"TOP SECRET: THE BATTLE FOR THE PENTAGON PAPERS" March 12, 2008

L.A. Theatre Works winds up a 23-city national tour of Top Secret: The Battle for The Pentagon Papers at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, where Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons' riveting historical drama, directed by John Rubinstein, will be recorded to air on LATW's nationally syndicated, weekly radio theater series, The Play's The Thing. Performances take place March 12-16.

Since October, a cast of stage and screen veterans including John Heard, Gregory Harrison, Susan Sullivan, John Vickery, Bo Foxworth, James Gleason, Russell Soder, Peter Van Norden, Tom Virtue and Geoffrey Wade has been performing at universities, colleges and civic centers across the country.

In a democratic society, when should a government be allowed to protect secrets in the name of national security? Top Secret: The Battle for The Pentagon Papers is an inside look at The Washington Post's decision to publish the top secret study documenting U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The subsequent trial tested the parameters of the First Amendment, pitting the public's right to know against the government's need for secrecy. The epic legal battle between the government and the press went to the nation's highest court - arguably the most important Supreme Court case ever on freedom of the press.

"The tour is a wonderful way to fire up a national, nonpartisan conversation about the central issue of the play - national security vs. the people's right to know," says LATW producing artistic director Susan Loewenberg.

"The issues presented by The Pentagon Papers case are sure to be with us as Americans as long as we are a democracy and as long as we face hostile forces in the world," comments playwright Cowan. "They have gained new currency, meaning and urgency in the era of international terrorism and the Internet."

In 1966, United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara commissioned a study on the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The document, which came to be known as The Pentagon Papers, contained more than two million words, including some that would prove politically embarrassing about Administration efforts to manipulate military information and the media. Only 15 copies of the Papers were circulated, and in 1971, one was leaked to the New York Times, which printed its first story before the government won a restraining order. Eager to get a piece of this remarkable story, The Washington Post, not covered by the initial injunction against The Times, obtained a copy of The Papers and had one day to read the documents and make a decision about publishing the sensitive material.

"Watergate cast a bigger shadow, but there was no time in Watergate when we had to tear everything apart and make a single decision that was fraught with such consequence," Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee noted when he retired in 1991.

Top Secret, based on a wide range of sources including interviews with participants and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, follows the debate played out at Bradlee's home as his staff sorts through the documents and tries to decide if publishing The Papers will violate national security - and as the lawyers and publisher decide if publishing will risk criminal action and possibly huge financial consequences. The play includes their momentous decision and the legal wrangling that followed- leading to the historic decision that re-affirmed the First Amendment. Our government's relationship to the media, the citizenry's right to information, and the First Amendment are all critically explored against the canvas of the Vietnam War and the secretive Nixon White House.

In conjunction with the tour, presenters sponsored presentations, panels, film-showings, actor Q&A sessions and other events associated with the performance. Local NPR stations at each venue were authorized to record that performance and air it once in their community along with post play discussions.

Playwright Geoffrey Cowan, former director of the Voice of America and a university professor who holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership at the University of Southern California, where he served for a decade as Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, has created a website for students, scholars and citizens interested in gaining a fuller understanding of the people, events and issues covered by the play. The website address is http://topsecretplay.org.

For three decades, L.A. Theatre Works has been the leading radio theater company in the United States, committed to using innovative technologies to preserve and promote significant works of dramatic literature and bringing live theater into the homes of millions. LATW's radio theater series, The Play's The Thing, airs weekly on 89.3 FM KPCC in Southern California. The L.A. Theatre Works Audio Theatre Collection is available in bookstores, libraries, through their catalog, digitally on itunes, overdrive.com, audible.com, and on the L.A. Theatre Works website at www.latw.org. A previous recording of Top Secret: Battle for The Pentagon Papers received the industry's coveted Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Award in 1992 in the Best Live Entertainment category.

Performances of Top Secret: The Battle for The Pentagon Papers take place on Wednesday, March 12 at 8 pm; Thursday, March 13 at 8 pm; Friday, March 14 at 8 pm; Saturday, March 15 at 3 pm; and Sunday, March 16 at 4 pm. Tickets range from $20.00 to $47.00. The Skirball Cultural Center is located at 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd, off the San Diego (405) Freeway in the Santa Monica Mountains (exit Skirball Center Drive). For tickets and information, call the L.A. Theatre Works box office at (310) 827-0889 or go to www.latw.org.