This depends somewhat on what you classify as "west," but generally speaking, yes, this is true, since it was in Ancient Athens that the first democracy was formed.
The pentagon papers is a report of the Department of Defense detailing the involvement of the United States' military on Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were first brought to public by the New York Times in 1971. The papers showed that the Johnson administration had lied about the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War.
