Military and Government

The Pentagon Papers

Officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, the Pentagon Papers is a Department of Defense–produced history of the United States' involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Some of the more explosive revelations in the Papers include the United States' bombing of Cambodia and Laos—not reported in mainstream media at the time—the extent and length of U.S. involvement in Vietnam prior to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, including involvement in a 1963 coup in South Vietnam, and the stark difference between internal federal government intentions with regards to Vietnam versus those expressed to the public, such as the China containment objective rather than aiding South Vietnam.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara created the Vietnam Study Task Force in 1967 to create a comprehensive but classified history of the Vietnam War—without the knowledge of President Johnson, the White House, or any federal agency outside the Department of Defense. Forty-three volumes from the study were leaked by Anthony Russo and Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who had worked on the study, to the New York Times, and the paper began publishing excerpts in June of 1971, with The Washington Post following suit. The Nixon administration attempted to stop the Papers' publication. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. United States, resulting in a landmark ruling that held the Times and the Post were able to publish the classified Papers without being subject to retaliation from the government.

Russo and Ellsberg, however, were indicted and charged under the Espionage Act of 1917; gross governmental misconduct, including document theft and wiretapping, resulted in a mistrial. Ultimately, the Times only published a small fraction of the Pentagon Papers, and the documents remained classified until 2011 when they were released by the National Archives.

HeinOnline presents the entirety of the Pentagon Papers in a fully searchable format, allowing researchers access to these seminal documents in our user-friendly platform. They are essential for understanding foreign policy, the Vietnam War, and chain-of-command decision making, as well as touching upon freedom of the press and citizens' right to know concerning governmental actions.