Release of the Pentagon Papers

June 13, 1971

Cover page of Time Magazine about the Pentagon Papers, published on June 28, 1971

Overview

The New York Times publishes the first of a series of articles based on the Pentagon Papers, a leaked collection of secret government files that reveals the history of U.S. policy in Vietnam.

The papers—officially called United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967—were put together by a task force formed by Secretary of Defense McNamara to study the course of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. They include over 7,000 pages of narrative and original government documents. One of the study’s authors, Daniel Ellsberg, photocopies it and gives it to the Times. Additional newspapers publish articles based on the Pentagon Papers soon thereafter. The Nixon administration reacts harshly, seeking an injunction against their publication. Nixon works to discredit Ellsberg and suspects others in his administration of leaking information to the press.

By 1972, the Pentagon Papers are formally declassified and the U.S. government publishes most of them. The Papers lead many to criticize the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ strategies and policies in Southeast Asia.¹

Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 848, 889–92; David L. Anderson, The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 154–55; Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (2nd revised edition; New York: Penguin, 1997), 414, 648–49; George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (4th edition; New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), 299–300.