THE 'PENTAGON PAPERS'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R000200160016-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 30, 2004
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: July 8, 1971
• Content Type: MEMO

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8 July 1971
SUBJECT: The "Pentagon Papers"
I. Background
1. The set of documents that has become informally termed the
"Pentagon Papers" is in fact a study entitled "United States-Vietnam
Relations 1945-1967" produced by a group labelled "Vietnam Task Fo_ ce"
in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The study consists of 45
volumes of text plus a four-page "47th volume" that includes the two-
page transmittal memorandum by which Leslie H. Gelb (Chairman of the
Task Force) formally forwarded the whole study to the Secretary of
Defense plus a two-page "outline" (i. e. , table of contents). A copy of
this "volume 47" is appended to this memorandum.
2. As a quick examination of the outline will illustrate, the s ady
is an amalgam of narrative text by members of the Task Force that wrote
it plus compendia of official documents grouped by period or subject or
both. In virtually every volume, the narrative text quotes extensively
(and usually quite selectively) from a variety of official documents. ,:ot
all of these are reproduced separately in the documentary annexes, but
in many cases the quotations are collectively so extensive that most of
the document in question is reproduced at some point or other in the study.
In addition, every volume (and, usually, every section) of narrative text
has a fairly elaborate set of footnotes which cite by full title, identifying
number (e. g. , SNIE 10-4-54) and issue date virtually every document
discussed, alluded to or quoted from in the text itself. The documents
cited, quoted from or discussed span the entire classification gamut from
overt published material (e. g. , books and articles) to Top Secret documents
carrying a variety of additional restrictive indicators.
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3. The study was commissioned in June 1967 by then Secretary
McNamara who levied the requirement on the Office of international
Security Affairs, at that time headed by John McNaughton. Morton H.
Halperin, McNaughton's Deputy for Policy Planning and Arms Control,
was apparently given command oversight of the project and the Task Force
which did the actual work was chaired by one of Halperin's subordinates,
Leslie H. Gelb. (Both Gelb and Halperin are now with the Brookings
Institute. ) Some 30-40 people -- officers from the military services,
Defense Department civilian employees (including Daniel Ellsberg) and
a variety of outside consultants, many but not all from the RAND
Corporation -- seemed to have worked on various parts of the study at
various times. Despite the dates given in its title (1945-1967), from the
standpoint of substance the study effectively cuts off with President
Johnson's 31 March 1968 speech. When the various parts of the study
were actually written cannot be determined with certainty, though its
various portions were clearly written by different people at different
times and the end result is much more a collection of separate mono-
graphs than a unified whole. It would appear that all portions of the
study were completed by the summer or early fall of 1968. As a glance
at Gelb's transmittal memorandum will demonstrate, however, the study
was not formally dispatched through channels to the Secretary of Defense
(Mr. Clifford) until 15 January 1969 -- a Wednesday. President Nixon's
inauguration was, of course, on Monday, 20 January 1969. Thus the study
was in fact dispatched with only two working days left before the change
of administration in the Defense Department.
II. Parochial Damage Assessment
4. There are repeated references to the Agency, its activities,
its officers (some identified by name) and its alleged positions throughout
most of the narrative portion of the study. Also the narrative is replete
with allusions to, discussions of and quotations from (augmented by specific
footnote citations) a wide range of Agency documents: operational cables,
raw field reports, Headquarters disseminations, NIE's and SNIE's, formal
memoranda and studies (from ONE, OER, OCI, the DDI and special task
groups), informal and in some cases internal memoranda, and memoranda
from the DCI (Mr. McCone) to the President. In assessing the damage
done in having the study pass in its entirety into the public domain and/or
unfriendly hands (e. g. , the Soviet Government), it must of course be
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recognized that all of the material in the Pentagon study, is now at least
the ee years old and some of it is over twenty years old: Nor_etheles s,
we are concerned about the following areas of actual or potential damage:
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7. Given the fact that -- whatever be its legal status or name --
a struggle is going on in which the U. S. is involved on one side and
North Vietnam on the other, in which armed force is being used,
Americans are being killed, and which the U.S. Government is trying
to end through negotiations currently in progress -- it is hard to
escape the fact that the leak of the Pentagon papers provides propaganda
and political action ammunition of inordinate value to those presently
engaged in armed conflict with the United States.
8. Finally, the leak of the study raises the whole range of issues
associated with the right -- or even ability -- of the U. S. Government
to conduct private business privately. It also raises a range of basic
issues concerning the right or ability of officials in any administration
to engage in frank debates or discussions associated with their official
responsibilities without having their views and actions subject to host,-'-_e,
out-of-context criticism at some later date and in some changed and later
climate out within a time span whereby such retrospective review can
adversely affect such officials' public or private careers without their
having any effective means of seeking recourse or redress. In short,
the leak of the Pentagon papers raises the basic issue of the U. S.
Government's right or ability to have or protect secrets of any nature.
IV. Other Pertinent Considerations
9. One of the major questions obviously raised by the matter of
the Pentagon papers is that of precisely what is now floating about in
unauthorized hands outside of government control. The answer is that we
do not really know. Eisberg, for one, clearly had access to the whole
study and is presumed to have copied all of it. He is believed to have
turned over a complete version to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
in 1970. Apparently he did not give a complete version to the New York
Times since that paper, by the inventory it furnished the court, does not
have the four negotiations volumes that constitute section VI-C. Whether
these volumes are floating around elsewhere is a matter of conjecture,
though there are grounds for believing that the Soviet Embassy (at least)
was given a complete set by someone.
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13. The study itself is patently tendentious, pa. tial and axe-
grindingly selective. It is much more of a background file for a future
et
pros c io n brief than a balanced or comprehensive historical survey-
The circumstances of the study's ~ preparation, the timing of its official
transmittal forward from its originators, and the distribution of'its
copies inevitably generate certain questions about the intentions of those
\Vho suocrvised its preparation. Also the study itself has one glaring
omission that could hardly have been inadvertent: There is no volume
V-B-5, h e. , while there are nine volumes of internal documents written
during the administrations of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower
and Re,-nedy, there is no such volume of documents for the administration
of President Johnson -- though Johnson-era documents were clearly used
(and cited) by the study's authors and, hence, clearly in their possession.
11. We know that in addition to what is in the study itself, Elisberg
had in his possession certain other papers, some of which (known as
Related Docu: tents ") were in a folder of his found at RAND.
Some of these related documents have been incorporated
in material published in the New York Times, but we really do not know
the totality of what was/is in Ellsberg's possession or is now in the
possession of the Times or some other paper.
12. In a 26 June story, the Chicago Sun-Times made reference to
an alleged 1969 CIA "estimate" purportedly disavowing, the domino theory.
The estimate in question (which was, to put it mildly, distorted in the
Sun-Times story) was in fact issued in November 1968. But a careful
examination of the Sun-Times story and the estimate's text leads to the
conclusion that what was leaked was not the estimate itself but someone's
commentary or summary of it, probably prepared in conjunction with worn
on the 29-question Vietnam assessment that constituted \SSM-1 -- work
that was in fact done in the spring of 1969. Whether or not this particular
hypothesis is correct, the 26 June Sun-Times story convincingly demonstrates
that highly classified Vietnam-related material considerably later in date
than anything in the Pentagon papers is also floating about outside of govern-
ment control. In short, there is the very real possibility that the leak of
the Pentagon papers may prove to be only an opening salvo in a campaign
of selective major leaks by persons opposed to the war and that once the
interest in the Pentagon study begins to wane, new sets of classified
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documents of more recent vintage may be surfaced i n public prin.;. What
we have assessed' to. date, conseouently, may well prove to be but thei_-rst
chapter of our final damage assessment.
Attachment
"Fir-al Report - OSD Task Force, Vietnam & Index"
1J. +G i7L 1
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F!NAL RE?ORI?- OSD T k Force, Vietnam
INDEX'
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