The US government on May 12 announced the famed "Pentagon Papers" on the war in Vietnam has been declassified and will be accessible starting next month at the Richard Nixon presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California.

The release came 40 years after the leakage of the one top secret document which resulted in a massive wave protesting the war in 1971.

Officially titled "United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense," the report detailed US political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. It revealed a greater level of US military involvement in Vietnam than had been made publicly known.

The papers, first published on the front page of the New York Times in 1971, created a major scandal and were deemed instrumental in the decision by then-president Lyndon Johnson not to stand for re-election.

The Times received the document from Daniel Ellsberg, at the time a
military analyst employed by the Pentagon./.