Step 1 : Introduction to the question "The "Pentagon Papers" contained secret government information about what?"
On this day in 1971, The New York Times began to publish sections of the so-called “Pentagon Papers,” a top-secret Department of Defense study of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. As the Vietnam War dragged on, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg—who had worked on the study—came to oppose the war, and decided that the information contained in the Pentagon Papers should be available to the American public. He photocopied the report and gave the copy to The New York Times, which then published a series of scathing articles based on the report’s most damning secrets.