Edited By John Prados
Washington, DC, June 13, 2011 - The complete version of the Pentagon Papers released today by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) includes a substantial amount of information not previously published. Approximately 34% of the report is available for the first time, according to NARA.
The public release today of the full Pentagon Papers—40 years after their leaked publication in the media—is a welcome event on many levels: including closing a bizarre chapter in the annals of U.S. government secrecy practices while opening another window into one of the pivotal episodes of modern world history, the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers are a milestone document in American political history both for their contents and for the legal and political battles that raged over the principles involved in their revelation and the tactics to which the Nixon administration resorted in its efforts to neutralize the leak. In addition, in and of themselves, the contents of the Pentagon Papers have informed histories of the American war in Vietnam for two generations and are likely to return to the fore today with the opening of material previously suppressed in the study
To mark today's public release, the National Security Archive here posts important background materials that users of the newly declassified portions of the Pentagon Papers—formally known as United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967—will find helpful.
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