The Pentagon Papers A secret study of the Vietnam War set off an incredible sequence of events. By John T. Correll n June 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara commis- sioned a sweeping study of the Vietnam War that would later Ibecome known as “The Pentagon Papers.” Earlier, McNamara had been a lead- ing proponent of US involvement in Vietnam, but by 1967, he was disil- lusioned with the war and no longer believed in the policies he had been so instrumental in establishing. His motives for launching the Penta- gon Papers project are not clear. Years afterward, McNamara said his purpose had been to preserve a written record for researchers, but there are doubts about his explanation. When the Pentagon Papers were published by the newspapers in 1971, 50 AIR FORCE Magazine / February 2007 former President Lyndon B. Johnson (University of California Press, 1996), and former Secretary of State Dean the idea for the study may have first Rusk—who were not informed about occurred to McNamara during a visit the project—speculated that the in- to the Kennedy Institute of Politics at tention had been to provide political Harvard in November 1966. ammunition for McNamara’s friend, McNaughton, who encouraged Mc- Robert F. Kennedy, who challenged Namara to sponsor the project, had Johnson for the Democratic presiden- been a professor of law at Harvard. tial nomination in 1968. McNaughton’s first action, after re- “I never thought to mention the ceiving his direction for the study project to the President or the sec- from McNamara, was to ask Harvard retary of state,” McNamara said in professor Richard E. Neustadt to lead his memoirs. “It was hardly a secret, it. When Neustadt was not available, however, nor could it have been with McNaughton turned to Halperin and 36 researchers and analysts ultimately Gelb, who had been faculty assistants involved.” In actuality, the study was to Henry A. Kissinger at Harvard. carried out with great secrecy, and (At one point, Kissinger himself was The Pentagon special measures were taken to avoid consulted on structure of the secret discovery by the White House. study. He does not mention this in The Vietnam Study Task Force was his memoirs.) One more Harvard con- created June 17, 1967 and tasked with nection was yet to come when Daniel creating an “encyclopedic history of Ellsberg, Ph.D., Harvard, 1963, briefly the Vietnam War.” Cleverly, McNa- joined the study in 1967 as one of the mara did not assign the job to the analysts. Papers regular historians in the Department Once McNamara set the project in of Defense. Instead, he gave it to his motion, he did not interfere with it. He trusted colleague, John T. McNaugh- figured it would take about six people ton, assistant secretary of defense for and would be finished in three months. international security affairs. General Ultimately, Gelb employed 36 analysts. supervision of the project was assigned Half of them were active duty military to McNaughton’s deputy, Morton H. officers. A fourth were federal civilian Halperin. Leslie H. Gelb, the director employees, and the final fourth were of policy planning and arms control professional scholars. When McNa- in ISA, was picked to direct the study mara left office in February 1968, the on a daily basis. study was still in progress. There was an extraordinary number of linkages between the Pentagon Pa- The Study pers project and Harvard University. Gelb’s team worked primarily from According to David Rudenstine, author documents in the Office of the Secre- of The Day the Presses Stopped: A tary of Defense files. There were no History of the Pentagon Papers Case interviews, no calls to the military Photo © Bettmann/Corbis Daniel Ellsberg. After two weeks on the run, Ellsberg (l) on June 28, 1971 arrives at the federal courthouse in Boston, where he was promptly ar- rested. Anthony J. Russo Jr. Ellsberg accomplice and co-defendant enters the federal courthouse in Los Angeles. AIR FORCE Magazine / February 2007 51 Only 15 copies of the study were produced. Of these, two copies were deposited with RAND, a federal con- tract research center that did a consid- erable amount of defense work. One of the RAND copies was contributed by Paul Warnke, who succeeded Mc- Naughton at International Security Affairs. The other was from Gelb and Halperin, who had been given a copy jointly. Access to the RAND copies required concurrence from two out of the three donors. Ellsberg Copies the Papers Daniel Ellsberg had drifted in and out of defense policy circles for years. He was on first-name terms with McNaughton, Halperin, Gelb, and Kissinger. He graduated from Harvard in 1952 and finished his course work Robert S. McNamara. Before his disillusionment, the Pentagon chief and for a Ph.D. in economics in 1954, but architect of the war makes an upbeat tour of South Vietnam. his doctorate was not awarded until he completed his dissertation in 1963. He served as a Marine Corps infantry of- services for input, no consultation with author Rudenstine has noted, “Sensi- ficer for two years in the 1950s, then other federal agencies. According to tive” was not part of the official clas- went to work for RAND. Halperin, these restrictions—as well sification system. They added it as a In July 1964, McNaughton offered as the top secret classification—were signal that disclosure of the contents him a job as his special assistant. In that intended to keep national security could cause embarrassment. capacity, his most important duty was advisor Walt W. Rostow from learn- The study filled 47 volumes, a total of screening all of the information that ing about the project, telling Lyndon 7,000 pages. Of these, 3,000 pages were came in on Vietnam. Ellsberg figured Johnson, and getting it canceled. historical studies and the other 4,000 this would lead to his appointment “at The study drew mainly on McNama- pages were government documents. The the deputy assistant secretary level” in ra’s and McNaughton’s files. William official title was “US-Vietnam Relations, less than a year. That did not happen, P. Bundy, former assistant secretary 1945-1967: History of US Decision and in 1965, he moved over to the State of state for far eastern affairs, also Making Process on Vietnam Policy.” It Department and went to Vietnam as a provided some material. The OSD was dubbed “The Pentagon Papers” by foreign service officer. files included some documents from the news media in 1971. When Ellsberg returned to the Unit- the CIA and the services, but the study team had no access to White House files or to military department docu- ments unless copies had been sent to AP photo McNamara or McNaughton. On Jan. 15, 1969, five days before the Nixon Administration took office, Gelb sent the completed study to Sec- retary of Defense Clark M. Clifford, who claims that he never read it. In his letter of transmittal to Clif- ford, Gelb said that the early chapters “concerning the years 1945 to 1961 tend to be generally nonstartling—al- though there are many interesting tidbits.” The fireworks were embodied in the bulk of the study that followed, covering the overthrow of South Viet- namese President Diem, the Tonkin Gulf incident, the beginnings of the air war and the ground war, strategy and diplomacy, and candid assessments along the way. Gelb and Halperin classified the Lyndon B. Johnson. The Texan, seen here in 1964, soon became a war president. study “Top Secret—Sensitive.” As He later suspected McNamara of conniving with Robert F. Kennedy. 52 AIR FORCE Magazine / February 2007 deliberately low-key prose and column after gray column of official cables, DOD photo memorandums, and position papers. The mass of material seemed to repel readers and even other newsmen. Near- ly a day went by before the networks and wire services took note.” President Nixon’s reaction that Sun- day morning was that the damage fell mostly on the Johnson Administration and that he should leave it alone. That afternoon, however, security advisor Kissinger convinced Nixon that he had to act on “this wholesale theft and unauthorized disclosure.” “The massive hemorrhage of state secrets was bound to raise doubts about our reliability in the minds of other governments, friend or foe, and indeed about the stability of our McNamara (l) and John T. McNaughton. McNamara bypassed regular DOD political system,” Kissinger said in historians in favor of giving the project to McNaughton, a trusted political ally. his memoirs. Once energized, Nixon soon became ed States in 1967, Halperin and Gelb fering them to Kissinger, Sen. J. William obsessed. Dissatisfied with the FBI’s recruited him to work on the Pentagon Fulbright, Sen. George McGovern, and progress in the case, he organized Papers for several months. He went others. He found no takers. his own group of investigators in the back to RAND in 1968. At this point, White House. They styled themselves he was choosing his friends and as- New York Times and Nixon “the plumbers” because their job was sociates primarily from the political In February 1971, Ellsberg told to stop leaks. left and his opposition to the Vietnam Neil Sheehan of the New York Times War had hardened. about the papers and they began dis- What the Study Disclosed In 1969, he requested access to the cussing the possibility of publication. Most of what the Pentagon Papers RAND copies of the Pentagon papers. In March, Ellsberg made the papers revealed was already known in a general Gelb was reluctant to give approval, available to Sheehan.