Forty years later, you can read the Pentagon Papers in their entirety.

The National Archives posted all 7,000 pages of the once-secret report on its website today, the final act in a saga that changed the presidency, the press and all of government four decades ago.

On June 13, 1971, TheNew York Times first disclosed the leaked report that detailed how members of the John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations and other public officials misled the public about actions in Vietnam.

News of the report solidified opposition to the Vietnam War, increased mistrust of government and led to a Supreme Court case that expanded media freedom.

The news leak of the Pentagon Papers also marked a major milestone on the road to the Watergate scandal that eventually drove President Richard Richard Nixon from office.

Some background from the Archives:

In 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara commissioned the Vietnam Study Task Force to develop a comprehensive report chronicling the American commitment in Vietnam from 1945 onward. The task force -- led by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, and officials Morton Halperin and Leslie Gelb -- eventually published the 47-volume report "United States-Vietnam Relations 1945–1967." The classified report contained 7,000 pages of sensitive intelligence and government documents, including some material that exposed American policy failures in Vietnam. After the Tet Offensive in 1968, American newspapers and media outlets began to question the assessments of the war provided by the U.S. Government. Public condemnation and antiwar activities soared. Former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg was just one of a growing number of former government officials who had grown disillusioned with the Vietnam War by 1971. Ellsberg, who had worked on the Pentagon Papers in 1967, began leaking parts of the classified study to the New York Times early in 1971. On June 13, 1971, after some internal deliberations, the Times published the leaked materials. Other publications, like the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, quickly followed suit.

Not all of the Pentagon Papers came out at that time. Ellsberg said he withheld some documents because he feared the Nixon administration might use some of the information to scuttle peace talks.

In recent weeks, Ellsberg and others have said they don't expect any bombshells in the new documents, because the gist of the material has been aired in one forum or another over the past four decades.

As we reported yesterday, the leak of the Pentagon Papers did have profound consequences for the presidency, particularly Nixon's.

The Nixon administration's adverse reaction to the news leaks led to more aggressive efforts to find officials who dealt with reporters, including phone taps and black bag jobs. It can be argued that the Pentagon Papers' release set Nixon's team on the road to the Watergate scandal (which included a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist).

The Nixonian reaction remains puzzling given the fact that the documents were more embarrassing to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, one reason Nixon himself was at first indifferent to the leak.

The Nixon team's legal efforts to block publication of the Pentagon Papers led to a landmark First Amendment ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, enhancing the media's ability to investigate public officials.

Then there's the fact that the Pentagon Papers detailed the government's lies and mistakes as the nation became more enmeshed in Vietnam.

Skepticism of government remains to this day.