Free E-book: Pentagon Papers ( Gravel Edition)

Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition:

A top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Completed in 1968 and leaked to the press to be first published by the New York Times in 1971. An excellent source for the study of the Vietnam War across administrations.

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The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident:

Flawed Intelligence and the Decision for War in Vietnam

From John Prados & The National Security Archive, George Washington University.

"President Johnson and top U.S. officials chose to believe that North Vietnam had just attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, even though the highly classified signals intercepts they cited to each other actually described a naval clash two days earlier (a battle prompted by covert U.S. attacks on North Vietnam), according to the declassified intercepts, Johnson White House tapes, and related documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Compiled by Archive senior fellow and Vietnam expert John Prados, today's 40th anniversary electronic briefing book includes Dr. Prados's detailed analysis of the intercepts - only declassified in 2003 - together with audio files and transcripts of the key Tonkin Gulf conversations between President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The latter are excerpted from Dr. Prados's book, The White House Tapes (New York: The New Press, 2003). The posting also contains photographs and charts from the Tonkin Gulf incident courtesy of the U.S. Naval Historical Center, a detailed documentary chronology compiled by the State Department's Office of the Historian for the Foreign Relations of the United States series, a CIA Special National Intelligence Estimate on possible North Vietnamese responses to U.S. actions from May 1964 (just declassified in June 2004), and links to previous and upcoming Archive publications on Vietnam."

Link to electronic briefing book (outside THF network).

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Fighting the War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973

Fighting the War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973:

From The National Security ARchive, George Washington University.


 "Previously secret U.S. Air Force official histories of the Vietnam war published by the National Security Archive disclose for the first time that Central Intelligence Agency contract employees had a direct role in combat air attacks when they flew Laotian government aircraft on strike missions and that the Air Force actively considered nuclear weapons options during the 1959 Laos crisis.
The newly declassified histories, which were released through Freedom of Information Act litigation by the National Security Archive with the law firm James & Hoffman, include the Air Force's detailed official history of the war in northern Laos, written during the 1990s but hidden in classified form for years. Also declassified were Air Force historical studies on specific years of the Vietnam War, documenting in great detail the Air Force's role in planning and implementing the air war in North and South Vietnam. Among other significant disclosures in these histories are:

• Air Force interest in nuclear options during at least two flash points in the Southeast Asian conflict: Laos in 1959 and in 1968 during the battle of Khe Sanh.
• CIA operational commitments for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion hampered the Agency's ability to carry out Kennedy administration policy in Laos.
• CIA proprietary Air America directed search and rescue missions in Laos in addition to its role in combat operations.
• The U.S. ambassador in Laos served as the field commander of the so-called "secret war" there, a role that has been largely undocumented."

Link to electronic briefing book (outside THF network).

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The CIA's Vietnam Histories

The CIA's Vietnam Histories:

From John Prados & The National Security Archive, George Washington University.

"The Central Intelligence Agency participated in every aspect of the wars in Indochina, political and military, according to newly declassified CIA histories. The six volumes of formerly secret histories (the Agency's belated response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados) document CIA activities in South and North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in unprecedented detail. The histories contain a great deal of new material and shed light on aspects of the CIA's work that were not well known or were poorly understood."

Link to electronic briefing book (outside THF network).

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Intelligence and Vietnam: The Top Secret 1969 State Department Study

Intelligence and Vietnam: The Top Secret 1969 State Department Study

From The National Security Archive, George Washington University. 

"In late 1968, Thomas L. Hughes, the director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), commissioned this study, intended as an in-house classified review and evaluation of INR's performance on the subject of Vietnam during the eight years of the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies. As Mr. Hughes explains in the retrospective preface he generously provided for this posting, he tasked two former INR analysts who were intimately familiar with INR's product but no longer serving in the Bureau - W. Dean Howells and Dorothy Avery - to produce the study. They wrote the chronological review of INR reporting, compiled the annexes of source material, and wrote the thematic summaries as well. Recently retired INR staffer Fred Greene then reviewed the material and wrote the critique section. Mr. Hughes refrained from supervising or editing the results."

Link to electronic briefing book & report (outside THF network).

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You can download podcasts to your mp4 player and/or mobile phone for free by visiting the THF Podcast Homepage or by subscribing to one of the RSS feeds below:

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