Pentagon Papers was a United States Department of Defense secret study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from the 1940’s to early 1968. The papers were first made public in The New York Times in June 1971, during the Vietnam War (1957-1975). The study raised questions about decisions and secret actions of government leaders regarding the war. The Supreme Court of the United States blocked the government’s attempt to prevent the study’s publication. The court decision was widely regarded as a powerful demonstration of the openness of U.S. society. The document’s official title was Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force. It was called the Pentagon Papers after the Pentagon Building , which houses the Department of Defense headquarters.
During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, public opposition to the nation’s involvement in Vietnam became widespread throughout the United States. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who had worked on the Pentagon Papers, copied the document and leaked it to The New York Times. Ellsberg had come to believe that the war was wrong and unjust, and he hoped the release of the study would hasten the war’s end. He also felt compelled to disclose what he considered to be the illegal and unconstitutional actions of high-ranking members of the U.S. government and military.
The first Pentagon Papers article appeared in The New York Times on June 13, 1971. Two days later, the U.S. Department of Justice obtained a temporary restraining order to stop The New York Times from publishing further related articles while the government sought a permanent injunction against publication. The newspaper eventually appealed the case, called the New York Times Co. v. United States, to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 18, The Washington Post also began publishing articles on the Pentagon Papers, resulting in another restraining order and appeal. The Supreme Court heard both appeals jointly.
On June 30, the Supreme Court held in a 6-3 decision that the government failed to justify restraint of publication. The court forbade such prior censorship of the press unless it was justified by an emergency and could be linked to “direct, immediate, and irreparable harm” to the nation. Citing freedom of the press , which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States , the court allowed the newspapers to continue publishing articles on the Pentagon Papers.
The Department of Justice charged Ellsberg (and fellow analyst Anthony J. Russo, Jr., who had assisted Ellsberg) with conspiracy, theft, and espionage for releasing classified documents. In 1973, the charges against Ellsberg and Russo were dropped after revelations of improper actions taken by the administration of President Richard Nixon and numerous irregularities in the government’s case. The administration’s improper actions included a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist by a secret investigative unit formed by Nixon known as the Plumbers. The Plumbers later became involved in events that led to the Watergate scandal, which resulted in Nixon’s resignation.
In 1967, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara commissioned the Pentagon Papers as an official history of the Vietnam War. About 7,000 pages long, the papers revealed that the main reason for U.S. involvement in Vietnam was to prevent the influence of Communist China from spreading throughout Southeast Asia. The papers also showed how the U.S. military had concealed from Congress that it had expanded the war effort in Southeast Asia by bombing Cambodia and Laos and raiding the North Vietnamese coast. They also illustrated how the presidential administrations of Harry S. Truman , Dwight D. Eisenhower , John F. Kennedy , and Lyndon B. Johnson had all misled the public regarding U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The papers further enraged an agitated U.S. public, but they had little effect on the war in Vietnam, which continued until 1975. Some parts of the Pentagon Papers, however, were not leaked. These sections remained classified until 2011, when the government declassified and released the complete report.
