Revealing The Pentagon Papers In Congress: Reading The Papers
Some scholars believed that, had FDR lived, there may have been no Vietnam War for either French or American troops. But the Pentagon Papers revealed, through access to State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Department classified material, that though Roosevelt “vehemently advocated” a trusteeship and ultimate post-war independence for Vietnam, Britain, which occupied Indochina after the war, would not allow it.
“Ultimately, U.S. policy was governed neither by the principles of the Atlantic Charter, nor by the President’s anti-colonialism but by the dictates of military strategy and by British intransigence on the colonial issue,” I read.
I went on with the Truman years, reading how Harry had rebuffed Ho in a disastrously stupid foreign policy decision.
