Neil Sheehan, Reporter Who Obtained the Pentagon Papers, Dies at 84
Source: New York Times
Neil Sheehan, the Vietnam War correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who obtained the Pentagon Papers for The New York Times, leading the government for the first time in American history to get a judge to block publication of an article on grounds of national security, died on Thursday at his home in Washington. He was 84. Susan Sheehan, his wife, said the cause was complications of Parkinsons disease.
Mr. Sheehan, who covered the war from 1962 to 1966 for United Press International and The Times, was also the author of A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, which won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer in 1989. Reviewing it in the Times, Ronald Steel wrote, If there is one book that captures the Vietnam War in the sheer Homeric scale of its passion and folly, this book is it.
Intense and driven, Mr. Sheehan arrived in Vietnam at age 25, a believer in the American mission. He left, four years later, disillusioned and anguished. He later spent what he described as a grim and monastic 16 years on A Bright Shining Lie, in the hope that the book would move Americans finally to come to grips with the war.
I simply cannot help worrying that, in the process of waging this war, we are corrupting ourselves, he wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 1966. I wonder, when I look at the bombed-out peasant hamlets, the orphans begging and stealing on the streets of Saigon and the women and children with napalm burns lying on the hospital cots, whether the United States or any nation has the right to inflict this suffering and degradation on another people for its own ends.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/business/media/neil-sheehan-dead.html
R.I.P.
Bradshaw3
(7,454 posts)I urge anyone who truly wants to understand the Vietnam War to read it. Sheehan had an ability to impart history with a compelling narrative aimed at a larger purpose. A great humanitarian, journalist and writer.
greenjar_01
(6,477 posts)It's probably a common opinion among those who have read it.
Bradshaw3
(7,454 posts)Using a central figure like John Paul Vann to tell the story wasn't that common back then, but helped to personalize it for the reader and maybe for Sheehan to understand as well.
DeminPennswoods
(15,246 posts)Just a terrific read
DemoTex
(25,370 posts)Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam" is one of the best books of the Vietnam era that I have read (and re-read). And I have read most of them.
Yeehah
(4,523 posts)Journalists often fight for their country with the same courage as a front-line soldier.
greenjar_01
(6,477 posts)If you haven't read it, read it. It's beautiful.
Bradshaw3
(7,454 posts)I may read it again someday, but the world is screwed up enough that don't think I can revisit those dark times right now.
Stallion
(6,473 posts)very likely could have served a long prison sentence without revealing his source-Daniel Ellsberger-who was the same source as the New York Times which was already under a Court restraining order. The wording of the restraining order arguably included Sheehan as well
He's a central figure in the movie "The Post" which I highly recommend
Thank You Sir
BumRushDaShow
(127,286 posts)Spielberg, with the Hanks & Streep dynamic, did a bang-up job. I thought it was a good "modern" bookend that complements the other period piece "All the President's Men" (that took place during the same time frame), both establishing the fervor of competition that went on between the major papers.
Paladin
(28,202 posts)If you haven't read "A Bright Shining Lie," by all means do so.
DinahMoeHum
(21,737 posts)All three of them were Pulitzer Prize winners.
BumRushDaShow
(127,286 posts)and OMG, for the first time, I actually understood what was going on after WWI and the effects of its aftermath.
(ETA - I had heard him on a WABC talk show - the defunct "Batchelor and Alexander" show, where he was doing a book tour for that)
geralmar
(2,138 posts)Sheehan was a darling of the left because of his Vietnam War reporting and anti-war stance. However the left savaged him after his New York Times review of Mark Lane's "Conversations With Americans". Lane interviewed former soldiers who claimed to have witnessed or participated in war atrocities in Vietnam. The book received almost rapturous reviews. Sheehan, for his review, researched the claims of the soldiers. He discovered they were almost to a man liars. They weren't stationed where they claimed to be where the atrocities took place, were disciplined for their own military crimes, or weren't even in Vietnam when the atrocity they claimed to have witnessed occurred. Lane to Sheehan basically claimed he couldn't be bothered to verify the claims of his interviewees. Sheehan did bother and reported what he discovered even though he knew it would anger the anti-war crowd. The facts were more important than salacious stories that align with the political bias of the reader. Although I never worked in journalism (my major), he was the journalist I would have aspired to be.
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/27/archives/conversations-with-americans-conversations-with-americans.html
Mark Lane, it should be noted, was a vile excuse for a human being. He profited off the Kennedy assassination with an irresponsible book full of lies (like "Conversations" and worse as Reverend Jim Jones lawyer fed him with paranoid fantasies that ultimately helped lead to the slaughter of 900 men, women and children. The only worthwhile consequence was Lane's freak-out when someone left empty Kool Aid packets on his doorstep.
jacobhenry
(1 post)Great article
SmartVoter22
(639 posts)What he did was illegal, but it was made illegal to hide what was going on in the Pentagon & White House. Secrecy is never a good thing and it should be extremely limited for national security reasons. We can spy, we can infiltrate and we can promote democracy without protecting the shoddy, the thinly veiled corruptions that use that protection.
This one act of defiance by Mr Sheehan, opened what American's now call 'transparency'.
Mr Sheehan provided all Americans with a tool to root out the bad players and the bad policies.
It is this kind of patriot, the ones with courage to do the right thing, that deserve our acknowledgement and honors.
NOTE: Medal of Freedom - "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.".