Pentagon Papers, the

The Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified study commissioned by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in 1967, detailed U.S. involvement in Vietnam by tracing policies and decision making in Indochina from the 1940s to 1968. The Pentagon Papers became public knowledge on June 13, 1971, with the debut of a series of articles in The New York Times by journalists Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith. By day three of the series, Attorney General John N. Mitchell requested The New York Times cease publication of The Pentagon Papers. The Times refused. Over the next few days, a series of court decisions addressing the right of the press to publish information and the right of the government to control information in the name of national security ensued. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on June 30, in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), that the government could not exercise prior restraint without threatening the rights of the press under the First Amendment. New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), also known as the Pentagon Papers case, was the first of its kind, as it tested the nature of the relationship between a free press and the government.

Soon after the court ordered suspension of the New York Times series, The Washington Post, and then the Boston Globe, began publishing articles on The Pentagon Papers. Both newspapers received court orders to stop publication. Clearly The New York Times was not the only newspaper with access to The Pentagon Papers and finding the source of the leak became a major focus for the government. Within days, Daniel Ellsberg was identified as the leak. On June 28, he surrendered himself to the authorities and was charged with possession of unauthorized materials. In the early 1960s, Ellsberg had worked for the Defense Department in Vietnam, and by the late 1960s, he was with an independent think tank, the RAND Corporation. Through this association, he had access to The Pentagon Papers. By 1971, disillusioned with U.S. policies in Vietnam, Ellsberg sent photocopies of The Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more than a dozen other newspapers. The charges against Ellsberg were dropped on May 11, 1973, on grounds of governmental misconduct.

The fallout from The Pentagon Papers lasted for months after initial publication and set the stage for continued investigative journalism during Watergate. The Pentagon Papers, as a landmark case about the relationship between the government and the press, reflected a time when the government was being questioned and the right of the public to know was being preserved.