Summary

Ellsberg contacted a U.S. officer in Vietnam to get the bloody evidence that McNamara wanted. Subsequently, Johnson ordered the launching of Operation Rolling Thunder a few days later. Despite the fact that the American public was told that the war would not widen, over the next three and a half years, America dropped 800 tons a day on North and South Vietnam. But soldiers and resources continued to flow down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from the north.

The choices were to either send American ground troops or bomb the supplies and arms sent in by the Soviets and Chinese which would start WWIII. Johnson reluctantly approved the deployment of 3,500 Marines into Da Nang, South Vietnam, at the request of General William Westmoreland. Ellsberg became reacquainted with journalist Patricia Marx at an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. Ellsberg tried...