Neil Sheehan Papers

A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress

Prepared by Nan Thompson Ernst with the assistance of John R. Monagle and Thelma M. Queen

Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Washington, D.C.

2009

Contact information: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mss/address.html

Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress Manuscript Division, 2009

Finding aid URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms009054

Table of Contents

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

Personal Names

Organizations

Subjects

Locations

Related Names

Occupations

Administrative Information

Provenance:

Processing History:

Additional Guides:

Transfers:

Copyright Status:

Access and Restrictions:

Security Classified Documents:

Preferred Citation:

Biographical Notes

Neil Sheehan

John Paul Vann

Scope and Content Note

Organization of the Papers

Description of Series

Container List

Abbreviations and Acronymns in the Collection

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein.

Administrative Information

The papers of Neil Sheehan, author and journalist, were deposited in the Library of Congress by Sheehan between 1990 and 1994. The papers deposited before 1993 were processed as the Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection, and the John Paul Vann papers, principally in Containers 25-57, were converted to a gift in 1994. Included in the Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection is a compilation of Current News, a Defense Department publication given to the Library in 1992 as an addition to the Sheehan Papers by Peter Braestrup. Papers received in 1994 remain on deposit and have been organized as a separate series entitled Professional File.

The papers of Neil Sheehan were processed in 1993 and 1994. The finding aid was revised in 2009.

A description of the Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection portion of the Sheehan Papers appeared in Library of Congress Acquisitions: Manuscript Division, 1990.

Items have been transferred from the Manuscript Division to other custodial divisions of the Library. Some maps have been transferred to the Library's Geography and Map Division. Sound recordings of interviews have been transferred to the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. Some photographs have been transferred to the Prints & Photographs Division. All transfers are identified in these divisions as part of the Neil Sheehan Papers.

Copyright in the unpublished writings of Neil Sheehan in these papers and in other collections in the custody of the Library of Congress is reserved. Consult reference staff in the Manuscript Division for further information.

Restrictions apply governing the use, photoduplication, or publication of items in this collection. Consult reference staff in the Manuscript Division for information concerning these restrictions. In addition, many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use.

Government regulations control the use of security classified items in this collection. Manuscript Division staff can furnish information concerning access to and use of classified material.

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, Neil Sheehan Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Biographical Notes

Scope and Content Note

The Neil Sheehan Papers span the years circa 1920-1993 with the bulk of the material ranging from 1960 to 1993. The collection is organized into two series. Material relating to Sheehan's prize-winning history, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, is organized as the Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection. Material relating to Sheehan's career as a journalist for United Press International in Asia, 1961-64, and the New York Times, 1964-1972, and as an author of other books and articles on the Vietnam War, 1964-1992, is organized in a Professional File.

The Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection includes publication records for A Bright Shining Lie , a research file, interviews and notes, official documents, and a Current News file containing issues of the Defense Department's compilation of press clippings published during the war. The arrangement reflects the organization established by Sheehan as he studied and wrote about the Vietnam War and John Paul Vann.

The biographical element of A Bright Shining Lie is based on Vann's personal papers given to Sheehan by the family. Declassified copies of documents relating to Vann were acquired by Sheehan through the Freedom of Information Act from the United States Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Vann's papers document his activities in Vietnam, his military career prior to Vietnam, his family and personal life, his civilian work for the Martin Company in Denver, and his political affiliations, especially his involvement in the 1964 presidential campaign. Vann's correspondents include Joseph Alsop, Huynh Van Cao, Tran Ngoc Chau, William Egan Colby, Daniel Ellsberg, David Halberstam, Paul D. Harkins, Henry Kissinger, Robert W. Komer, Victor H. Krulak, Edward Geary Lansdale, Richard M. Nixon, Maxwell D. Taylor, and Nguyen Van Thieu.

Papers documenting Vann's military career primarily concern his service in Vietnam as an army lieutenant colonel appointed senior advisor to the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) in the Mekong River delta. Reports and memoranda for the Ap Bac battle and Dan Tien operations in 1962-1963, along with Vann's correspondence and press accounts by Sheehan and David Halberstam, document Vann's criticism of the South Vietnamese government and armed forces and his advocacy of political reform and direct military intervention by the United States. Viewed with increasing disfavor by the American command staff, Vann retired from the army soon after completing his Vietnam tour of duty in 1963.

The war remained a central concern for Vann, and in 1965 when American combat troops were sent to fight in southeast Asia, he joined the action as a State Department pacification official. Vann's Agency for International Development records document his work with the pacification program from 1965 to 1972. Vann and his colleagues wanted to "harness" a social revolution to the United States war effort, and their proposals (see especially, "Harnessing the Revolution" in container 48), policy statements, reports, training manuals, and correspondence document the instruction given to the Vietnamese in self-defense, fighting insurgents, intelligence gathering, and suggestions for efficient representative government.

Vann's quick rise through the ranks of the pacification program was based on his grasp of military objectives and his extensive field knowledge of war developments. In 1971 he was appointed to an unprecedented civilian command of troops defending the Central Highlands against a long-awaited attack by North Vietnamese regular forces. Records for the defense of Kontum, Plieku, and other battles of the North Vietnamese army's 1972 Easter offensive are in the Vann subseries, Region II files. Supplemental documentation can be found in the Vietnam subseries under North Vietnam offensives and the Individuals subseries in files for soldiers who worked with Vann to defend the Central Highlands.

Sheehan's primary sources on the Vietnam War for A Bright Shining Lie include the Pentagon Papers and other official documents, supplemented by interviews and supporting records provided by key participants. When Sheehan was a reporter for the New York Times in 1971, he obtained copies of the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. The term "Pentagon Papers" was coined by the New York Times to describe the forty-seven volume "History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy, 1945-1967" compiled at the Pentagon upon the request of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. This multivolume work is an annotated compilation or summary of relevant government documents, most of them classified, with introductory essays by various government analysts. Sheehan's Pentagon Papers file, listed as part of the Official Documents subseries, includes photocopied portions of government documents which remain classified and thus are stored separately. His copy of volumes one and two of the House Committee on Armed Services Pentagon Papers edition, published as United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967, is annotated to mark censored passages. Notes relating to the Pentagon Papers can be found in Bright Shining Lie publication records and throughout the Research File especially under Ellsberg in the Individuals subseries and in the Subject File subseries. Publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times in 1971, and subsequently by Bantam Books and Beacon Press, is documented in the second series of the collection, the Professional File.

Sheehan's Research File of papers from military and civilian personnel includes government memoranda and documents, letters, orders, command guidance, and studies dealing with Vann and the Vietnam War. Richard Ziegler gave his journal documenting the ARVN Seventh Infantry Division in 1962-1963, and Daniel Ellsberg provided Sheehan with copies of reports and position papers, as did other RAND analysts such as Charles Benoit. Papers were contributed by Tran Ngoc Chau, a Vietnamese politician who was tried for treason by the Nguyen Van Thieu government in South Vietnam. Sheehan also obtained reports from Vann's commanders and copies of documents from various archives. Fellow news correspondents, especially David Halberstam, gave Sheehan copies of interview notes. These materials, along with Sheehan's notes and clippings, are distributed by subject throughout the Research File.

While writing A Bright Shining Lie, Sheehan interviewed more than four hundred Americans, Vietnamese, and foreign news correspondents. The interviews are documented in nearly two hundred stenographic notebooks, six hundred audiocassette tapes, and typed summaries of more than one hundred interview tapes. Correspondence clarifying points raised in interviews and other supporting documentation can occasionally be found in the Research File. Among those interviewed were generals Ly Tong Ba, Huynh Van Cao, William E. DePuy, Pham Van Dong, Ngo Dzu, Victor H. Krulak, Edward Geary Lansdale, William C. Westmoreland, and Robert H. York; reporters Joseph Alsop, Peter Braestrup, and David Halberstam; White House and executive branch officials, including Ellsworth Bunker, George Christian, William Egan Colby, Philip Charles Habib, Robert W. Komer, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr; analysts such as Daniel Ellsberg; and politicians such as Tran Ngoc Chau.

The Professional File in the collection documents Sheehan's broader career as a journalist and author. The Books and Articles subseries contains publication records and research files. Material relating to After the War Was Over includes interviews conducted in 1989 of Vietnamese who were consulted by Sheehan years earlier for A Bright Shining Lie. Sheehan's New York Times file documents his career with the newspaper. His first assignment was with the metropolitan desk, but he was soon reassigned to Indonesia where he reported on the crisis surrounding President Achmed Soekarno and the military's suppression of a communist-led uprising in 1965. Sheehan then returned to Vietnam as a war correspondent. After 1966, he covered the war from Washington. As a Pentagon and national security reporter, Sheehan was responsible for Defense Department issues in general and for the war in Vietnam from a political perspective.

The New York Times file reflects the conflict and symbiosis inherent between a democratic government and the press. It also documents the evolution of Sheehan's own stand on the Vietnam War. Sheehan's position evolved from the stance he espoused in a widely read 1966 article, "Not a Dove But No Longer a Hawk," to more thorough opposition to the war later, especially after reading and reporting on the Pentagon Papers.

The New York Times file documents aspects of the decision to publish excerpts of the Pentagon Papers and the bitter legal battle which ensued. The Books and Articles file includes publication records for the one-volume Bantam Books version, edited by Sheehan, and later reissued by Quadrangle Press. Sheehan's copy of volumes 1-3 of the Beacon Press publication of the Pentagon Papers, known as the "Senator 'Mike' Gravel" edition, is annotated to mark censored passages. The files include correspondence, memoranda, notes, speeches, and records of legal proceedings, the Justice Department investigation, press coverage, and journalism prizes.

The United Press International–Indochina subseries includes business records of the Saigon bureau but is predominately a file of Sheehan's dispatches from South Vietnam for 1962-1964. Sheehan's dispatches are in the form of telegraphic transmissions some of which are coded. As a cost-saving measure, routine news was sent by cast account; urgent stories and bulletins were sent as cables. The dispatches offer a detailed record of war reporting during the period when United States advisors, including John Paul Vann, assisted the South Vietnamese government in combating insurgents.

Vietnamese names in the collection are alphabetized by the last part of the given name. The family name is the first element, as in Ngo and Vo for Ngo Dinh Diem and Vo Nguyen Giap. Sheehan followed tradition in referring to the Vietnamese by the last part of their given names, as in Diem and Giap. His alphabetization has been preserved even though it differs from name authority standards of the Library of Congress which cite family names first.

Organization of the Papers

The collection is arranged in twelve series:

• Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection: Bright Shining Lie, 1963-1993
• Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection: Research File, circa 1920-1991
• Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection: Interviews and Notes, 1972-1987
• Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection: Official Documents, 1961-1986
• Vann-Sheehan Vietnam War Collection: Current News (Early Bird Edition), 1964-1975
• Professional File: Books and Articles, 1964-1992
• Professional File: New York Times, 1956-1993
• Professional File: United Press International–Indochina, 1961-1964
• Closed, 1937-1985
• Oversize, 1962-1971
• Classified, 1960-1972
• Top Secret, 1961-1969

Description of Series

Container List