The death has taken place of journalist and author Neil Sheehan who, as a reporter for the New York Times, broke the Pentagon Papers story in the early 1970s. Sheehan, born Cornelius Mahoney Sheehan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, authored the Pulitzer Prize winning "A Bright Shining Lie," which documented the early years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Sheehan compared the struggle of the Vietnamese for national independence with that of the Irish. And it was an Irish film director, Terry George, who would direct the HBO movie based on Sheehan's bestselling book. Sheehan was 84.
