Nearby atop the Times were three other columns displaying a story by investigative reporter Neil Sheehan: “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing Involvement,” the first installment of what would come to be known as the “Pentagon Papers,” the leak of a classified yearlong seven-thousand-page study commissioned by Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, that traced how the U.S. had become embroiled in the Vietnam War. The papers documented, richly and at great length, the official lies that had led so many young American men to die in the jungles of southeast Asia.
