 The credibility of the U.S. government again suffered in 1971 when "The New York Times", "The Washington Post" and other newspapers serially published "The Pentagon Papers" (actually "U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967").This top-secret historical study of the American commitment in Vietnam, from the Franklin Roosevelt administration until 1967, had been contracted to the RAND Corporation by Secretary of Defense McNamara.The documents were leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department official who had worked on the study.