Agent Orange and stripping

17:52

the jungle to dust and sticks. Ellsberg

17:55

tasted the war. And he came home

17:58

convinced we were never going.

17:59

to win. The people we were fighting

18:02

were not going to give up.

18:05

We weren't going to beat them. They

18:07

were very good soldiers and

18:10

they were fighting in their backyard. When

18:13

Ellsberg got back to the United States, it

18:15

was 1967. The

18:17

stated purpose of the demonstration was to

18:19

again stop the draft.

18:22

And the news media was full

18:24

of protesters marching in the streets.

18:33

Ellsberg didn't know it at the time, but even

18:36

Secretary of Defense McNamara had concluded

18:39

Vietnam was a lost cause. McNamara

18:42

had ordered a secret study about decision

18:44

making in Vietnam. It was so

18:46

secret, even President Johnson didn't

18:48

know it was happening. This study, which

18:50

covered the entire history of the conflict, going

18:53

back to World War II, would later be

18:55

called the Pentagon Papers. They

18:57

were looking for researchers who had expertise in

18:59

Vietnam, so they asked Ellsberg to help

19:02

write it. He didn't have to

19:03

help plan the war anymore. Now

19:05

he could write about why it all went wrong. I

19:08

was still thinking of this as something

19:11

that we'd had a right to do and might

19:13

be doing again somewhere. And

19:15

obviously we had not been successful.

19:19

So the question was, what could we learn from our past

19:21

experience?

19:22

While he worked on the study, Ellsberg was still

19:24

seeing top secret communications about the

19:27

war. And one day in 1968, he

19:30

saw a memo from Commanding General

19:32

William Westmoreland that raised his deepest

19:34

fears. I knew there was a possibility

19:36

of using nuclear weapons that was being

19:38

discussed in the White House.

19:41

And I also knew that Westmoreland

19:43

was asking for a couple hundred thousand more men

19:46

basically to invade North Vietnam,

19:48

which would bring the Chinese in, which would mean

19:50

nuclear war. Ellsberg showed the top

19:52

secret memo to Senator Bobby Kennedy,

19:54

who was running for president.

19:56

He didn't think he was out of bounds here.

19:58

After all, Kennedy had been attorney General.

19:59

for his brother JFK, so clearly

20:02

he had security clearances. A

20:04

few days later, a story about the

20:06

troop request showed up in the New York Times.

20:09

Someone had leaked it. Ellsberg

20:11

says it wasn't him, and he doesn't know who it was. But

20:14

the story blew up,

20:16

and Democrats in Congress started openly

20:18

turning against Johnson's war escalation.

20:21

This got Ellsberg thinking about the power

20:23

of leaks.

20:24

Could leaks slow down the war? My

20:26

idea was one a day, so

20:28

that the president would know that somebody

20:31

with very high access, which I had

20:33

at that time, was leaking. He

20:35

thought that if Johnson did decide to escalate

20:38

the war again, he probably wouldn't

20:40

tell the American people how many troops he

20:42

really wanted. That's what he had done for

20:44

three years at this point, lied

20:47

every time about what he was actually sending.

20:50

This time, he would know that somebody who knew

20:52

what he was doing was going to leak it, and

20:54

he couldn't do it secretly. That was my

20:56

idea. Ellsberg

20:59

had spent years in the inner circle of

21:01

government secrets, but now the

21:03

patriotic Cold Warrior went rogue.

21:06

So for the first time now, I

21:10

break my promise, not

21:13

my oath of office, but my

21:15

contractual promises not to reveal secrets.

21:18

That's important to understand. Secrecy

21:21

was an article of faith to Ellsberg and everyone

21:23

he worked with. But he decided now

21:25

that secrecy wasn't his highest duty. Every

21:28

member of Congress, every

21:30

member of the armed services, every officer

21:33

in the armed services, and every official

21:35

in the executive branch takes the same

21:37

oath. And it's not an oath to the president.

21:41

And it's not even an oath to secrecy. It's

21:44

an oath to defend and support the

21:46

Constitution of the United States against

21:48

all enemies, foreign and domestic.

21:51

So in 1968, a full

21:53

three years before the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg

21:56

staged his first real week.

21:58

He gave New York Times journalist Neil

22:00

Sheehan a report claiming that

22:02

the U.S. had Viet Cong and other communist

22:05

troops on the run across the country.

22:08

General Westmoreland had written this report for the White House

22:10

at the end of the year. Problem is,

22:13

it was totally wrong.

22:15

Just a couple of weeks later, the communists

22:17

suddenly attacked military command posts all

22:19

over South Vietnam in the Tet Offensive.

22:22

Not bad for a force that was supposedly

22:25

all but defeated. So I leaked

22:27

Westmoreland's year-end report, top-secretize

22:29

only, for the president saying

22:32

that we

22:35

have emptied South Vietnam of the Viet Cong.

22:39

Westmoreland was removed from command the

22:41

next day. Leaking, it turned

22:43

out, could work. Though Ellsberg

22:46

was still running in elite national security

22:48

circles, he started meeting anti-war activists

22:51

and even hanging out at peace rallies. He

22:53

was leading a double life,

22:55

peace activist and top-secret

22:57

military researcher. You've asked, you

22:59

know, what did my understanding

23:02

change? In the summer

23:04

of 1969, I

23:07

read the earliest parts of

23:10

the Pentagon Papers, which I had

23:12

put off to last on the assumption that

23:14

they were least relevant. In a way, that part

23:17

had more effect on me than anything else

23:19

because it made the efforts seem illegitimate

23:22

from the start.

23:29

Now

23:29

here's more history I didn't learn in high school.

23:32

I learned, and maybe you did too, that America

23:34

got into Vietnam to stop communists

23:36

in the north from taking over the democratic

23:39

and independent South Vietnam. We

23:41

were stopping aggression, right? Well,

23:44

not exactly. Vietnam

23:46

had been a French colony before World War II. Then

23:50

in 1945, the Vietnamese declared independence.

23:52

No north, no south, one

23:54

country. That lasted for

23:57

about two seconds. The French

23:59

want their former communists.

23:59

back and ask the US for help.

24:02

But Americans aren't ready to do that. Colonialism's

24:05

dying, let it go. But

24:07

then, in 1949, China falls

24:09

to the communists. Could Vietnam,

24:11

just south of the border, be next? Suddenly,

24:15

the US is ready to help the French and

24:17

starts pouring in money and supplies. So

24:20

when I looked at that and I read that history and I said,

24:23

this isn't in the American ideals

24:25

or the spirit. We're against empire, we're against

24:27

colonialism. To Ellsberg, that

24:29

meant the war was illegitimate from

24:32

the beginning.

24:33

He believed Americans should never have

24:35

been there. And that meant all

24:37

the people killed on both sides were

24:39

not casualties of war. The unjustified

24:42

homicide seemed to me murder. And

24:46

a process of murder that was still going on,

24:49

I wasn't interested just in setting the record

24:51

straight or putting out history or something. I

24:53

was interested in educating

24:55

people to the need to stop this

24:58

war. Around

25:00

the same time, Ellsberg learned something

25:02

else that pushed him into action.

25:05

The new president, Richard Nixon,

25:07

wasn't actually going to de-escalate the war.

25:10

Nixon wanted leverage for peace talks and

25:12

he decided a secret expansion

25:15

of US bombing would be the way to get it.

25:17

Ellsberg didn't know it at the time, but Nixon

25:19

was even considering a nuclear attack

25:21

in Vietnam.

25:23

Nixon talked about it with his advisor, Henry

25:25

Kissinger, in a real Dr. Strangelove

25:27

moment that actually happened. This

25:30

recording is from 1972 after

25:32

the Pentagon Papers were leaked,

25:34

but it gives you a sense of where Nixon's head

25:36

was at. The tape is super scratchy,

25:38

but Ellsberg knows it by heart. Well,

25:41

no, I got a piece of nuclear bomb.

25:43

You got that? You know, oh,

25:45

Henry, I'd use a nuclear bomb.

25:48

Got that, Henry? Guess it would

25:50

say, well, Mr. President,

25:52

I think that would be just too much. Too

25:55

much, Henry, that's too big. I just want you to think

25:57

big, for Christ's sake. I just want you to think

25:59

big.

26:03

It occurred to Ellsberg that the files in his

26:06

top-secret safe at work, the Pentagon papers,

26:09

might be a weapon to use against the war, if

26:11

he could get them to the public. I felt, I

26:14

have here thousands of pages of

26:17

documentation of

26:20

murder.

26:23

Maybe I can convince people

26:25

that it's still going on.

26:28

So

26:28

I asked my friend Tony Russo

26:31

if he knew where there was a Xerox machine.

26:34

Keep in mind, in 1970, a Xerox

26:36

machine was high-end technology. It

26:39

wasn't like everyone just had one. But

26:41

it turned out, Tony's girlfriend did

26:43

have one at her advertising agency. So

26:46

we started that night, too.

26:49

I took the papers out from my safe and

26:51

began copying them. And I did that for,

26:53

really, for most of the next year. He

26:57

didn't just copy the papers once. He

26:59

made a bunch of copies and handed them out to

27:01

friends to hang onto in case he was ever arrested.

27:04

He was also showing

27:05

bits of the papers to historians, think

27:07

tanks, and pretty soon, reporters.

27:10

He called his old contact at the New York Times,

27:12

Neil Sheehan,

27:13

and told him what he had. And I didn't think

27:16

the Times would do it at that point. Neil

27:18

Sheehan had actually told me in

27:20

the fall of 1970 that

27:24

he'd been taken off Vietnam affairs. But

27:26

if Ellsberg could get him a full copy, Sheehan

27:29

would try to keep looking into it on the side.

27:31

Eventually, Sheehan persuaded him to hand

27:34

over all 7,000 pages. He

27:36

kept telling me that. He says, no, they're not interested.

27:38

This is back burner, as far as they're concerned. But

27:41

I want to keep at it, you know, working at

27:43

it, so that eventually I'll be able

27:45

to do something with it. It turns out the

27:47

story was definitely not on the back

27:49

burner. The New York Times was actually

27:52

putting together a small, secret team

27:54

on the Pentagon Papers.

27:59

Rosie Rosenthal gets pulled back into the

28:02

story. Remember, he was a 22-year-old

28:04

editorial assistant at the paper when he got

28:06

that call from a Times editor. He

28:09

said, you know, I want you to

28:11

come to room 1111 at the Hilton

28:13

Hotel tomorrow. Don't tell

28:16

anybody where you're going and

28:18

bring enough clothes for a month or more. And

28:21

I basically said, who is this? And he said, I'm

28:24

serious, you know, because I had no idea. That

28:26

was a strange phone call. So you stayed

28:28

at the Hilton? Yeah, I lived

28:29

in, I slept in a room with two

28:32

huge filing cabinets that had, you know,

28:35

I slept with the Pentagon Papers.

28:40

How many other people were doing what you were doing?

28:42

The whole team was probably, one

28:44

time it got finished over 20. There

28:47

was a tremendous amount of pressure and, you

28:49

know, a sense that any moment,

28:51

the FBI could come in and grab everything

28:54

and arrest everybody. The

28:57

Times decided to do more than just report about

28:59

what was in the documents. They wanted people

29:02

to be able to read the Pentagon Papers for themselves. Back

29:06

then, the only way to get the documents to the public was

29:08

to print them, verbatim. And

29:11

that's what the Times was planning to do. It

29:13

would look like a wall of black text,

29:16

almost no ads, for page after

29:18

page after page. The New York

29:21

Times was

29:21

about to air out the dirty laundry of four

29:24

presidents. And no one

29:26

knew what would happen. It was an amazingly elaborate

29:29

process. They had to set up another room and built

29:31

a room within the Times to set the type secretly.

29:34

You know, actually they didn't want any of the union

29:37

people to do it, so they took foremen and

29:39

managers to set the type secretly.

29:42

Ellsberg didn't know any of this was happening

29:45

until he got a call on a Saturday

29:47

afternoon from a Times editor who wasn't on

29:49

the project. Ellsberg had shown him

29:51

part of the study and the editor was planning

29:53

on using some of it in a book.

29:59

And

30:02

he said, they're coming out with it, and the building

30:04

is locked up. They have private

30:07

police around here to check everybody

30:09

who comes in and out because they're afraid

30:11

of an injunction.

30:13

He said, oh, really? This was especially

30:15

interesting news to Ellsberg because he happened to

30:17

have a full copy of the papers in

30:19

his apartment. He usually kept copies

30:22

spread out in empty apartments with

30:24

friends he could trust.

30:25

If the FBI happened to stop by on this day,

30:27

he'd be caught red-handed. So

30:30

I hang up the phone and I call

30:32

Neil Sheehan. Neil is not available.

30:36

So. Do you know who you talk to? Do you

30:38

know who you talk to at the Times? No, no,

30:41

I forget. Wait, were you? Spoiler alert,

30:43

it was Rosie. I answered the phone at the foreign

30:45

desk, and it was about 4 o'clock maybe on a Saturday

30:48

after the. Yeah, right. The attention in the

30:50

newsroom was incredible because of. Coming

30:52

out that night. The paper was coming out in the Bulldog,

30:55

the early edition. And we were worried still

30:57

that the feds would come in and stop it. The

30:59

presses were literally about to start rolling. And

31:02

I answered the phone and I heard the voice said, is

31:04

Neil Sheehan there? I have to speak to him. It's urgent, urgent.

31:07

I need him. Where is he? And

31:09

you were like intense on the phone. I

31:10

didn't know who it was. And I said, who is this?

31:13

And you said, it's Daniel Ellsberg. And I said, well, hold

31:15

on. And I put my hand over the phone,

31:18

and I turned to two of the editors right there.

31:20

And I said, it's some guy. Was Neil there? No.

31:23

He was back at the Hilton. And I said, it's some

31:25

guy who really sounds like he has to talk to Sheehan.

31:28

He said his name is Daniel Ellsberg. And the two

31:30

editors went white in the face. And

31:33

they looked at each other and one of them said, it's

31:35

the source. The

31:37

editors waved their arms back at Rosie. Get rid

31:39

of the guy. And I said, I don't know. I'll

31:43

tell him you called. I think I probably said I don't know where

31:45

he is. And hung up. So Neil

31:47

is not available. So

31:48

I then pick up the phone

31:51

and call Howard Zinn, who

31:53

I was going to see that night, to go see Butch

31:55

Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for

31:57

the fourth time or something for me.

31:59

I had given Howard about a thousand pages of

32:02

it, and Noam Chomsky about it as historians,

32:04

you know, for their interest. They were keeping

32:06

it under their bed. And this next part

32:08

makes you wonder, what was he thinking?

32:11

So I said, Howard, I've got to store

32:13

some more stuff with you, the FBI may come any

32:15

minute. I said, let me come by

32:17

your place, and I want to drop something off. So

32:20

somebody else also had given me a lid of grass.

32:23

A lid of grass, that's about an ounce of marijuana.

32:26

And I thought, okay, they're going to come, you

32:28

know, any minute here. So we took the lid of grass

32:29

here, and I gave Howard

32:32

the stuff. And then we smoked

32:34

as much as we could, and

32:37

flushed the rest down the toilet. Yeah,

32:40

so while Ellsberg was dodging the FBI

32:43

in a movie theater, baked and watching

32:45

Butch Cassidy, the presses were

32:47

rolling for the Sunday paper.

32:49

It's June 13, 1971, and just past midnight,

32:56

the

33:01

first edition hits the street. The

33:03

team at the New York Times is huddled, wondering

33:06

what comes next. At the

33:08

White House, President Nixon will wake up to

33:10

get a briefing he didn't expect. Okay,

33:13

nothing else in the Christian world? Yes, sir,

33:15

very significant. This goddamn

33:18

New York Times expose. Next

33:21

on Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting,

33:24

and PRX.

33:31

If you like what we do and you want to help, well,

33:33

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33:36

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34:00

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34:03

him, not you, yes, you. Thank

34:06

you so much. Thank

34:09

you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. All

34:11

right.

34:16

From the Center for Investigative

34:18

Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal,

34:20

I'm Al Letzer.

34:23

It's June 13th, 1971. A

34:26

team of journalists has been working in secret out

34:28

of hotel rooms for weeks. It's

34:31

a Sunday morning and the Pentagon Papers, a

34:33

classified history of the Vietnam War hits

34:35

newsstands. Americans are about

34:37

to learn much of what they've been told about the

34:40

war is a lie. Our former

34:42

colleague, Michael Corey, picks up the story, which

34:44

first aired in May of 2016. At

34:47

the New York Times, everyone was waiting for

34:49

the hammer to drop. Robert Rosie

34:51

Rosenthal remembers wondering,

34:53

would the FBI swoop in and confiscate

34:55

the documents? Would they all get arrested? Nothing

35:00

happened that Sunday. I remember being

35:02

in the Hilton with Neil Sheehan and all the reporters

35:04

Sunday New York Times and nothing was happening

35:06

and they were bummed. We were all bummed.

35:09

You might expect that at the White House, Nixon

35:11

was blowing his stack over this.

35:14

You'd be wrong. Thanks

35:16

to all those secret recordings Nixon made, we

35:18

know exactly what he was thinking. Here he

35:20

is talking on the phone that Sunday to General

35:23

Alexander Haig. Just a note, there's

35:25

some salty language in some of these tapes. Okay.

35:29

Nothing else of interest in the world? Yes sir,

35:31

very significant. This goddamn

35:33

New York Times expose the

35:36

most highly classified documents of the war.

35:40

Oh that, I see. I

35:42

didn't read the story, but you mean

35:44

that was leaked out of the Pentagon?

35:46

This is a devastating security

35:49

breach of the greatest magnitude

35:52

of anything I've seen. Well, what's

35:54

being done about it then? I mean, I didn't do it.

35:56

Did we know this was coming out? No, we did not,

35:58

sir. Yeah.

35:59

Now, I just start right at the top

36:02

and fire some people. I mean,

36:04

whatever department that came out of it, I'd fire the top guy.

36:07

So, no, he's not happy.

36:09

But for Nixon, this is more than a little tame.

36:12

And what he hears next is interesting. But

36:14

it's something that is a mixed bag.

36:16

It's a tough attack on Kennedy.

36:20

It shows that the genesis of the war really

36:23

occurred during the 61. That's

36:25

Clifford, I see. And

36:28

it's brutal on President Johnson. They're

36:30

gonna end up in a massive gut fight

36:32

in the Democratic Party on this thing.

36:35

See, Nixon kind of likes the idea

36:38

that the New York Times is giving the Democrats

36:40

trouble. This next call is from

36:42

Monday morning after the Times ran another

36:44

section of the Pentagon Papers. It's

36:46

Nixon with one of his White House aides. Hello.

36:49

It's Mr. Ehrlichman calling you, sir. Yeah, okay.

36:53

Hello, Mr. President. The

36:55

Attorney General's called a couple times about

36:58

these New York Times stories. And

37:00

he's advised by his people that

37:03

unless he puts the Times on notice, he's

37:06

probably gonna waive any right of prosecution

37:09

against the newspaper. And

37:11

he is calling now to see if you would

37:13

approve his, putting them on

37:15

notice before their first edition for tomorrow

37:17

comes out.

37:19

I realize there are negatives

37:21

to this in terms of the vote

37:24

on the Hill.

37:27

You mean to prosecute

37:29

the Times? Right. Hell, I wouldn't prosecute

37:31

the Times. My view is to

37:33

prosecute the goddamn Perks of David tools.

37:36

Yeah, if you can find out who that is. Yeah, I

37:38

know. I mean, could the Times be prosecuted?

37:40

Apparently so.

37:46

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Well, could he

37:48

wait one more day? They have one more

37:50

day after that. I don't know,

37:53

I don't know.

37:54

Next, Nixon calls Attorney General

37:56

John Mitchell. Mitchell wants to put

37:58

the Times on legal notice. that they're violating

38:01

the law by possessing or publishing the papers.

38:03

Nixon finally agrees. Well, look, as

38:05

far as the time is concerned, hell, there are enemies.

38:08

I think we just ought to do it in any way. As

38:10

Rosie told me and Pentagon Papers whistleblower

38:12

Daniel Ellsberg, the Times was about

38:14

to learn that they had the White House's full attention.

38:17

Monday's stories came out and it got some more attention,

38:19

but it exploded when Attorney General

38:21

John Mitchell asked the Times

38:24

not to publish. How did he ask the Times? It

38:27

was a brief

38:28

telegram in those days and I happened to be

38:30

in the room where all the stuff came in and it's,

38:33

you know, teletype machine, clack, clack, clack, clack,

38:35

and it's,

38:35

it was a telex to punch Sullsberger, a telegram

38:38

basically requesting ceasing publication

38:41

because of national security. And that was on Monday.

38:44

And if you go back and look at the Thursday. You saw it? You're

38:47

the one that saw it coming? Yeah, I actually saw it. I ripped

38:49

it off and ran. I happened to be there. And I ran down

38:51

to the foreign desk. This set

38:53

off one of the fiercest debates that

38:56

has probably ever happened inside a newsroom.

38:59

Should the Times stop or should

39:01

they defy the Attorney General of

39:04

the United States?

39:08

They needed to consult with publisher punch

39:10

Sullsberger, but at that moment he

39:12

was on a plane to London. And all the editors

39:15

went up to his office and kept the line

39:17

open and I was literally in the room because I had

39:19

to hold the phone. Which room? The

39:21

publisher's office on the 11th floor of the

39:23

Times because they were waiting to see what he would

39:25

do. And you were actually there? Yeah. She's

39:28

in the room. And hearing

39:31

this incredible discussion around what to do.

39:34

Do you remember anything of the discussion? What

39:37

I recall

39:38

was a very intense argument. And

39:42

I kept sitting there going, I can't believe I'm sitting here. I was 22

39:45

years old and I'm listening to everything.

39:49

And it was hot again and intense.

39:53

The editors and the paper's lawyers went back and

39:56

forth. The Attorney General's note

39:58

said they were violating the espionage

39:59

Act. That's serious stuff. Do

40:02

we have the right to publish classified documents?

40:05

What good is freedom of the press if we can't do this?

40:08

Well, what good is freedom of the press if the FBI

40:10

shuts us down? Are we going to take

40:12

a financial hit? How much will it cost to fight

40:15

this? What about our reputation? Is this

40:17

worth it? It's the only time I've ever seen

40:19

a scene that was out of the movies because

40:21

they had to stop the, you know, it wasn't clear

40:23

what would happen. So they literally stopped the press.

40:25

They did stop the press. Well, they hadn't started, but they

40:27

delayed them. Yeah.

40:29

The paper's London bureau chief, Tony

40:32

Lewis, was on the other end from a phone

40:34

booth at the airport waiting to snag

40:37

the publisher as soon as he got in. And

40:39

that's where one of the most important decisions

40:42

in the history of journalism got made inside

40:44

a phone booth at Heathrow. And

40:46

they were waiting to ask the publisher what he wanted to

40:48

do. And he ordered, he said, let's publish.

40:52

The editors crowded into an elevator with

40:54

Rosie to go tell the newsroom. The

40:56

Times top editor was Abe Rosenthal, who's

40:59

no relation to Rosie

40:59

Rosenthal. But Rosie's father, who

41:02

was a prominent journalism professor, had

41:04

actually gotten Abe his first newspaper job. And

41:07

he's in the elevator and he turns around and he looks

41:09

at me and he pokes me in the chest and he goes, don't

41:11

ever repeat a word you

41:13

heard tonight to a living

41:16

person, not even your father. And and

41:20

then he came down into the newsroom and it was quite dramatic.

41:22

And he put his hand up and said, we're going to publish. And

41:24

there was literally a cheer.

41:28

On Tuesday, Attorney General John

41:31

Mitchell was done asking. He

41:33

went to court and got a temporary restraining

41:35

order. The Times was now officially

41:38

banned from publishing the papers until

41:40

a judge could decide on the case. The

41:42

Times announced they would abide by the temporary

41:44

order and stopped publication.

41:49

But Ellsberg, now very much a wanted

41:51

man, wasn't done. Nothing

41:53

in the temporary order said another newspaper

41:55

couldn't publish the papers.

41:57

So he leaked them again,

41:58

this time to the Washington.

41:59

The story led the evening news. Good

42:02

evening. The dispute between the

42:04

government and the press over publication

42:06

of secret Pentagon documents on the Vietnam

42:09

War has spread to a second newspaper. The

42:12

Justice Department late today asked for a federal

42:14

court order to stop the Washington Post from printing

42:17

any more information from the documents. Now

42:19

the Post was sidelined. So Ellsberg

42:22

gave a section to the Boston Globe, another

42:24

injunction. Next, they popped up

42:26

in the St. Louis Post's dispatch, injunction. Then

42:30

the L.A. Times, the

42:31

Night Papers, the Christian Science Monitor. The substance

42:33

of the Pentagon Papers is virtually lost today

42:36

in the legal process drama that is rapidly

42:38

turning into a farce. The news

42:40

media was now in full revolt.

42:43

After enjoining four papers, the Justice

42:45

Department couldn't keep up. A new one

42:48

was popping up as soon as they stopped the last one. More

42:51

than 20 newspapers eventually published

42:53

portions of the Pentagon Papers.

42:55

And once the Supreme Court ruled, the formerly

42:57

top secret papers, which few had

42:59

even known existed,

43:01

were now very public. Good evening. The

43:04

Supreme Court said no to the government and yes to the

43:06

newspapers, voting 6-3 to let

43:08

the New York Times and the Washington Post... The latest

43:10

batch of Pentagon Papers shows how deeply

43:12

the U.S. was involved in Vietnam, even

43:14

during the Eisenhower administration. For

43:17

example, by 1958... One possible

43:19

way of dealing with all-out Chinese intervention,

43:22

which was secretly discussed at the time, was

43:24

with nuclear weapons. But after

43:27

the smoke cleared, Ellsberg figured

43:29

he had failed. No impact on the war.

43:31

The war went on. It was bigger the next year. The public knew

43:33

more and they were even more against the war, but

43:36

they were already against the war and that

43:38

had no effect on Nixon. With

43:40

the Pentagon Papers alone,

43:42

nothing.

43:44

And that might have been it. Except,

43:47

remember Nixon's initial reaction to the Pentagon

43:49

Papers on that first day? How

43:51

he liked that the leak might make trouble for

43:53

the Democrats? That was not

43:56

a fleeting thought. In that first

43:58

week, while the Times was under, the U.S. was still under the pressure to temporary

44:00

injunction, Nixon takes this idea

44:02

over the edge. He's trying

44:05

to deflect as much of the heat as possible

44:07

to former President Lyndon Johnson. He

44:09

wants Johnson to hold a press conference about

44:11

the Pentagon Papers. Johnson

44:14

isn't interested, and Nixon is getting

44:16

pretty steamed about it.

44:17

His chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, has

44:20

an idea. The, uh, makes the blackmailed

44:22

Johnson and his, uh, what?

44:25

Maybe they could blackmail Johnson. You

44:27

could blackmail Johnson on this stuff that it

44:29

might be worth doing. Haldeman

44:32

explains that White House aide Tom Houston

44:35

thinks there might be copies of classified

44:37

files that would embarrass Johnson

44:39

at the Brookings Institution, a Washington

44:41

think-tank. Now, do you remember Houston's plan?

44:44

To implement it. But couldn't we

44:46

go over, now

44:47

Brookings has no right to, to have a class?

44:50

Do you know why? I mean, I

44:52

want it implemented on a thievery basis. God

44:55

damn it. Get it. Get those files. Go

44:57

to state and get it.

44:59

Did you catch that? Nixon says

45:01

he wants Houston's plan implemented on

45:04

a thievery basis. He's

45:06

ordering his aides to commit a crime, on

45:08

tape, by orchestrating a break-in at

45:10

Brookings.

45:12

As it turns out, the break-in Nixon asked

45:14

for doesn't appear to have ever happened. But

45:17

this sounds familiar, right? This started

45:19

in motion a chain reaction. So that

45:21

gave birth to the plumbers. To

45:24

find out what else I had and

45:26

stop me from putting it out. If

45:29

you don't remember from that history class, the

45:31

plumbers were a group of former CIA

45:33

guys and Nixon loyalists who did illegal

45:36

work for the president. They famously

45:38

got arrested while trying to bug Democratic

45:40

headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

45:42

But did you ever wonder why they were

45:44

called the plumbers? Originally,

45:47

one of their jobs was to stop and

45:50

start leaks. And leak

45:52

number one was the Pentagon Papers.

45:57

Ellsberg didn't know this at the time, of course.

45:59

he was more worried about preparing for his trial.

46:03

He figured he'd be spending the rest of his life

46:05

in prison, and the government was certainly

46:07

going to try. A federal grand

46:09

jury handed down new indictments

46:11

today in the case of the Pentagon Papers. The

46:13

charges were against Dr. Daniel Ellsberg

46:15

and Anthony Russo. The

46:18

former Defense Department aide could receive

46:20

a maximum of 115 years in prison and fines up to $120,000.

46:25

So Ellsberg got acquitted, right?

46:28

Nope. Because the trial

46:30

never got that far. In Los Angeles

46:32

today, federal judge Matt Byrne interrupted

46:34

testimony at the Pentagon Papers trial

46:36

with a dramatic announcement. Byrne

46:38

said he had received a memorandum from

46:40

the Justice Department stating that two Watergate

46:43

conspirators, Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy,

46:45

had burgurized the offices of Daniel Ellsberg's

46:48

psychiatrist. ABC's Dick Shoemaker

46:50

has details. The judge, Matt Byrne, read

46:52

the memo to a shock courtroom.

46:54

He said the government didn't know if any information from

46:56

the files was communicated to the prosecution.

46:58

He wants to know if Liddy and Hunt worked for the White

47:00

House at the time of the alleged crime. The

47:03

defense held a hurried conference and they said

47:05

the burden of proof is now on the government to

47:07

show Ellsberg hasn't been compromised. It's

47:09

certain there'll be a motion for a mistrial.

47:12

I bet you thought Nixon resigned because

47:14

of Watergate. But that's only sort

47:16

of true. If the Plumbers had only been

47:19

caught on the Watergate, yeah, some heads

47:21

would probably have had to roll. But the burglars

47:23

didn't actually have any evidence that implicated

47:25

the president. But Nixon

47:28

knew that if investigators got the Plumbers talking,

47:31

they'd find out about the other illegal operations

47:33

that the White House had authorized, like

47:36

the planned burglary at Brookings and the

47:38

Ellsberg break-in. And so

47:40

they had to be paid off to

47:43

keep them quiet and keep them perjuring

47:45

themselves in front of a grand jury about

47:47

what

47:47

other crimes they knew.

47:49

When it comes to Nixon, we all know it was the cover-up,

47:51

not the crimes, that forced him to resign.

47:54

And the news media followed every twist and

47:56

turn as the scandals piled up. Watergate

48:00

and other matters. When it was learned today

48:02

that some of the Watergate conspirators had been

48:05

involved in illegal actions relating

48:07

to the Pentagon Papers case, the whole

48:09

affair took on a new and more

48:11

sinister air. It began

48:13

with a comic opera burglary of the Democrats,

48:16

and then in the past few days, the

48:18

focus has shifted from the burglary to

48:20

the much more important question of a possible

48:23

cover-up in the White House itself, a

48:25

possible obstruction of justice. And

48:28

now, with words that these men with connections

48:30

to the White House were engaged in other

48:32

illegal practices, one frightening

48:34

question must be asked. What else

48:36

did they do? And what else are we

48:38

to learn?

48:44

The public would learn enough about Nixon

48:47

to end his presidency. As

48:49

for Daniel Ellsberg, the espionage

48:51

case against him ended in a mistrial.

48:55

Reveals Robert Rosie Rosenthal joins

48:57

me now. Hey Rosie. Hello Al.

49:00

So this is such an incredible story,

49:02

a real personal journey for you. And

49:04

listening to it again just reminds me

49:07

of what a remarkable man Daniel Ellsberg

49:09

was. He was someone who

49:12

really, I believe, has one of the more remarkable

49:14

lives of any American. Not only did

49:16

he have the genius really, and to be part

49:19

of a secret world, but then to really see

49:21

what he believed was not truthful and

49:24

step away from that world

49:25

and break from, in a sense, his tribe. And

49:28

revealed injustice and truths that

49:30

he felt people had to know. Daniel

49:33

had a cancer diagnosis in February,

49:36

and he knew he didn't have a lot of time left. You

49:39

two were close. I wanted to ask, what

49:41

kind of things you talked about in his last

49:43

months?

49:45

Well, in the last conversation I actually had

49:47

with him on the phone, he

49:49

actually said he was happy in a way, because

49:52

he sort of knew what he had to do. He

49:54

had no regrets. And he

49:56

said he was busy. I said he had to go out. I said, what

49:58

are you going to go do?

49:59

I'm going to go see Titanic again. He

50:02

wanted to see the movie again. And he also in

50:06

a way felt liberated from some restraints he

50:08

had health-wise on what he could eat. I know he was

50:10

eating like bagels and lox and sweets

50:12

and salt.

50:14

I think he really felt he'd done all he could

50:16

in his life. Yeah, Daniel

50:19

became such a champion for a lot of whistleblowers

50:21

today. How would you sum up his legacy?

50:24

He used to say courage is contagious and

50:27

what he did created a contagion.

50:29

I think, or a belief that others could follow

50:32

in his path and that when

50:35

you're inside something, whether it's the government,

50:37

corporate world, maybe in your own life, how

50:39

do you really have

50:41

the courage and the ability to stand up and

50:43

reveal the truth and take the consequences

50:45

good and bad?

50:48

Robert Rosenthal has revealed CEO

50:50

and editor in chief. Rosie, thanks

50:53

so much for talking to me about your friend Daniel

50:55

Ellsberg.

50:56

Thank you, Al. Michael

51:01

Corey was our lead

51:02

producer and reporter this week. The show was edited by Cat Snow. This

51:05

week's update was produced by Michael Montgomery and

51:07

edited by Cynthia Rodriguez. Special

51:10

thanks to Jeffrey Kimball, Ken Hughes, and Luke

51:12

Nichter, and also Robert Thompson at

51:15

the National Archives. Nicky Frick is

51:17

our fact checker. Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel.

51:20

Our production managers are Steven Raskon and Zulema Cobb.

51:23

Score and sound designed by the dynamic duo Jay Breezy, Mr.

51:27

Jim Briggs, and the director of the show Jim

51:29

Briggs

51:29

and Fernando Mamayo Arruda.

51:32

They had help from Claire C. Note Mullen and also

51:34

Brett Simpson. Our CEO is Robert

51:36

Rosenthal. Our COO is Maria

51:38

Feldman. Our interim executive producers

51:40

are Taki Telenides and Brett Myers. Our

51:43

theme music is by Comorado, Lightman. Support

51:46

for reveal is provided by the Riva and David Logan

51:48

Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the

51:50

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the

51:52

Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the

51:54

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park

51:56

Foundation, and the Helmand Foundation. Reveal

51:59

is a... co-production of the Center for Investigative

52:01

Reporting and PRX. I'm

52:03

Al Ledson, and remember, there is always

52:06

more to the story.