the daily flashback. on this day in 1971 that new york times published what would become known as the pentagon papers. the top secret documents leaked by daniel ellsberg showed that the government had lied about the progress of the vietnam war. the government attempted to stop the papers from being published triggering a landmark supreme court ruling in favor of freedom of the press. 40 years later the national archives is releasing the 7,000 page study to the public for the first time. wikileaks before there was one. charlie, stew and liz. stu, talk about the president here. i love this economist cover. i don t know if you caught it this week. this enlarged version of obama and all of these little guys, prancing around below and says and yet i could still lose and that is he is running against the economy. we know that they re serious and nervous about re-election
laid out on vietnam, history was going to understand the reasons for the critical decisions that were made. reporter: released for the first time today about 35% of the original 7,000 page-study. all available online as of about 30 minutes ago on the national archives website. we re combing through it and we ll give you more details throughout the day. basically what we re looking at jenna, in terms of new material is diplomatic negotiations it end the war. that is what has remained secret for 40 years. jenna: we ll look forward to those reports, james, always do. thanks so much, james rosen in d.c. today. reporter: thank you. jon: talk a little politics now and you can expect some sharp elbows in new hampshire when republican candidates take the stage for the presidential debate tonight. for the first time frontrunner mitt romney will face six of the likely rivals who want to get into first place themselves. chief political
the syrian rebels. the commander in chief rejected their counsel as a fantasy. you want an honest open discussion. clearly in that instance the process did do that but it didn t yield probably what would have been the better result which would have been to have taken their advice. then there was a president s red line. charlie savage and author of power wars, a critically acclaimed 800 page study of the obama national security claim said the president usually insistent on orderly procedure stunned his team twice. first by making policy on the fly, then with a last minute pivot away from air strikes. the fact that became a red line, certainly was not an output of functional decision making because no one knew he was going to say it until he said it. most of his policy advisors in that situation expected him to move forward and authorize and