Pentagon Papers - Contents

Contents

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara created the Vietnam Study Task Force on June 17, 1967, for the purpose of writing an "encyclopedic history of the Vietnam War". McNamara claimed that he wanted to leave a written record for historians, to prevent policy errors in future administrations. McNamara neglected to inform either President Lyndon Johnson or Secretary of State Dean Rusk about the study. One report claimed that McNamara planned to give the work to his friend Robert F. Kennedy, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. McNamara later denied this, although he also admitted that he should have informed Johnson and Rusk.

Instead of using existing Defense Department historians, McNamara assigned his close aide and Assistant Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton to collect the papers. McNaughton died in an air accident one month after work began in June 1967, but the project continued under the direction of Defense Department official Leslie H. Gelb. Thirty-six analysts—half of them active-duty military officers, the rest academics and civilian federal employees—worked on the study. The analysts largely used existing files in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and conducted no interviews or consultations with the armed forces, with the White House, or with other federal agencies in order to keep the study secret from others, including National Security Advisor Walt W. Rostow.

McNamara left the Defense Department in February 1968 and his successor Clark M. Clifford received the finished study on 15 January 1969, five days before Richard Nixon's inauguration - although Clifford claimed he never read it. The study comprised 3,000 pages of historical analysis and 4,000 pages of original government documents in 47 volumes, and was classified as "Top Secret - Sensitive". ("Sensitive" is not an official security designation; it meant that the study's publication would be embarrassing.) The task force published 15 copies; the think-tank RAND Corp received two of the copies from Gelb, Halperin, and Paul Warnke, with access granted if at least two of the three approved.