(Parts of this sound similar to our current circumstances. The second paragrah could be easilly applied to Iran. Feel free to disagree.)
Most, but not all of the Pentagon Papers were given ("leaked") to Neil Sheehan of The New York Times in early 1971 by a former State Department official Daniel Ellsberg, with his friend Anthony Russo assisting in copying them. The Times began publishing excerpts as a series of articles on June 13. <1> Controversy and lawsuits followed. On June 29, U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska entered 4,100 pages of the Papers into the record of his subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds. These portions of the Papers were subsequently published by Beacon Press. <2>
The Papers revealed, among other things, that the government had deliberately expanded its role in the war by conducting air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by U.S. Marines well before the American public was told about the actions, and while President Lyndon Johnson had been promising not to expand the war. The document increased the credibility gap for the U.S. government, and was seen as hurting the efforts by the Nixon administration to fight the war.According to Anthony Lewis's contribution in the coursepack from James Goodale's (former inhouse counsel to the Times) law school course on Old Media, New Media the Times received advice from inhouse counsel not to publish. Goodale counseled otherwise, reasoning that the press had a First Amendment right to print material of such significance to the people's understanding of government policy. The Nixon administration, however, argued that Ellsberg and Russo had no legal authority to release classified documents and were therefore guilty of a felony in providing them to the Times.
One of the "credibility gaps" that the Times wrote of was that a consensus to bomb North Vietnam had developed in the Johnson administration on September 7, 1964, before the U.S. presidential elections. <3> However, according to the same Papers, none of the actions recommended by the consensus on September 7 involved bombing North Vietnam. <1> On June 14, 1971 the Times declared that the Johnson administration began the last rounds of planning for a bombing campaign in November.
Another controversial issue was the implication by the Times that Johnson had made up his mind to send U.S. combat troops to Vietnam by July 17, 1965 and this became the basis for an allegation that he only pretended to consult his advisors from July 21-July 27. This was due to the presence of a cable which stated that "Vance informs McNamara that President has approved 34 Battalion Plan and will try to push through reserve call-up." <2> When the cable was declassified in 1988, it was revealed that it read "there was a continuing uncertainty as to his
final decision, which would have to await Secretary McNamara's recommendation and the views of Congressional leaders particularly the views of Senator Russel." <4>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers