photo courtesy of Donal F. Holway/The New York Times
… doesn’t mean you’re not being followed.
This thought comes to mind with the upcoming re-release of the Pentagon Papers Monday, June 13. First leaked by Daniel Ellsberg to the New York Times in 1971, the full unedited version will be available online courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
While Howard Hughes was not directly involved in the Vietnam war, or the U.S. government’s doomed involvement in the relentess war in the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia, of which the Pentagon Papers documents, Hughes engineering genius, the flying boat, was the model and inspiration for the C-5 Galaxy cargo plane that did serve American troops in both the Cold War and Vietnam.
And while Hughes was engulfed in his own paranoia by the time the Vietnam conflict ended in 1975, his life of intrigue and mystery paralleled the years revealed in the Pentagon Papers. Geoff Schumacher’s Howard Hughes: Power, Politics & Paranoia explores this volatile time, as well as iconic figure; a history back in the headlines.