With the nation involved in two wars and facing continuing threats of terrorism, the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy will present “Top Secret Talks,” a timely examination of the tension between the government’s need for secrecy and the public’s right to know. The series will be presented in conjunction with the New York production of Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers.

As issues of government classification — and declassification — confront the current administration and as the Internet opens new frontiers for the disclosure of confidential information, “Top Secret Talks” promises a month-long series of conversations with leading journalists, scholars and policymakers about the modern lessons of the Pentagon Papers story.

“We hope that the series will engage New Yorkers in a lively and important dialogue as these issues continue to be debated on the national stage,” said Geoffrey Cowan (pictured, right), Top Secret playwright, university professor and director of the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. “The courts have changed, technology has changed, the financial stability of the press has changed, and we live with a new fear of terrorism. But the issues endure.”

Individual programs are presented by organizations such as the Columbia Journalism Review, Human Rights Watch, New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, the Asia Society, New York University and the Center for Public Integrity. Speakers will include Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense and State Department official who gave the Pentagon Papers to the Washington Post; Washington Post investigative reporter Carl Bernstein; Leslie Gelb, who led the Department of Defense project that produced the Pentagon Papers; New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson; Washington Post editor Marcus Brauchli; and Cowan, among others.

Originally produced by L.A. Theatre Works and presented in partnership with the New York Theatre Workshop and Affinity Collaborative Theatre, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers opens Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop with previews beginning Feb. 24.

Cowan’s play asks an enduring question: In a democratic society, when and how long, if ever, should the government be allowed to keep secrets in the name of national security?

Top Secret provides a dramatic look at the decision of the Washington Post to publish information from the classified study documenting U.S. involvement in Vietnam after a federal court had shut down publication by The New York Times. The ensuing court battle over the potential national security threat posed by publication tested the parameters of the First Amendment and focused on the conflict between government and the press. The epic legal battle went to the nation’s highest court as arguably the most important Supreme Court case ever held on freedom of the press.

Writing in Vogue, Graydon Carter calls Top Secret “quite magnificent.” Reviewing the play during its national tour in 2008, Howard Shapiro of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “I was processing Vietnam - but thinking Iraq. Top Secret vigorously maintains that the American press is not just a prodder and inciter; it has a rigorous job to do in order for democracy to work ... it resonates directly into this decade. … It’s all the sharper for its dramatic nuance, for plumbing the jittery politics of the ’70s and the internal machinations of the Post.”

All "Top Secret Talks" will be presented at the New York Theatre Workshop.

Thursday, Feb. 25
8 p.m. Performance | 9:30 p.m. Discussion
Guest: playwright Geoffrey Cowan
Sponsor: New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

Sunday, Feb. 28
7 p.m. Performance | 8:30 p.m. Discussion
Topic: “The Learned and Unlearned Lessons of the Vietnam War and the Nixon Administration”
Guest: author and journalist Jonathan Schell
Sponsor: The Asia Society

Thursday, March 4
8 p.m. Performance | 9:30 p.m. Discussion
Guests: Marcus Brauchli, executive editor, Washington Post; Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author; and Carroll Bogert (moderator), associate director of Human Rights Watch
Sponsor: Human Rights Watch

Saturday, March 6
8 p.m. Performance | 9:30 p.m. Discussion
Topic: USC Annenberg Benefit Program
Guests: Jill Abramson, managing editor, The New York Times; Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author; Norm Pearlstine, chief content officer, Bloomberg L.P. and author; Geoffrey Cowan; Stephen Graham, founding trustee, New York Theatre Workshop
Sponsor: USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy

Sunday, March 7
2 p.m. Performance | 3:30 p.m. Discussion
Topic: “A Salute to Leroy Aarons”
Guests: author Charles Kaiser and Geoffrey Cowan
Sponsors: Millie Harmon Meyers and Joshua Boneh

Thursday, March 11
8 p.m. Performance | 9:30 p.m. Discussion
Topic: “Investigative Journalism, Then and Now”
Guests: William E. Buzenberg, executive director, Center for Public Integrity; Sheila Coronel, director, Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Columbia University and founder, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism; Bill Kovach, chairman, Committee of Concerned Journalists
Sponsor: The Center for Public Integrity

Friday, March 12
8 p.m. Performance | 9:30 p.m. Discussion
Topic: “Truth & Fiction in the Docudrama”
Sponsor: USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy

Tuesday, March 16
7:00 PM Performance | 8:30 PM Discussion
Topic: Columbia Journalism Review Benefit
Guests: Daniel Ellsberg, former Defense and State Department official; Leslie Gelb, journalist, diplomat and president emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations; James Goodale, former vice president and general counsel, The New York Times; Nicholas Lemann, dean, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; Victor Navasky (moderator), chairman, Columbia Journalism Review and Delacorte Professor of Journalism, Columbia University
Sponsor: Columbia Journalism Review

Wednesday, March 17
8 p.m. Performance | 9:30 p.m. Discussion
Topic: “Women and Leadership in the News Industry”
Guest: Liza Gross, executive director, International Women’s Media Foundation
Sponsor: International Women’s Media Foundation & USC Annenberg

Saturday, March 27
8 p.m. Performance | 9:30 p.m. Discussion
Topic: “Confidential Government Information in the Digital Age: Roles and Responsibilities of Courts, the Executive Branch and the Media”
Guests: Mark L. Wolf, chief judge, U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, and Burt Neuborne, the Inez Milholland Professor of Civil Liberties, New York University Law School
Sponsor: USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy

Date: TBA
Topic: “The Language of Torturers: The Pentagon Papers, Then and Now”
Guests: author David Rudenstine; author and journalist Todd Gitlin; Steve Wasserman (moderator), fellow, New York Institute for the Humanities
Sponsor: New York Institute for the Humanities