Summary of The Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers are a collection of documents leaked in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst at the RAND Corporation. The documents consisted of a massive collection of reports from the Department of Defense, detailing US political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945-67. These reports documented the systematic lies and deliberate obfuscations of the truth that the US government used to justify its war in Vietnam. It exposed the countless American lives and resources lost in pursuit of an unwinnable war and a failed foreign policy. The newspapers who first published the Pentagon Papers faced legal action for publishing classified material. Ultimately the Supreme Court ruled that the newspapers had the right to publish the material under the First Amendment. It opened the public’s eyes to a disastrous US policy and paved the way for the eventual end of the war.