Cornelius Mahoney "Neil" Sheehan (born October 27, 1936) is an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series of articles revealed a secret United States Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and led to a US Supreme Court case, *New York Times Co. v. United States*, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), when the United States government failed to halt publication. He received a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his 1988 book *A Bright Shining Lie*, about the life of Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann and the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. **Source**: [Neil Sheehan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Sheehan) on Wikipedia.