Most Dangerous: Prologue–Part I

by Steve Sheinkin
In this suspenseful and meticulously researched book, Steve Sheinkin brings the Vietnam War era to life by focusing on Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who initially helped justify the Vietnam War and later released top-secret documents known as the Pentagon Papers.

Here are links to our lists for the text: Prologue–Part I, Part II, Part III–Epilogue
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. blunt
    characterized by directness in manner or speech
    At a White House meeting, the president’s top foreign policy advisor put it bluntly: “Daniel Ellsberg is the most dangerous man in America. He must be stopped at all costs.”
  2. espionage
    the systematic use of spies to obtain secrets
    He did, however, plan to try out a different piece of espionage equipment loaned to him by the CIA, a tobacco pouch with a miniature camera hidden in the bottom, and a hole for the camera lens.
  3. feasible
    capable of being done with means at hand
    They could report to the White House with confidence that the operation to destroy Daniel Ellsberg was most definitely feasible.
  4. reconnaissance
    the act of scouting, especially to gain information
    The men spread maps and reconnaissance photos of North Vietnam on the table. While Johnson leaned over the table to look, McNamara pointed out potential targets for an American air strike, mainly North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases along the coast.
  5. flak
    artillery designed to shoot upward at airplanes
    Alvarez saw black clusters of antiaircraft flak bursting all around his plane.
  6. strafe
    attack from above with machine guns or cannon fire
    Alvarez sped over the pier again, strafing the bigger ship from barely a hundred feet above the water.
  7. unprovoked
    occurring without motivation or incitement
    “The attacks were deliberate,” Johnson said. “The attacks were unprovoked. The attacks have been answered.”
  8. categorical
    not modified or restricted by reservations
    McNamara categorically denied this.
  9. blatantly
    in a completely obvious manner
    McNamara was blatantly misleading Congress, but aside from Morse, no other senators knew it.
  10. misgiving
    uneasiness about the fitness of an action
    Some had misgivings about handing President Johnson what was practically a declaration of war, especially in such a hurry, and with such a vague idea of where things might lead.
  11. covert
    secret or hidden
    After studying in the Soviet capital of Moscow, he spent much of the 1920s and 1930s traveling through Asia, organizing covert communist groups. When Japan occupied Indochina during World War II, he slipped across the border from China into Vietnam and formed the Viet Minh, a guerrilla force that began battling the invaders.
  12. auspicious
    indicating favorable circumstances and good luck
    It was an auspicious beginning to America’s military involvement in Vietnam.
  13. inviolable
    incapable of being transgressed or dishonored
    “The creator has given us certain inviolable rights: the right to life, the right to be free, and the right to achieve happiness.”
  14. consolidate
    make firm or secure; strengthen
    Ho consolidated power by arresting anyone suspected of disloyalty to his regime, executing many, and sending thousands more to prison camps.
  15. unprecedented
    novel; having no earlier occurrence
    “On the day the electorate, as expected in polls, was voting in unprecedented numbers against bombing North Vietnam or otherwise escalating the war, we were working to set such a policy in motion,” Ellsberg recalled.
  16. sustained
    continued at length without interruption or weakening
    McNamara wanted to use the details to help convince the president to begin a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam.
  17. incendiary
    capable of causing fires or catching fire spontaneously
    His school held terrifying air-raid drills, and in each classroom was a large bucket of sand—to be used to extinguish fires sparked by incendiary bombs.
  18. qualm
    uneasiness about the fitness of an action
    Now he had until early the next morning to gather the stories McNamara wanted. There was no time for qualms. “An order from McNamara,” he later said, “was like an order from God.”
  19. paddy
    an irrigated or flooded field where rice is grown
    Beautiful groves of palm trees and bamboo. Women walking along rice paddies, carrying baskets on long poles balanced on their shoulders. A boy riding a water buffalo.
  20. thatch
    plant stalks used as roofing material
    There were about twenty thatch huts along the dirt road.
  21. inherently
    in an essential manner
    Simply put, the enemy was willing to fight longer and take more losses. “Their staying power,” advised the CIA, “is inherently superior.”
  22. substantially
    to a great extent or degree
    Option three: “Expand promptly and substantially the U.S. military pressure against the Viet Cong.”
  23. brunt
    the main part, especially of a force or shock
    “We have relied on South Vietnam to carry the brunt. Now we would be responsible for satisfactory military outcome.”
  24. tangible
    capable of being perceived
    Then came word that the colonel wanted the visiting general to see the bodies—a tangible sign of the progress being made.
  25. invariably
    without change, in every case
    When they pulled into villages, children invariably crowded around the car, smiling and calling out any English they knew:
    “Okay! Okay!”
    “Hallo!”
    “Number one!”
  26. idealistic
    motivated by noble or moral beliefs rather than practicality
    “I disagreed with him, but I always felt he was a man of absolute integrity,” Marx said of these debates. “What I sensed was that this was a man who was totally idealistic.”
  27. attrition
    a wearing down to weaken or destroy
    It was a cruel kind of scorekeeping, stacking up human lives like chips in a poker game. But the point was brutally clear: the United States could not win this kind of war. In fact, Krulak argued, the war of attrition played right into Hanoi’s hands.
  28. hamlet
    a community of people smaller than a village
    Daniel Ellsberg pulled his car to the side of the road in a tiny hamlet south of Saigon.
  29. salvageable
    capable of being fixed or saved from ruin
    As he walked through town, Ellsberg watched villagers stooped over in the remains of their homes, sifting the ruins for anything salvageable.
  30. contested
    disputed or made the object of contention or competition
    On a clear morning later that spring, a small military plane cruised low over the Plain of Reeds, a contested area near Saigon.
  31. discernable
    able to be perceived by the senses or intellect
    “No amount of bombing can end the war,” an exhausted-looking McNamara told a few reporters in an off-the-record discussion in February. The sustained bombing of Vietnam, he confided, was showing no discernable results.
  32. appraisal
    the classification of something with respect to its worth
    “His voice lacked the authority it had once projected when he would point briskly to graphs and flip-charts to prove his rosy appraisals.”
  33. squalid
    foul and run-down and repulsive
    She walked through squalid refugee camps.
  34. bleak
    offering little or no hope
    Sheehan’s view was bleak.
  35. underlying
    in the nature of something though not readily apparent
    “We’ve put more than a hundred thousand more troops into the country over the last year, and there’s been no improvement. Things aren’t any better at all. That means the underlying situation is really worse!”
  36. unnerve
    disturb the composure of
    At dinner that night, while chatting with faculty members, the day’s unnerving events sparked a new idea in McNamara’s mind.
  37. facilitate
    make easier
    “For the first time,” he later recalled, “I voiced my feeling that, because the war was not going as hoped, future scholars would surely wish to study why. I thought we should seek to facilitate such study in order to help prevent similar errors in the future.”
  38. artillery
    large but transportable armament
    A thunderous boom of artillery fire shook the building.
  39. corrugated
    shaped into alternating parallel grooves and ridges
    In the center of town were a few plaster buildings with corrugated tin roofs.
  40. mortar
    a muzzle-loading high-angle gun with a short barrel
    “You’ll be mortared tonight,” an officer who knew the area well told Ellsberg.
  41. slog
    walk heavily and firmly, as when weary, or through mud
    Walking patrols for a week, Ellsberg lived the life of an infantryman in Vietnam. Lugging packs weighing more than fifty pounds, the young men slogged across muddy rice fields and cut through dense forests.
  42. levee
    an embankment built to prevent a river from overflowing
    Later in the day the men rested on a dirt levee between rice fields.
  43. canteen
    a flask for carrying water; used by soldiers or travelers
    As the sky grew dark, the exhausted Americans sat on the ground gulping water from canteens and licking melted chocolate bars from the wrappers.
  44. debilitating
    impairing strength and vitality
    But a debilitating case of hepatitis spoiled the vacation. He figured he must have picked up the liver disease while wading through one of those rice paddies.
  45. grapple
    work hard to come to terms with or deal with something
    He didn’t blame his father for the accident, not exactly. Instead, he grappled with an intensely painful realization—one that would have unsettling relevance to his bitter experience in Vietnam.
Created on Tue Sep 10 18:30:34 EDT 2019 (updated Mon Sep 23 15:50:24 EDT 2019)

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