Pentagon Papers: primary documents
Key documents from the Pentagon Papers record transcribed in searchable HTML: the McNamara memoranda to President Johnson documenting the Defense Secretary's private assessment that the war was unwinnable; the NSA historian's finding that intelligence officials deliberately omitted the evidence showing the August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin attack never occurred; the Pentagon Papers summary findings on four administrations; and the Supreme Court's core holdings in New York Times Co. v. United States. First searchable HTML compilation of these primary source documents in one place.
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. Memoranda to President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966-1967. Top Secret. Included in the Pentagon Papers. Now available without redaction through the National Archives and the Foreign Relations of the United States series (history.state.gov).
The Secretary of Defense to the President:
The war in Vietnam is not going well. Success in the next year or two will depend on whether the following three things occur: (1) Can we improve substantially the pacification program? (2) Can we improve substantially the ARVN [South Vietnamese Army] effectiveness? (3) Can we get the enemy to stop large-scale operations and terrorism? [...]
Pacification has, if anything, gone backward. [...]
I see no reasonable way to bring the war to an end soon. [...] The prognosis is bad that the war can be brought to a satisfactory conclusion within the next two years. The large-unit operations probably cannot improve [the situation] significantly. [...]
The Secretary of Defense to the President:
The United States has an important stake in seeing that we do not have to withdraw from Vietnam in ignominious defeat. [...]
There may be a 'stalemate' with the military problem in the South [remaining unresolved]. [...]
I recommend that we stop the bombing of North Vietnam. [...]
The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. [...]
The Secretary of Defense to the President:
The war in Vietnam is acquiring a momentum of its own that must be stopped. [...]
Westmoreland's [troop request] could lead to a major national disaster. [...]
There is an important difference between what the public is told and what is going on inside. [...]
Context: McNamara's November 1967 memo describing the war as a potential "major national disaster" was written while the Johnson administration publicly maintained that progress was being made. The Tet Offensive began on January 30, 1968, demonstrating to the American public what McNamara's classified memos had told the President for over a year. McNamara left the Defense Department in February 1968. The reaction of other Johnson advisors to the November 1967 memo was described by McNamara in his memoir as "dangerously strong." The war continued for six more years.
Source: Pentagon Papers, National Archives (archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers). Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Volumes III and IV (history.state.gov).
Selected findings from the Pentagon Papers study as documented across its 47 volumes. Fully declassified June 2011 by the National Archives. The following are confirmed findings of the study, not editorial interpretations.
The United States provided military and financial aid to France's colonial war in Indochina beginning in 1950. The commitment preceded significant communist threat to the region and was undertaken with the State Department privately acknowledging the French military position was deteriorating. [...]
The 1954 Geneva Accords required nationwide elections in Vietnam in 1956 to reunify the country. The United States and the government of South Vietnam declined to permit the elections. [...]
The [U.S.-backed Saigon government] refused to be bound by the Geneva Accords and, with the knowledge and approval of the United States, refused to participate in the 1956 elections. [...]
[Internal assessments concluded] that free elections would likely result in the communists winning, possibly by a significant margin. [...]
The United States was directly involved in the planning and execution of the November 1963 coup that overthrew South Vietnamese President Diem, who was subsequently killed. [...] The U.S. government knew of and did not act to prevent Diem's death. [...]
Despite public statements describing American involvement as advisory, the United States steadily expanded its military commitment from approximately 900 advisors in 1961 to over 16,000 by November 1963. [...]
Planning for the systematic bombing of North Vietnam began before the Gulf of Tonkin incident and before the 1964 election. [...]
The administration planned a graduated escalation of the war before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed, using the resolution as political cover for decisions already made. [...]
Internal assessments from 1967 onward concluded the bombing campaigns were not achieving their stated objectives. The assessments were not publicly disclosed. [...]
Source: United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967 (the Pentagon Papers). National Archives. Fully declassified June 2011. 48 boxes, approximately 7,000 pages. archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers.
Robert J. Hanyok, NSA historian. "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964." Published in classified NSA Cryptological Quarterly, early 2001. Declassified 2005-2006, released alongside nearly 200 additional NSA Gulf of Tonkin documents. Available at nsa.gov. The NSA official history of Vietnam, declassified 2007, reaches the same conclusion.
Based on a comprehensive analysis of the signals intelligence records from the night of August 4, 1964, the conclusion of this study is that there was no attack on the USS Maddox or the USS Turner Joy on that night. [...]
The North Vietnamese activity on the night of August 4 consisted of salvage and search and rescue operations following the August 2 engagement, not an attack on the American destroyers. [...]
The overwhelming body of reports, if used, would have told the story that no attack had happened. [...]
Intelligence officials deliberately omitted most of the relevant communications intercepts when presenting evidence to policymakers. The signals intelligence record was skewed to support the conclusion that an attack had taken place. [...]
Intercepted North Vietnamese communications told a story that could not be revealed to the public although the evidence was persuasive enough to use as a cornerstone for a new direction in American policy toward North Vietnam. [NSA internal Gulf of Tonkin study, 1964, declassified] [...]
There was no incident in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964. [...]
The NSA's records from that night, when viewed in their totality rather than selectively, support no other conclusion. [...]
The August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, obtained using evidence intelligence officials knew was incomplete and selectively presented, gave the Johnson administration authority to escalate the Vietnam War without a formal congressional declaration. It was used to justify every major escalation until the war's end. The resolution was repealed in 1971, the same year the Pentagon Papers were published. The NSA Hanyok study documenting these findings was written in 2001, four years before it was declassified. Its classification for four years after its completion was itself a decision.
Source: Robert J. Hanyok, "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish," NSA Cryptological Quarterly, 2001. Declassified 2005. NSA Official History of the Vietnam War, declassified 2007. nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/gulf-of-tonkin/
Supreme Court of the United States. New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713. Decided June 30, 1971. Per curiam opinion, 6 to 3. Separate concurrences by six justices. The case addressed whether the Nixon administration could suppress publication of the Pentagon Papers through prior restraint.
Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity. The Government thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint. The District Court for the Southern District of New York in the New York Times case and the District Court for the District of Columbia and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the Washington Post case held that the Government had not met that burden. We agree. [...]
I believe that every moment's continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment. [...]
The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. [...]
In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do. [...]
The First Amendment tolerates absolutely no prior judicial restraints of the press predicated upon surmise or conjecture that untoward consequences may result. [...]
The Government has not met [the heavy burden]. Accordingly, I join the Court in reversing the judgments of the courts below. [...]
In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry , in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government. For this reason, it is perhaps here that a press that is alert, aware, and free most vitally serves the basic purpose of the First Amendment. [...]
Source: New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). Public record. supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/403/713/
The documents confirm: the August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin attack never happened, and intelligence officials deliberately omitted contrary evidence when presenting the signals intelligence record to policymakers; four administrations maintained internal assessments of the Vietnam situation that diverged from their public statements; McNamara privately told Johnson in 1967 that Westmoreland's troop request could lead to a major national disaster while the administration publicly supported the war effort; the bombing campaigns were internally assessed as ineffective before they were publicly discontinued; and the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the government could not suppress publication of a document that exposed these facts.
What the documents do not establish: that the decision to fight in Vietnam was made in bad faith by any individual. The Pentagon Papers document a pattern of institutional behavior, not individual bad faith at every level. McNamara and others privately believed in the importance of preventing communist expansion in Southeast Asia even as they doubted the strategy being used. The documents establish what senior officials knew. They establish where the public account diverged from the private assessment. They do not establish what any official's ultimate motivations were for the divergence.
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