L.A. Theatre Works To Air TOP SECRET: Battle For The Pentagon Papers

Beginning Saturday, July 3, 2010. L.A. Theatre Works Radio Theatre Series will air Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers by Leroy Aarons & Geoffrey Cowan, starring Diane Adair, Bo Foxworth, John Getz, James Gleason, Gregory Harrison, John Heard, Charles Janasz, Raphael Sbarge, Russell Soder, Susan Sullivan, Peter Van Norden, Tom Virtue, and Geoffrey Wade. The broadcast can be heard locally in Southern California on Saturday from 10 pm to midnight on 89.3 KPCC, and can also be streamed on demand at http://www.latw.org/

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 young Americans into the conflict. One of the document's contributors, Daniel Ellsberg, 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, as you'll hear in Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers. The broadcast includes two panel discussions complete with a "Who's Who" list of the major players from the era of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, including former White House counsel John Dean, journalist Carl Bernstein, foreign policy expert Leslie Gelb, and Daniel Ellsberg himself.

L.A. Theatre Works' radio theater series can also be heard on the following stations (check local listings for broadcast times): 89.7 WGBH, Boston; 91.5 WBEZ, Chicago; 94.9 KUOW, Seattle; 90.1 WABE, Atlanta; 94.1 KPFA, Berkeley; 91.1 KRCB, North Bay (San Francisco); and many other stations nationwide.

Major funding for L.A. Theatre Works broadcast series is provided by the S. Mark Taper Foundation. Founded in 1989, the S. Mark Taper Foundation is a private family foundation dedicated to enhancing the quality of people's lives by supporting non-profit organizations and their work in the community.