Ellsberg provides a vivid eyewitness account of the two years he spent behind the lines in Vietnam as a State Department observer—an experience that convinced him of the hopelessness of Johnson's policies and profoundly altered his own political thinking. As Ellsberg recounts with drama and insight, the release of the Pentagon Papers, first The New York Times and The Washington Post, set in motion a train of events that ultimately toppled a president and helped to end an unjust war.