Pentagon Papers Declassified 40 Years after Publication

Posted June 13th, 2011 at 12:45 pm (UTC-5)
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The U.S. National Archives has released the complete “Pentagon Papers,” 40 years after parts of the secret government study first appeared in The New York Times.

The then-classified study by the U.S. Defense Department showed the United States was secretly escalating the conflict in Vietnam while misleading Congress, the American public and U.S. allies.

A forerunner of the WikiLeaks document disclosure, publication of the documents started a national discussion on freedom of the press and government transparency.

Military analyst Daniel Ellsburg, the man primarily responsible for leaking the study, told the Associated Press that he does not expect to find any significant revelations in the 7,000-page study.

While most of the study has been out for years, Monday's release draws the information together for the first time, and makes it available online.