National Perspective - for Shribman's column

The picture is a group portrait of five Republican presidential candidates precisely one-third of a century ago. (JIM COLE/AP PHOTO)

It occurred 50 years ago this month, a story known primarily by people now dead but one that is vital for our times, and for all time. It is a tale about the Pentagon Papers, the Unitarian Universalist Church, a teeny publishing house, a radical historian, a renegade Pentagon employee, a couple of suitcases spilling over with secret documents, a meeting on Boston Common, a few FBI agents, and — here is the poetry and poignance of it all — a tourist walk called the Freedom Trail.

And at the center of it all is an enigmatic senator who died at age 91 last weekend.

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