Stephen Colbert: You are starring in a wonderful movie, a Steven Spielberg movie with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks it's called "The Post", and it's about "The Post" and "The New York Times" sort of racing to publish the Pentagon Papers.
Tom Hanks: In all fairness and the historical record "The New York Times" broke the story, Nielsie and they put the they put this top-secret study they had the papers and they put it they ran it I think a couple of days before the Nixon administration the Justice Department enjoined, them stopping them from publishing this this report that had been around an awful lot for about the history's America's history record in Vietnam.
Stephen Colbert: And the thing about it is that the record shows that...
Tom Hanks: Every single person said we should not be...
Stephen Colbert: Every Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson...
Tom Hanks: The war is unwinnable it's gonna be in my eyes Mobley should not be there and yet we kept getting there and by the time 1970 rolled around I'm gonna say somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 troops had already been killed, nevermind countless many many of the Vietnamese and this it hadn't even been it was actually already five years old I think Robert McNamara who was a secretary defense commissioned it and it got out and and because of its really the week about when Katherine Graham became Katherine Graham and Ben Bradley you know...
Stephen Colbert: You play...
Tom Hanks: Who I play, it's funny "The Washington Post" at the time certainly wanted to compete with the New York Times on a national level but they also wanted to be the number one paper in Washington DC which was called the "Washington star". That was the number one paper in DC at the time and where is the Washington now star now my friend, it's on the ash heap of history...
Stephen Colbert: And in this scene "the Washington Post" who was beaten - we have a scene we have a clip right here. I believe it's after "the Washington Post" has acquired a large portion of the Pentagon Papers directly from Daniel Ellsberg who is the man who had been a Marine worked for the RAND Corporation and had stolen it from the rancor...
Tom Hanks: He'd spirited it away from the RAND Corporation the problem... See the rest of the interview in the video.
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