Secrets and Lies

DANIEL ELLSBERG'S just-published memoir, "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers" is a page- turner. The Vietnam War shaped and shadowed both of our lives for more than a decade. I, however, was a young nobody. He was the consummate insider, a brilliant military policy analyst, who enjoyed access to top-secret information, as well as to high government officials.

Why, then, I kept asking myself, did it take him so long to openly oppose the Vietnam War? Ellsberg answers my question by brilliantly recreating the mind of the insider, the person who observes discrepancies but then doesn't expose official deception. In a memorable scene, he warns Henry Kissinger, the man who will run Richard Nixon's foreign policy, that access to top-secret information breeds a dangerous arrogance; you come to believe that only you know the truth.
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