Secretary of Defense McNamara Authorizes Pentagon Papers
In the midst of the Vietnam War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara developed doubts about whether the U.S. could win the war. Consequently, on this day he authorized a secret history of American involvement in Vietnam, beginning in the late 1940s. The report, which became known as The Pentagon Papers, finally totaled 3,000 pages of text and 4,000 pages of documents in 47 volumes.
Daniel Ellsberg, who had once been a strong supporter of the war but now was opposed to it, illegally photocopied the Papers at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, where he worked, and leaked it to The New York Times. The Times published an explosive story based on the Papers on June 13, 1971, which revealed secrets about American involvement that had been kept from the public. The Nixon administration obtained an injunction against the Times on June 15, 1971, and in a historic decision in favor of freedom of the press, the Supreme Court declared the injunction unconstitutional on June 30, 1971.
In addition to the Pentagon Papers case, the Vietnam War created a number of civil liberties crises. They include (1) the lack of a Congressional Declaration of War as required by the Constitution (June 3, 1970); (2) threats to freedom of the press in the Pentagon Papers case (June 30, 1971); (3) spying on the anti-war movement by the CIA (August 15, 1967); (4) threats to freedom of expression, for example high school student protests (February 24, 1969); censorship of television programs (February 25, 1968); and directly and indirectly some of the events that led to the Watergate Scandal (May 9, 1969; January 27, 1972).
Read the Pentagon Papers on line: http://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers/
Read: John Prados and Margaret Pratt Porter, Inside the Pentagon Papers (2004)
Learn more about Daniel Ellsberg: Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002)
Read: Tom Wells, Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg (2001)