The Pentagon Papers refer to a classified U.S. Department of Defense study titled "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force", which detailed the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968.
Commissioned in 1967 by then–Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the study revealed that successive U.S. administrations had misled the public and Congress about the scope and objectives of the Vietnam War. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst who had worked on the study, leaked portions of the report to The New York Times, sparking a major legal and political controversy.
The U.S. government attempted to block publication, citing national security concerns, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the press, affirming the right to publish the documents in a landmark First Amendment case. The leak exposed covert operations, including bombings and raids that had not been disclosed to the public, and fueled growing opposition to the war. The full report—spanning 47 volumes and thousands of pages—was officially declassified and released in 2011.
