In the Supreme Court case of the New York Times Co. vs. United States there is a power struggle. This struggle includes the entities of the individual freedoms against the interests of federal government. It is well known that the first amendment protects the freedom of speech, but to what extent does this freedom exist. There have been instances in which speech has been limited; Schenck vs. United States(1919) was the landmark case which instituted such limitations due to circumstances of “clear and present danger”. Many have noted that the press serves as an overseer which both apprehends and guides national agenda. However, if the federal government possessed the ability to censor the press would the government restrain itself? In the case of the Pentagon Papers the necessities of individual freedoms supersedes the scope of the national government.
The “pentagon papers”, officially titled: Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, was a U.S. government study commissioned, by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, in 1967. [Robert McNamara served under both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.] The study traced the United States involvement in Vietnam from World War II to the present. The papers were highly confidential and compiled by many sources. Groups, such as the military, universities, and private organizations, worked on portions of the study. The joint efforts created a 47-volume study; only 38 of the 47 volumes were physically produced. One of the groups which had worked on the study was RAND Corporation. An employee of Rand Corporation, Daniel Ellsberg, used his clearance to gain access to a printed copy of the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg then began secretly removing and copying volumes o...
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...d Upon.” The New American 1 July 2013: 19. InfoTrac War and Terrorism Collection. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
McCraw, David, and Stephen Gikow. “The End to a Unspoken Bargain? National Security and Leaks in a Post-Pentagon Papers World.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 48.2 (2013): 473-509. Academic OneFile. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
“More Pentagon Papers, Same Story.” Baltimore Sun 29 June 1972, A16: n. pag. Historical Newspapers. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
“NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. UNITED STATES, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).” Case Law. Find Law, n.d. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
“NEW YORK TIMES v. UNITED STATES.” The Oyez Project. llT Chicago-Kent College Of Law, n.d. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
Salter, Kenneth W. The Pentagon Papers Trial. Berkeley: Editorial Jusa, 1975. Print.
“12 Viet Peace Tries Fail, Pentagon Papers Show.” Baltimore Sun 28 June 1972, A2: n. pag. Historical Newspapers. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
The aftermath — No More Vietnams — is well-covered in Appy’s work. The No More Vietnam mantra is usually presented as avoiding quagmires, focusing on quick, sharp wins. Instead, Appy shows politicians have manipulated No More Vietnams into meaning greater secrecy (think Central America in the 1980’s), more over-the-top justifications (“You don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”) and an emphasis on keeping American deaths inside the acceptable limits of the day to tamp down any public anti-war sentiment.
al., Appellants v. City of New York et al. Supreme Court of the United States. U.S. 1998. Web. 6 May 2014.
"Summary of the Decision." Landmark Cases Of The U.S Supreme Court. Street Law, Inc, n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. .
Trager, Robert, J. R. (2010). The Law of Journalism & Mass Communication. Washington D.C.: CQ Press.
Glenn Greenwald, a talented and widely read columnist on civil liberties for the Guardian newspaper, failed in his attempt to alarm his readers to the flagrant and widespread violations of American privacy. Although his article was full of facts, documentation, and quotes from top rank officials, the article did not convey any sense of wrong doing or outrage. Rather it was dull, lacked passion and a sense of persuasion. In fact, the only attention grabbing part in the whole article is the title.
He was also a Gulf War veteran who commanded an armored cavalry. His desire in writing this book was to examine, through the recently declassified documents, manuscript collections, and the Joint Chief of Staff official histories, where the responsibility for the Vietnam foreign policy disaster lay, but also examine the decisions made that involved the United States in a war they could not win. This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Pentagon Papers: The Truth to War. On June 31, 1971, President Nixon picked up a copy of his New York Times newspaper and found the 1st story on the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers was a hidden government document that had information on the Vietnam War. It was also a government study in Southeast Asia. Daniel Ellsberg knew that the government was hiding something.
Daum, A. W., Gardner, L. C., & Mausbach, W. (2003). America, the Vietnam War, and the
In 1971 the New York Times and Washington Post had to make a decision to print illegally leaked, classified documents about the American involvement in the Vietnam War. The debate had begun by a man by the name of Daniel Ellsberg who had managed to copy over 7000 pages of highly classified documents. The documents contained and revealed the secret history of the government's true involvement in the Vietnam War. Furthermore, these extremely confidential documents exposed that the government had hidden knowledge that the Vietnam war had cost more lives than what the public was led to believe. All of the classified information would later come to be known as the "Pentagon Papers."
Remy, Richard C., Gary E. Clayton, and John J. Patrick. "Supreme Court Cases." Civics Today. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe, 2008. 796. Print.
The New York Times v. Sullivan Supreme Court case, a landmark United States Supreme Court case, was a result of Lester Bruce Sullivan suing the New York Times for libel, a published false statement that can cause damage to a person's reputation or career. The case revolved around a one-page advertisement featured in the newspaper that was titled, “Heed Their Rising Voices,” which was created by civil rights leaders. The purpose of the ad was to raise money in defense of Martin Luther King, Jr., but it contained many terrorism allegations
Hall, Kermit L, eds. The Oxford guide to United States Supreme Court decisions New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Ellsberg was a military analyst who decided that information held in the Pentagon Papers should be more readily available to the American public. The Pentagon Papers are documents that held sensitive information belonging to the United States government. To get this information out, Ellsberg illegally photocopied the report and gave them to the New York Times in March of 1971. The New York Times then proceed to print daily articles beginning on June 13, 1971. The U.S. government then got a court order that prevented the New York Times from printing any more articles. They argued that the articles were a threat to national security. In response to this, Ellsberg then sent the articles to the Washington Post, which instantly posted articles as well. The government tried to do the same thing to the Washington Post, but got denied. Within two weeks of getting denied, that case, along with the New York Times case, were in the Supreme
In 1971 The administration of Nixon Tried to stop the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing The Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam war. The Supreme court agreed with several other courts that had previously ruled on the issue, saying simply “We agree.” Shortly after the decision the newspapers resumed printing in order to finish the story about the leaked government documents. The Times released interpretive articles about the documents as well as the scripts of the documents themselves. Since they were classified government documents about conduct during wartime, the administration tried to use a form of prior restraint to stop the articles from being published, however the Supreme Court decision put
For example, Cooper quotes Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black, as saying that the First Amendment, and its inherent protection for the press' ability to spread information quickly, especially dissentient views, was necessary for the commonweal (Cooper 34). In this context, it stands to reason that having a decentralized press mirrors this country's self-limiting of political power through branches of government that abstract political control to the local level (state's rights). Therefore, just as dispersed government control facilitates localized accountability, fractured me...