A Secret Study
A government study of U.S. involvement in the war was authorized by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967. He formed the Vietnam Study Task Force, a group of 36 Defense Department aides, to work on the 7,000 page, 47 volume report. The Pentagon Papers outlined the entire history of U.S. involvement in the war, spanning from 1945-68 and revealing many misdeeds by the U.S. government.
The Papers are Published
In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst for the report, leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. The paper published parts of the report which showed Americans that they had been misled about the level of U.S. involvement in the war. Outraged, Nixon and the Justice Department went to court to stop the release of the papers. During this time, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe also published parts of the Pentagon Papers. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the publications and the report continued to intensify the antiwar movement. Daniel Ellsberg was then indicted for leaking the Pentagon Papers. Convinced the court would not rule fast enough, the Nixon administration ordered "the Plumbers", a secret White House group, to investigate Ellsberg and discredit him. This led to Ellsberg's case to be declared a mistrial.