The Pentagon Papers

Timeline

1950 (1950): The United States provided large-scale military equipment to the French in its fight against the Communist Viet Minh 1954 (1954): The United States began to engage in "acts of sabotage and terror warfare" in the defense of South Vietnam against Communist North Vietnam 1955 (1955): The United States encouraged and directly assisted South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm's rise to power 1963 (1963): The United States encouraged and directly assisted the overthrow of the South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm August 2, 1964 (1964-08-02): Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the United States manipulated public opinion in its preparation for open warfare against a Communist takeover of South Vietnam

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study; they were first brought to the attention of the 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 the Johnson Administration "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress".

More specifically, the papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with the bombings of nearby Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which were reported in the mainstream media.

For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were later dismissed after prosecutors investigating the Watergate Scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.

In June 2011, the entirety of the Pentagon Papers was declassified and publicly released.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara created the Vietnam Study Task Force on June 17, 1967, for the purpose of writing an "encyclopedic history of the Vietnam War". McNamara claimed that he wanted to leave a written record for historians, to prevent policy errors in future administrations. McNamara neglected to inform either President Lyndon Johnson or Secretary of State Dean Rusk about the study. One report claimed that McNamara planned to give the work to his friend Robert F. Kennedy, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. McNamara later denied this, although he admitted that he should have informed Johnson and Rusk.

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