Neil Sheehan, N.Y. Times reporter who obtained Pentagon Papers and chronicled ‘Bright Shining Lie’ of Vietnam, dies at 84

Neil Sheehan, a tireless chronicler of the Vietnam War who obtained the Pentagon Papers for the New York Times and later received the Pulitzer Prize for his book “A Bright Shining Lie,” a meticulously researched indictment of America’s role in that conflict, died Jan. 7 at his home in Washington. He was 84.

The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, author Susan Sheehan.

Sheehan, the son of impoverished Irish-immigrant dairy farmers, graduated from Harvard University and served in the Army before joining the United Press International wire service. Reporting from Saigon in the early 1960s, he became known as one of the “fearless threesome” of Vietnam War correspondents.

Along with Malcolm Browne of the Associated Press and David Halberstam of the Times, he ferreted out details about battlefield casualties and war-zone dysfunction, crafting dispatches that challenged sunny reports from the daily military press briefings that some journalists ridiculed as “Five O’Clock Follies.”