During the late 1960s, the Pentagon became a focal point for protests against the Vietnam War. A group of 2,500 women, organized by Women Strike for Peace, demonstrated outside Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's office at the Pentagon on 15 February 1967.[61] In May 1967, a group of 20 demonstrators held a sit-in outside the Joint Chiefs of Staff's office, which lasted four days before they were arrested.[62] In one of the better known incidents, on 21 October 1967, some 35,000 anti-war protesters organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, gathered for a demonstration at the Defense Department (the "March on the Pentagon"). They were confronted by some 2,500 armed soldiers. During the protest, a famous picture was taken, where George Harris placed carnations into the soldiers' gun barrels.[63] The march concluded with an attempt to "exorcise" the building.[64]
On 19 May 1972, the Weather Underground Organization bombed a fourth-floor women's restroom, in "retaliation" for the Nixon administration's bombing of Hanoi in the final stages of the Vietnam War.[65]
On 17 March 2007, 4,000 to 15,000 people (estimates vary significantly) protested the Iraq War[66] by marching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon's north parking lot.[67]