On June 13, 1971, the New York Times published the first part of the top-secret document more commonly known as the Pentagon Papers.
The official title of the so-called Pentagon Papers was “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force”, which was a top secret study conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1967-1969. The final report, contained in 47 volumes of over 7,000 pages of narratives and documents, detailed U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam since the end of World War II up until the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.
The Pentagon Papers revealed that successive U.S. administrations of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had misled the American public regarding the extent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In 1971, portions of the report were leaked to the New York Times, which then began publishing those portions. The U.S. government, now under President Richard Nixon, tried to restrict further publication, but was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Subsequently, aside from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and other newspapers published portions of the report. The revelation of the Pentagon Papers came at a time when public opposition and outrage to the Vietnam War was reaching the tipping point.
In Relation to the Vietnam War President Nixon had announced in a nationwide broadcast that he had committed U.S. ground troops to a planned military operation in Cambodia. Within days, large demonstrations of up to 100,000 to 150,000 protesters broke out in American cities, with the unrest again centered in universities and colleges. On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University, Ohio, National Guardsmen opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing four people and wounding eight others. This incident sparked even wider, increasingly militant and violent protests across the country. Anti-war sentiment already was intense in the United States following news reports in November 1969 of what became known as the My Lai Massacre, where U.S. troops on a search and destroy mission descended on My Lai and My Khe villages and killed between 347 and 504 civilians, including women and children.
American public outrage further was fueled when in June 1971, the New York Times began publishing the “Pentagon Papers” (officially titled: United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense), a highly classified study by the U.S. Department of Defense that was leaked to the press. The Pentagon Papers showed that successive past administrations, including those of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, but especially of President Johnson, had many times misled the American people regarding U.S. involvement in Vietnam. President Nixon sought legal grounds to stop the document’s publication for national security reasons, but the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently decided in favor of the New York Times and publication continued, and which was also later taken up by the Washington Post and other newspapers.