(snip)
President Nixon at first planned to do nothing about publication of the study, since it embarrassed the Johnson and Kennedy administrations rather than his; however, Henry Kissinger convinced the president that not opposing the publication set a negative precedent for future secrets.[11] The administration argued Ellsberg and Russo were guilty of a felony under the Espionage Act of 1917, because they had no authority to publish classified documents.[29] After failing to persuade The New York Times to voluntarily cease publication on June 14,[11] Attorney General John N. Mitchell and Nixon obtained a federal court injunction forcing The New York Times to cease publication after three articles.[11] The New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger said:
These papers, as our editorial said this morning, were really a part of history that should have been made available considerably longer ago. I just didn't feel there was any breach of national security, in the sense that we were giving secrets to the enemy.[30]
The newspaper appealed the injunction, and the case New York Times Co. v. United States (403 U.S. 713) quickly rose through the U.S. legal system to the Supreme Court.[31]
On June 18, 1971, The Washington Post began publishing its own series of articles based upon the Pentagon Papers;[11] Ellsberg had given portions to The Washington Post reporter Ben Bagdikian. Bagdikian brought the information to editor Ben Bradlee. That day, Assistant U.S. Attorney General William Rehnquist asked The Washington Post to cease publication. After the paper refused, Rehnquist sought an injunction in U.S. district court. Judge Murray Gurfein declined to issue such an injunction, writing that "[t]he security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know."[32] The government appealed that decision, and on June 26 the Supreme Court agreed to hear it jointly with The New York Times case.[31] Fifteen other newspapers received copies of the study and began publishing it.[11]
(snip)
"Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
—?Justice Black[33]
(snip)
As the press rooms of the Times and the Post began to hum to the lifting of the censorship order, the journalists of America pondered with grave concern the fact that for fifteen days the 'free press' of the nation had been prevented from publishing an important document and for their troubles had been given an inconclusive and uninspiring 'burden-of-proof' decision by a sharply divided Supreme Court. There was relief, but no great rejoicing, in the editorial offices of America's publishers and broadcasters.
—?Tedford and Herbeck, pp. 225–226.[34]
(snip)
Les Gelb reflected in 2018 that many people have misunderstood the most important lessons of the Pentagon Papers:
... my first instinct was that if they just hit the papers, people would think this was the definitive history of the war, which they were not, and that people would, would think it was all about lying, rather than beliefs. And look, because we'd never learned that darn lesson about believing our way into these wars, we went into Afghanistan and we went into Iraq... You know, we get involved in these wars and we don't know a damn thing about those countries, the culture, the history, the politics, people on top and even down below. And, my heavens, these are not wars like World War II and World War I, where you have battalions fighting battalions. These are wars that depend on knowledge of who the people are, with the culture is like. And we jumped into them without knowing. That's the damned essential message of the Pentagon Papers.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#
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