On Hannah Arendt’s “Lying in Politics” with Celestino Perez

The Strategy Bridge

In 1971, the New York Times published leaked versions of what became known as the Pentagon Papers. The papers were part of a 7,000 page report commissioned by Defense Sec. Robert McNamara that looked at the history of the American involvement in Vietnam. Later that year, political theorist Hannah Arendt published an essay in the New York Review of Books called “Lying in Politics” that focused on issues of deception and self-deception as revealed in the Pentagon Papers. In this episode we talk with Dr. Celestino Perez about Arendt’s essay and what it can teach us about decision making. Perez is a colonel in the U.S. Army and a professor at the Army War College.