Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnem Task force (The “Pentagon Papers“).
U.S. Department of Defense
1967
7,000pp.
In June of 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked significant portions of this report, blowing the lid off of the way the United States had conducted the war in Vietnem.
Today, thanks to the National Archives, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, the entire, original, unredacted seven thousand page report has been declassified and made available to the public. It also includes background documentation and a complete account of the peace negotiations, none of which were previously available.
That this release will become one of the most important documents in the study of the war is axiomatic. What is better, it is available at no charge to anyone with the desire and bandwidth to download its 1.5 gigabytes of PDF files. Whether you have read the original edition published by the New York Times or not, historians, political scientists, and Vietnam War buffs will want to grab this. I’m scheduling it for when I am back in the US, or someplace with really fast download speeds.
Related articles
- Review: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (steadydietoffilm.typepad.com)
- The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed. Fed Crimes Too Big To Understand? (worldnewsrecord.wordpress.com)
- Ah, Those “11 Words”! (nsarchive.wordpress.com)
