I saw the movie, The Post recently in Edwardsville. Even
though you need to be met by a loan officer at the concession stand, it is well
worth the trip for the movie.
First we may need some
background. Robert McNamara the Secretary of Defense saw the war consuming lives
and treasure and ordered a multi volume study of the history of our involvement
in Vietnam .
It was a harrowing tale of fairly consistent U.S.
government deception over our shifting
goals in dealing with a Communist government in Hanoi . Daniel Ellsberg, a Marine, a PhD and
analyst, could no longer countenance the years of deceptions, so he released
material that he took from a locked cabinet to the fine reporter Neil Sheehan
of the New York Times. The Nixon administration began a series of actions that
led to Watergate, especially the creation of a “plumbers” unit to stop leak, an
attempt at humor, I suppose from that buttoned-up group. They would illegally
burglarize the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to find incriminating evidence
against him. Recall that he was facing an enormous prison term for the release
of the Papers.
This is directed by the masterful Spielberg, so keep an eye
out for interesting camera shots, how it is placed in crucial moments.. Look at
the lighting in the newsroom as opposed to homes, and the set where the
documents were being copied. Look at the first long unbroken scene at breakfast
between Mrs. Graham and her editor, Ben Bradlee. Watch the close-up as she
announces her decision as to whether the newspaper should publish, at the last
possible moment. It is filled with moments of the not so distant past that our technology has hurtled by: dial
telephones, pay telephones that required change to operate, giant copying
machines, typewriters with clacking sound that could rouse the dead, even amid
the clouds of smoke from the cigarettes everywhere..
For me the most involving story in it is the growth of the Post’s
publisher Katherine Graham. She was a doyenne of Washington society. Her father handed over
operation of the Post Company to her brilliant but unstable and alcoholic husband Phil. He committed suicide in the
summer of 1963. So, she was left with the operation of the company, but
struggling to deal with her new role eight year later, not yet board chair. Not
only was she under that pressure, but the company was becoming a publically
held company at the very time the massive leaks occurred. The movie oscillates
between the public import of a newspaper and the private struggles within
public decision. We learn that McNamara’s wife is undergoing cancer treatments
as the papers are revealing what we started to call a “credibility gap.” (She
would succumb to the disease a decade later).
In 2018, I realize that it may be difficult for many of us
to even imagine a White House at odds with a free press. For the first time in
American history, the Nixon administration sought and won, at first, prior
restraint of printing material by a newspaper. In a 6-3 decision Black’s opinion:
Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in
government…In revealing the workings of government…In
revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the
newspapers nobly did that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.”
Dismissing the claimed threat to national security, the Court continued, “The
word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be
invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.” In
the years that have passed, we have lost trust in both government
pronouncements and the accuracy of a
free press, even arguing over facts themselves.
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