In 1971, federal investigators convened two grand juries to investigate, among other things,

the publishing by major newspapers of thousands of pages of secret government documents

reviewing the history from 1945 on of the still ongoing war in Vietnam.

The Pentagon Papers, the monumental chronicle of government's secrets and lies,

described in a 2017 Ken Burns film series.

Seven thousand pages of highly classified documents and historical narrative.

Compiled secretly at the orders of former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara.

He had hoped a study of the decision-making process

that had led the United States to become so deeply involved in Vietnam

would help future policymakers avoid similar errors.

The consequences were vast, including that historic effort by the federal government to investigate under the Espionage Act,

staffers at the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe.

As tends to be the case with sprawling grand jury cases,

the investigators' questions and methods remain a secret. But Jill Lepore hopes to change that.

On Monday of this week, Lapoor, Harvard historian, New Yorker staff writer, and author of

these truths, a history of the United States,

asked a federal court to order the release of documents related to those grand juries.

Why and when was the investigation open the poor demands and court documents?

Why was it closed? To what lengths did the government go in conducting

the investigations? A half century after Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg's mammoth revelations,

questions still linger. Les Gelb isn't so sure the press got the right message from the

Pentagon papers then or now.

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