thumb|A November 1950 [[Central Intelligence Agency map of dissident activities in Indochina, published as part of the Pentagon Papers]]
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 Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with 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; these charges were later dismissed, after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that 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 documents forming the Pentagon Papers were declassified and publicly released.
Contents
thumb|Shortly after their release in June 1971, the Pentagon Papers were featured on the cover of [[Time (magazine)|Time magazine for revealing "The Secret War" of the United States in Vietnam.]]
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". although Leslie H. Gelb, then director of Policy Planning at the Pentagon, has said that the notion that they were commissioned as a "cautionary tale" is a motive that McNamara only used in retrospect. McNamara told others, such as Secretary of State Dean Rusk, that he only asked for a collection of documents rather than the studies he received. Motives aside, McNamara did not inform either Rusk or President Lyndon Johnson about the study. McNamara later denied this, though he admitted that he ought to have informed Johnson and Rusk. McNamara wanted the study done in three months. Paul Warnke, future generals Paul F. Gorman and John Galvin,
The analysts largely used existing files in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. To keep the study secret from others, including National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, they conducted no interviews or consultations with the armed forces, with the White House, or with other federal agencies.
Organization and content of the documents
thumb|220x124px|right |alt=A map of North Vietnam divided into red areas for bombing strategy, as duplicated by the US Military Academy|[[Route Packages, areas of bombing over North Vietnam, for Operation Rolling Thunder, mentioned in the Papers]]
The 47 volumes of the papers were organized as follows:
I. Vietnam and the U.S., 1940–1950 (1 Vol.)<br />
:A. U.S. Policy, 1940–50
:B. The Character and Power of the Viet Minh
:C. Ho Chi Minh: Asian Tito?
II. U.S. Involvement in the Franco–Viet Minh War, 1950–1954 (1 Vol.)<br />
:A. U.S., France and Vietnamese Nationalism
:B. Toward a Negotiated Settlement
III. The Geneva Accords (1 Vol.)<br />
:A. U.S. Military Planning and Diplomatic Maneuver
:B. Role and Obligations of State of Vietnam
:C. Viet Minh Position and Sino–Soviet Strategy
:D. The Intent of the Geneva Accords
IV. Evolution of the War (26 Vols.) <br />
:A. U.S. MAP for Diem: The Eisenhower Commitments, 1954–1960 (5 Vols.)
::1. NATO and SEATO: A Comparison
::2. Aid for France in Indochina, 1950–54
::3. U.S. and France's Withdrawal from Vietnam, 1954–56
::4. U.S. Training of Vietnamese National Army, 1954–59
::5. Origins of the Insurgency
:B. Counterinsurgency: The Kennedy Commitments, 1961–1963 (5 Vols.)
::1. The Kennedy Commitments and Programs, 1961
::2. Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961–63
::3. The Advisory Build-up, 1961–67
::4. Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces in Vietnam, 1962–64
::5. The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, May–Nov. 1963
:C. Direct Action: The Johnson Commitments, 1964–1968 (16 Vols.)
::1. U.S. Programs in South Vietnam, November 1963–April 1965: NSAM 273 – NSAM 288 – Honolulu
::2. Military Pressures Against NVN (3 Vols.)
:::a. February–June 1964
:::b. July–October 1964
:::c. November–December 1964
::3. Rolling Thunder Program Begins: January–June 1965
::4. Marine Combat Units Go to DaNang, March 1965
::5. Phase I in the Build-Up of U.S. Forces: March–July 1965
::6. U.S. Ground Strategy and Force Deployments: 1965–1967 (3 Vols.)
:::a. Volume I: Phase II, Program 3, Program 4
:::b. Volume II: Program 5
:::c. Volume III: Program 6
::7. Air War in the North: 1965–1968 (2 Vols)
:::a. Volume I
:::b. Volume II
::8. Re-emphasis on Pacification: 1965–1967
::9. U.S.–GVN Relations (2 Vols.)
:::a. Volume 1: December 1963 – June 1965
:::b. Volume 2: July 1965 – December 1967
::10. Statistical Survey of the War, North and South: 1965–1967
V. Justification of the War (11 Vols.) <br />
:A. Public Statements (2 Vols.)
::Volume I: A – The Truman Administration
:::::B – The Eisenhower Administration
:::::C – The Kennedy Administration
::Volume II: D – The Johnson Administration
:B. Internal Documents (9 Vols.)
::1. The Roosevelt Administration
::2. The Truman Administration: (2 Vols.)
:::a. Volume I: 1945–1949
:::b. Volume II: 1950–1952
::3. The Eisenhower Administration: (4 Vols.)
:::a. Volume I: 1953
:::b. Volume II: 1954–Geneva
:::c. Volume III: Geneva Accords – 15 March 1956
:::d. Volume IV: 1956 French Withdrawal – 1960
::4. The Kennedy Administration (2 Vols.)
:::Book I
:::Book II
VI. Settlement of the Conflict (6 Vols.) <br />
:A. Negotiations, 1965–67: The Public Record
:B. Negotiations, 1965–67: Announced Position Statements
:C. Histories of Contacts (4 Vols.)
::1. 1965–1966
::2. Polish Track
::3. Moscow–London Track
::4. 1967–1968
Actual objective of the Vietnam War: Containment of China
upright=1.5|thumb|As laid out by U.S. Secretary of Defense [[Robert McNamara, the Chinese containment policy of the United States was a long-run strategic effort to surround Beijing with the USSR, its satellite states, as well as:]]
Although President Johnson stated that the aim of the Vietnam War was to secure an "independent, non-Communist South Vietnam", a January 1965 memorandum by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton stated that an underlying justification was "not to help friend, but to contain China".
On November 3, 1965, Secretary of Defense McNamara sent a memorandum to Johnson, in which he explained the "major policy decisions with respect to our course of action in Vietnam". The memorandum begins by disclosing the rationale behind the bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965:
McNamara accused China of harboring imperial aspirations like those of the German Empire, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union. According to McNamara, the Chinese were conspiring to "organize all of Asia" against the United States:
In a sub-section titled "Special American Commitment to Vietnam", the papers emphasized once again the role played by the United States:
As early as August 23, 1963, an unnamed U.S. representative had met with Vietnamese generals planning a coup against Diem.
Proposed operations
The Director of Central Intelligence, John A. McCone, proposed the following categories of military action:
- Category 1 – Air raids on major Viet Cong supply centers, conducted simultaneously by the Republic of Vietnam Air Force and the United States Air Force (codenamed Farmgate)
- Category 2 – Cross-border raids on major Viet Cong supply centers, conducted by South Vietnamese units and US military advisers.
While maritime operations played a key role in the provocation of North Vietnam, U.S. military officials had initially proposed to fly a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over the country, but this was to be replaced by other plans. photocopied the study in October 1969 intending to disclose it. Ellsberg approached Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Senators William Fulbright and George McGovern, and others, but none were interested. After discussing them in February 1971, Ellsberg gave 43 of the volumes to Sheehan on March 2.
Sheehan makes copies
Ellsberg had initially requested that Sheehan only take notes of the study in Ellsberg's apartment; Sheehan disobeyed, frantically copying them in numerous shops in the Boston area at the urging of and with help from his wife Susan Sheehan, and flying with the copies to Washington, where he and an editor there worked in a hotel room at The Jefferson to organize and read them. Editors A. M. Rosenthal and James L. Greenfield had the copies delivered by mail first to Greenfield's apartment, then Greenfield and his wife drove them to multiple rooms at the New York Hilton Midtown. There, Sheehan, Rosenthal, Greenfield, deputy foreign editors Gerald Gold and Allan M. Siegal, a team of three writers—Fox Butterfield, Hedrick Smith, and E. W. Kenworthy—and researcher Linda Amster worked around the clock to organize and summarize them for publication. Before publication, The New York Times sought legal advice. The paper's regular outside counsel, Lord Day & Lord, advised against publication,
thumb|right |alt=A large skyscraper called the New York Hilton Midtown, in daylight in 2013|The [[New York Hilton Midtown (pictured in 2013), where Times reporters organized the Papers for publication in spring 1971]]
Start of publication
The New York Times began publishing excerpts on June 13, 1971; the first article in the series was titled "Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Involvement". The study was dubbed the Pentagon Papers during the resulting media publicity. Street protests, political controversy, and lawsuits followed.
Entry into the Congressional Record
To ensure the possibility of public debate about the papers' content, on June 29, US Senator Mike Gravel, an Alaska Democrat, entered 4,100 pages of the papers into the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds. These portions of the papers, which were edited for Gravel by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, and given directly to Gravel by Ben Bagdikian, the then national editor of The Washington Post in a June 26 meeting in front of the Mayflower Hotel at midnight, A federal grand jury was subsequently empaneled to investigate possible violations of federal law in the release of the report. Leonard Rodberg, a Gravel aide, was subpoenaed to testify about his role in obtaining and arranging for publication of the Pentagon Papers. Gravel asked the court (in Gravel v. United States) to quash the subpoena on the basis of the Speech or Debate Clause in Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution.
That clause provides that "for any Speech or Debate in either House, [a Senator or Representative] shall not be questioned in any other Place", meaning that Gravel could not be prosecuted for anything said on the Senate floor, and, by extension, for anything entered to the Congressional Record, allowing the papers to be publicly read without threat of a treason trial and conviction. When Gravel's request was reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court denied the request to extend this protection to Gravel or Rodberg because the grand jury subpoena served on them related to a third party rather than any act they themselves committed for the preparation of materials later entered into the Congressional Record. Nevertheless, the grand jury investigation was halted, and the publication of the papers was never prosecuted.
Later, Ellsberg said the documents "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates." He added that he leaked the Papers to end what he perceived to be "a wrongful war"; The administration argued Ellsberg and Russo were guilty of a felony under the Espionage Act of 1917, because they had no authority to publish classified documents. After failing to persuade The New York Times to voluntarily cease publication on June 14, The New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger said: