Pentagon Papers

Pentagon Papers (1971).On 13 June 1971, the New York Times began publication of a secret Department of Defense history of Vietnam War decision making commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara toward the end of the Johnson administration. Leaked by former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who believed the revelation might alter the course of the war, the story outraged President Richard M. Nixon, already suspicious of the press, particularly by threatening the president's hoped‐for opening to China. As Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, observed in his memoir, The White House Years, “Our nightmare was that … the massive hemorrhage of state secrets was bound to raise doubts [in Peking] about our reliability.” When the Times declined to suspend further publication on its own, Nixon's lawyers won a temporary restraining order from the 2nd Circuit Court in New York. At that point, Ellsberg approached the Washington Post, which picked up and ran the story. Nixon's lawyers sued again in the District of Columbia Circuit Court but failed to demonstrate any substantial damage to national security and lost. On 23 June, they appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to review the case in an unprecedented Saturday morning sitting. In the end, the Court likewise found in favor of the newspapers, but despite widespread public belief it set no solid precedents in support of freedom of the press by doing so. Ruling that prior restraint of the press imposed a heavy burden of proof, which the Nixon administration had failed to carry out, it left the possibility open that the government or the military might pursue similar litigation in the future with greater success.
[See also Supreme Court, War, and the Military; Vietnam War: Changing Interpretations.]

Bibliography

Sanford Ungar , The Papers and the Papers, 1972.
Lucas A. Powe, Jr. , The Fourth Estate and the Constitution, Freedom of the Press in America, 1991.

William M. Hammond