Listening to the 4-part series "Tricky Dick" on HBO Max (linked with Amazon Prime), I was thinking they forgot the Pentagon Papers episode, but I went back to Part 3 where they're in the time-frame that includes 1971, and the Pentagon Papers is touched upon.
(I must have gone to sleep before that part.)
The Pentagon Papers incident was in 1971: Daniel Ellsberg, a government employee with access to files, took a bunch of the info relating to the winnability of the Vietnam War, from 1945 on up to the 1960s, photocopied it, and gave it to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
The records showed military experts saying the war was un-winnable, but this perspective was kept from the American people so that we could get into the war.
Mr. Ellsberg's idea was that if the American people had this information, they would demand an end to the war.
When these records started getting published in the two leading newspapers, President Nixon did not like this, and he sent people who worked for him in, to burglarize the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and try to find information that would make Mr. Ellsberg - "look bad."
Daniel Ellsberg in 1971
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