The Wikileaks documents are no Pentagon Papers

In 1971, in contrast, the Pentagon Papers revealed a host of important discrepancies between the public posture of the U.S. government with respect to Vietnam and the truth — from the Truman administration, through the times of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.

These included Lyndon Johnson’s dissembling during the 1964 presidential campaign and in the run-up to the key decision in 1965 to send large numbers of combat troops, as well as confirmation of U.S. involvement in the 1963 coup [9] against South Vietnamese premier Ngo Dinh Diem. And perhaps most famously, was the evidence that the administration had decided to escalate the war before the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution gave them the authority to do so.

There are many reasons for the differences between these two troves of documents, but perhaps the most important is that today’s documents provide a “ground level” view of the war, while the Pentagon Papers offered a classic “top-down” perspective. Wars are fought on the ground, and the perspective such a view provides can be invaluable. But many of a war’s key secrets, especially in political terms, are generated at the top.