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| Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 © AFP/Getty Images/File Neilson Barnard |
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The Pentagon Papers, a US government report into the Vietnam War, were finally published in full, 40 years after embarrassing details of the document were leaked.
President Lyndon Johnson's administration commissioned a Vietnam Study Task Force in 1967 to write a comprehensive report about America's ill-fated involvement in the Vietnam conflict.
Excerpts were leaked to the New York Times in 1971, by former United States Military Analysist Daniel Ellsberg, showing that successive US administrations had lied to the public about Vietnam, and triggering then president Richard Nixon to attempt to prevent any further such leaks.
