6/19/2023 0 Comments Nytimes news media editorial![]() ![]() ![]() United States that the prior restraint was unconstitutional. The government appealed its case, and in less than two weeks the case-combined with the New York Times appeal-was before the Supreme Court. The government then sought another injunction, but this time was refused. In response, Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the Washington Post, which began printing excerpts as well. Historically, prior restraint has been considered the most serious form of censorship. This was the first time in American history that the government had successfully ordered a prior restraint (an order that news be censored ahead of publication) on national security grounds. The government immediately obtained a court order preventing the Times from printing more of the documents, arguing that publishing the material threatened national security. He gave copies to the New York Times, which began printing excerpts from the documents on June 13, 1971. To achieve his goal, he broke several laws. They would become known as the “Pentagon Papers.”Įllsberg believed that Americans needed to know what was in the reports, and decided to make the Pentagon Papers public. They exposed government knowledge that the war would cost more lives than the public was being told, and that the war was being escalated even as the President had said it was close to ending. He fed pages and pages of classified documents into the machine as the night wore on.ĭaniel Ellsberg copied more than 7000 pages of documents that revealed the history of the government’s actions in the Vietnam War. Not daring to turn lights on, the researcher stood cloaked in darkness, listening to the rhythmic hum of the photocopier. The decision by the New York Times and Washington Post to print illegally leaked, classified documents about American involvement in the Vietnam War sparked a First Amendment battle between the highest levels of government and two of the most respected newspapers in the country. ![]()
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