Section 793 of the Espionage Act was cited by Attorney General John N. Section 793 of the Espionage Act įloyd Abrams, counsel to The New York Times Kenworthy and Fox Butterfield, reporters and Samuel Abt, a foreign desk copy editor. Siegal, assistant foreign editors Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, E. Rosenthal, managing editor Daniel Schwarz, Sunday editor Clifton Daniel and Tom Wicker, associate editors Gerald Gold and Allan M. In addition to The New York Times Company, the Justice Department named the following defendants: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, president and publisher Harding Bancroft and Ivan Veit, executive vice presidents Francis Cox, James Goodale, Sydney Gruson, Walter Mattson, John McCabe, John Mortimer and James Reston, vice presidents John B. The government sought a restraining order that prevented the Times from posting any further articles based upon the Pentagon Papers. Decision-Making Process on the Vietnam Policy.' The government claimed it would cause 'irreparable injury to the defense interests of the United States' and wanted to 'enjoin The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing the contents of a classified study entitled History of U.S. By the following Tuesday, the Times received an order to cease further publication from a District Court judge, at the request of the administration. The black article appeared in the Times ' Sunday edition, on June 13, 1971. Daniel Ellsberg, who had helped to produce the report, leaked 43 volumes of the 47-volume, 7,000-page report to reporter Neil Sheehan of The New York Times in March 1971 and the paper began publishing articles outlining the findings. McNamara commissioned a 'massive top-secret history of the United States role in Indochina'. At this point, about 58,000 American soldiers had died and the government was facing widespread dissent from large portions of the American public.

By 1971, the United States had been engaged in an undeclared war with North Vietnam for six years. The Pentagon Papers, however, came to light not by a high-ranking government official. Johnson used and revealed secrets purposefully. The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Max Frankel stated in a 1971 deposition, while the New York Times was fighting to publish the Pentagon Papers, that secrets can be considered the currency on which Washington runs and that 'leaks were an unofficial back channel for testing policy ideas and government initiatives.' Frankel recounted for example that the Presidents John F. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did protect the right of The New York Times to print the materials. The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, was subordinate to a claimed need of the executive branch of government to maintain the secrecy of information. President Richard Nixon had claimed executive authority to force the Times to suspend publication of classified information in its possession. The ruling made it possible for The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers to publish the then- classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censorship or punishment. 713 (1971), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on the First Amendment right of Freedom of the Press.

To exercise prior restraint, the Government must show sufficient evidence that the publication would cause a 'grave and irreparable' danger.Ĭhief Justice Warren E. New York Times Co., 444 F.2d 544 ( 2d Cir.

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