Pentagon Papers released in their 7,000-page entirety

FORTY years after the explosive leak of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study chronicling deception and misadventure in US conduct of the Vietnam War, the report has come out in its entirety.

The 7,000-page report was the WikiLeaks of its time, a sensational breach of government confidentiality that shook Richard Nixon’s presidency and prompted a Supreme Court fight that advanced press freedom.

Prepared near the end of Lyndon Johnson’s term as president by defence department and private foreign policy analysts, the report was leaked by one of the analysts, Daniel Ellsberg, in an act of defiance that stands as one of the most dramatic cases of whistle-blowing in history.