Pentagon Papers And Treason At NY Times? (Vanity)

01/06/2006 | JoeGar

[JoeGar]

In 1971, the New York Times published the top secret "Pentagon Papers" which resulted in much angst in government. Years ago, I read that the reason for that angst was that the publishing of the papers blew the cover of a extremely valuable CIA spy. As I remember it, one comment in the Pentagon Papers could be traced back to a conversation that could have only come from the interior of Nikita Khrushchev's limo. The CIA had recruited Khrushchev's chauffeur and he had planted a bug in the limo. When the Russians read the Pentagon Papers in the Times, they immediately arrested the chauffeur, tortured him, and killed him. I can find no basis for this story. Can anyone confirm whether this story is true?

[Williams]

Don't know, but I can tell you there was not much "there" there in the pentagon papers. Go ask someone at the NYT just what the big revelation of the pentagon papers was, and you'll get some gobbledegook about the pentagon knew the Vietnam war would be tougher than they were admitting, or something like that.

You had a war with 500,000 US troops committed, hundreds of casualties a week, and this was a revelation to anybody? The pentagon papers were a big nothing. They were just a bunch of internal docs that the liberal press could keep publishing every week and keep acting like horrible revelations were coming out.

[mlstier]

Amazing. Not much has changed.