The U.S. National Archives is set to release the complete “Pentagon Papers” in Washington Monday, exactly 40 years after parts of the leaked government document first appeared in the New York Times.
The then-classified study by the U.S. defense department showed the United States was secretly escalating the conflict in Vietnam while misleading Congress, the American public and U.S. allies. A forerunner of the WikiLeaks document disclosure, publication of the documents started a national discussion on freedom of the press and government transparency.
Military analyst Daniel Ellsburg, the man primarily responsible for leaking the study, told the Associated Press that he does not expect to find any significant revelations in the complete 7,000 page document, now declassified, which will be published online.