Pentagon Papers Published

Setting the scene

By 1971, the Vietnam War had become deeply unpopular, with over 500,000 American troops in Vietnam and 50,000 dead. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Marine and RAND Corporation analyst who had worked on Vietnam policy, had become disillusioned after visiting Vietnam and reading classified documents. In 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had commissioned a secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam—a 7,000-page, 47-volume study. Ellsberg, who had access, photocopied the entire study in 1969, intending to expose government deception.

What happened

On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing excerpts from the Pentagon Papers. The documents revealed that four administrations—Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—had systematically lied to Congress and the public about Vietnam, expanding the war while claiming to seek peace. The papers showed the Gulf of Tonkin incident was misrepresented and that the U.S. had secretly bombed Laos and Cambodia. The Nixon administration obtained a court injunction to stop publication—the first prior restraint in U.S. history. The Times appealed, and on June 30, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in New York Times Co. v. United States that the government had not met the heavy burden for prior restraint.

Why it still matters

The Pentagon Papers were a watershed for press freedom, establishing that the government cannot censor the press except in extreme circumstances. They confirmed public suspicions about government dishonesty and accelerated opposition to the Vietnam War. Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act, but the case was dismissed in 1973 after revelations of government misconduct, including the burglary of his psychiatrist's office by the Nixon 'plumbers'—the same team that would break into Watergate. The papers' publication demonstrated the importance of whistleblowers and a free press in a democracy, setting precedent for later leaks like WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.

Background

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study, it was made public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that Lyndon B. Johnson's administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress". The leak triggered a landmark press freedom Supreme Court case.