I’ll give this a bump before I fall asleep for background: Even while Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara began having serious doubts about Vietnam and our ability to win. He personally commissioned, as a result, the lengthy Pentagon Papers in which the government heavily criticized its own involvement in the country. Thanks to the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and New York Times, the Papers were successfully leaked and printed in an incredible display of freedom of speech and freedom of the press despite Nixon’s attempts to stop them from humiliating him. The leakers were two DoD civilians, who smuggled copies of the pages out of the Pentagon. I’m beginning to have to wonder if McNamara was involved in the leak. He was out of government by the time, but I’m really beginning to think that he was calling the shots behind the two leakers because he knew Vietnam was a horrible mistake and had to try to find a way to undo the damage he did under Kennedy and LBJ.