This month the federal government will finally declassify and release all 7,000 pages of the Pentagon papers, originally published 40 years ago by the New York Times and the Washington Post. To mark the occasion, L.A. Theatre Works is offering this special broadcast of Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers.

In the late 1960’s, a classified government study of the Vietnam War revealed that the U.S. had misled the public regarding its intentions in Southeast Asia. Yet the Nixon administration continued to paint an optimistic picture of the war effort while sending more and more young Americans into the conflict. One of the document’s contributors, Daniel Ellsburg, decided that the public needed to know the truth about Vietnam, and leaked the study to the press. The result shook America to its core and challenged the First Amendment.

Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers stars John Heard as Ben Bradlee, Susan Sullivan as Katherine Graham, and Gregory Harrison as Brian Kelly.

Both hours of the broadcast include panel discussions with key figures from the era of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, including journalist Carl Bernstein, former White House counsel John Dean, and Daniel Ellsburg himself.

This month the federal government will finally declassify and release all 7,000 pages of the Pentagon papers, originally published 40 years ago by the New York Times and the Washington Post. To mark the occasion, L.A. Theatre Works is offering this special broadcast of Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers.

In the late 1960’s, a classified government study of the Vietnam War revealed that the U.S. had misled the public regarding its intentions in Southeast Asia. Yet the Nixon administration continued to paint an optimistic picture of the war effort while sending more and more young Americans into the conflict. One of the document’s contributors, Daniel Ellsburg, decided that the public needed to know the truth about Vietnam, and leaked the study to the press. The result shook America to its core and challenged the First Amendment.

Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers stars John Heard as Ben Bradlee, Susan Sullivan as Katherine Graham, and Gregory Harrison as Brian Kelly.

Both hours of the broadcast include panel discussions with key figures from the era of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, including journalist Carl Bernstein, former White House counsel John Dean, and Daniel Ellsburg himself.