June 15, 2021— Sunday was the 50th anniversary of the moment–also a Sunday– when the New York Times began publishing the leaked “Pentagon Papers.” The papers were a top secret compilation of U.S. government records plus analyses by experienced observers of the roots and process of United States intervention in Vietnam. The papers had actually been commissioned by then-secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara, perplexed at the seeming intractability of the American situation in Vietnam.
As McNamara had hoped, the Pentagon Papers taught many things. The men who copied the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo, and Ellsberg, who circulated them and finally made the leak a reality, hoped the secret record might bring a halt to the war. That did not happen. But for a very long time–decades–the Papers formed the foundation for much of the historical analysis of the Vietnam war. Today, when declassification, even at its snail’s pace, has advanced the record past what is available in the Pentagon Papers, that collection remains a major source for Vietnamese historians in reconstructing their wartime experience.
With a tip of the hat to Ellsberg and Russo, the historical issues are not my target today. Rather it is the secrecy. Government secrecy. This seems to be an obsession, and the leak of the Pentagon Papers marked a milestone in the evolution of the struggle over secrecy. Within hours of the appearance of the Times’s edition of June 13, 1971, officials at the White House were already considering counterattacks. The president, Richard Nixon, was actually relatively calm about the leak, figuring that the documents and analysis dated to the Johnson administration and thus were embarrassing only to his Democrat opponents, but staff adviser Alexander M. Haig was adamant that secrecy had to be upheld. The strong countermeasures turned into an attempt to impose prior restraint, to deny the press the opportunity to report this story to the people. Had the Nixon White House succeeded the U.S. government would have established a principle that it could censor the information available to the American public. But after initial success in district courts, Nixon officials failed at the Supreme Court, which denied the administration’s bid for prior restraint.
In the torrent of commentary accompanying the 50th anniversary, New York Times author Adam Liptak contributed a piece arguing that the Pentagon Papers decisions actually led to an “incoherent state of law” because they did not draw precise boundaries around what was and was not permissible for government. There is a certain amount of sense to that, but the bigger truth is authorities have contested the public’s right to know all along. The Pentagon Papers case tied down one flap of the tent, but there is plenty more blowing in the wind. In fact, today, as it happens, we are smack in the middle of the latest battle over government secrecy, where it turns out that officials of the last administration sought the private communications and contact information (and perhaps, more) of political opponents, journalists, and even the administration’s own White House counsel. There will be more to say about this scandal before it ends, but for now let me simply say that the motives were as black, and the methods every bit as outlandish as those of fifty years ago.
