by Neil Sheehan
What was the reason that impelled The Times to publish this material in the first place? The basic reason is, as was stated in our original reply to Mr. Mitchell, that we believe “that it is in the interest of the people of this country to be informed. . . .” A fundamental responsibility of the press in this democracy is to publish information that helps the people of the United States to understand the processes of their own government, especially when those processes have been clouded over in a hazy veil of public dissimulation and even deception.
As a newspaper that takes seriously its obligation and its responsibilities to the public, we believe that, once this material fell into our hands, it was not only in the interests of the American people to publish it but, even more emphatically, it would have been an abnegation of responsibility and a renunciation of our obligations under the First Amendment not to have published it. Obviously, The Times would not have made this decision if there had been any reason to believe that publication would have endangered the life of a single American soldier or in any way threatened the security of our country or the peace of the world.
The documents in question belong to history. They refer to the development of American interest and participation in Indochina from the post-World War II period up to mid-1968, which is now almost three years ago. Their publication could not conceivably damage American security interests, much less the lives of Americans or Indochinese. We therefore felt it incumbent to take on ourselves the responsibility for their publication, and in doing so raise once again the question of the Government’s propensity for over-classification and mis-classification of documents that by any reasonable scale of values have long since belonged in the public domain.
We publish the documents and related running account not to prove any debater’s point about the origins and development of American participation in the war, not to place the finger of blame on any individuals, civilian or military, but to present to the American public a history—admittedly incomplete—of decision-making at the highest levels of government on one of the most vital issues that has ever affected “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”—an issue on which the American people and their duly elected representatives in Congress have been largely curtained off from the truth.
It is the effort to expose and elucidate that truth that is the very essence of freedom of the press.
—June 16, 1971
Decision for Freedom
District Judge Murray L. Gurfein’s decision yesterday denying the Government’s plea for a preliminary injunction to bar this newspaper from publishing articles about a secret Pentagon study of the Vietnam war marks a significant victory for press freedom in the United States and for the right of the American people to be informed about the operations of their Government.
“A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know,” Judge Gurfein declared. “These are troubled times. There is no greater safety valve for discontent and cynicism about the affairs of government than freedom of expression in any form.”
After hearing the Government’s arguments in a lengthy secret session, the District Judge agreed with this newspaper’s contention that publication of the articles and documents did not endanger national security. “Without revealing the content of the testimony,” he said, “suffice it to say that no cogent reasons were advanced as to why these documents except in the general framework of embarrassment . . . would vitally affect the security of the nation.”
The case now goes to the Appeals Court which we hope will speedily clear the way for resumed publication of the articles and documents based on the Pentagon study. By any definition of democratic government and freedom of the press, the public is entitled to the information contained in this history, which in fact is indispensable to an understanding of the evolution of American policy in Vietnam.
—June 20, 1971
The Vietnam Papers
On Nov. 25, 1964, some three weeks after President Johnson’s election, The Times observed editorially that “another Vietnam reassessment is under way . . . [and] if there is to be a new policy now, if an Asian war is to be converted into an American war, the country has a right to insist that it be told what has changed so profoundly in the last two months to justify it.” The country was not told.
Six months later, after repeated demands for “a straightforward explanation” of what was clearly becoming a major land war on the continent of Asia, this newspaper noted that “there is still no official explanation offered for a move that fundamentally alters the character of the American involvement in Vietnam” and pleaded “for the President to take the country into his confidence. . . .”
These comments illustrate how Congress and the American people were kept in the dark about fundamental policy decisions affecting the very life of this democracy during the most critical period of the war. The conviction even then that the Government was not being frank with the American people has been fully confirmed by the massive Pentagon history and documentation which The Times began to publish last week—until the Government undertook to censor it.
The running commentary and documents that did appear in this newspaper before the Government moved to block them throw a clear spotlight on the decision-making process during the period up to and including the major escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and 1965. The multi-volume study on which The Times’ account was based shows beyond cavil how the decisions affecting American participation in and conduct of the war were planned and executed while their far-reaching political effect and profound significance, fully appreciated at the top reaches of government, were either deliberately distorted or withheld altogether from the public.
Even more important, the papers as published thus far suggest that almost no one in the upper ranks of the Administration during this crucial period six and seven years ago was probing into the basic political issue on which the military operation depended: Was the Saigon Government’s control of South Vietnam of such vital, long-range interest to the United States that it warranted an open-ended American military involvement—or was this really an unexamined conclusion that had already become an article of faith? Nearly every official concerned was discussing the tactics and strategy of the war, how to handle it, how to win it, how to come out of it, what plans to make under various contingencies. These were important matters indeed and the officials in question would not have been doing their duty if they had failed to consider them. They should not be faulted for this; nor was it in any way improper to have planned for every conceivable military eventuality.
But the missing factor was discussion or argumentation over the raison d’être of the war and the rationale for continuing massive American involvement in it. It seems to have been accepted without question by virtually everyone in the top ranks, except Under Secretary of State George Ball, that the interests of the United States did indeed lie, at almost any cost and overriding almost any risk, in military victory for the South Vietnamese Government even to the point of major American participation in a war on the land mass of Southeast Asia.
This was the premise, this the context, and this the fateful error. If, as the principal officers of the Government saw the country being drawn into such a war, a full and frank debate and discussion in Congress and outside had been undertaken, it is quite possible that events would have moved in a different way. No one will ever know, for this “open covenant, openly arrived at” between American Government and American people never materialized.
This, then, is what the Vietnam Papers prove—not venality, not evil motivation, but rather an arrogant disregard for the Congress, for the public and for the inherent obligation of the responsibilities of leadership in a democratic society. The papers are not only part of the historical record; they are an essential part of that record. They are highly classified documents and so is the analytical
study on which The Times running commentary was based. But they carry the story of Vietnam no farther than 1968—now three years ago; they in no way affect current plans, operations or policy; and there seems no longer any justification for these papers—along with many others in governmental files—to bear the kind of classification that keeps them from general public access. Overclassification and mis-classification of documents is at best a normal reflection of governmental inertia; but, as here, it is often used to conceal governmental error.
The material was not published by The Times for purposes of recrimination or to establish scapegoats or to heap blame on any individual in civilian or military ranks. It was published because the American public has a right to have it and because, when it came into the hands of The Times, it was its function as a free and uncensored medium of information to make it public. This same principle held for The Washington Post when it too obtained some of the papers. To have acted otherwise would have been to default on a newspaper’s basic obligation to the American people under the First Amendment, which is precisely the point that Federal District Judge Murray Gurfein suggested in his memorable decision in this newspaper’s favor last Saturday.
And yet the Government of the United States, in an action unprecedented in modern American history, sought and is continuing to seek to silence both The New York Times and The Washington Post, claiming that “irreparable injury” to the national security would be caused by publication of further chapters in the Vietnam study. The fact is that “irreparable injury” has been done to the Government itself, not because of anything that has been published but, quite the contrary, because of the extraordinary action the Government took to thwart and subvert in this manner the constitutional principle of freedom of the press which is the very essence of American democracy. Judge Gurfein’s decision—whether or not it is sustained on appeal—surely represents a landmark in the endless struggle of free men and free institutions against the unwarranted exercise of governmental authority.
—June 21, 1971
“An Enlightened People”
The historic decision of the Supreme Court in the case of the United States Government vs. The New York Times and The Washington Post is a ringing victory for freedom under law. By lifting the restraining order that had prevented this and other newspapers from publishing the hitherto secret Pentagon papers, the nation’s highest tribunal strongly reaffirmed the guarantee of the people’s right to know, implicit in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
This was the essence of what The New York Times and other newspapers were fighting for and this is the essence of the Court’s majority opinions. The basic question, which goes to the very core of the American political system, involved the weighing by the Court of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom against the Government’s power to restrict that freedom in the name of national security. The Supreme Court did not hold that the First Amendment gave an absolute right to publish anything under all circumstances. Nor did The Times seek that right. What The Times sought, and what the Court upheld, was the right to publish these particular documents at this particular time without prior Governmental restraint.
The crux of the problem lay indeed in this question of prior restraint. For the first time in the history of the United States, the Federal Government had sought through the courts to prevent publication of material that it maintained would do “irreparable injury” to the national security if spread before the public. The Times, supported in this instance by the overwhelming majority of the American press, held on the contrary that it was in the national interest to publish this information, which was of historic rather than current operational nature.
If the documents had involved troop movements, ship sailings, imminent military plans, the case might have been quite different; and in fact The Times would not have endeavored to publish such material. But this was not the case; the documents and accompanying analysis are historic, in no instance going beyond 1968, and incapable in 1971 of harming the life of a single human being or interfering with any current military operation. The majority of the Court clearly recognized that embarrassment of public officials in the past—or even in the present—is insufficient reason to overturn what Justice White described as “the concededly extraordinary protection against prior restraint under our constitutional system.”
So far as the Government’s classification of the material is concerned, it is quite true, as some of our critics have observed, that “no one elected The Times” to declassify it. But it is also true, as the Court implicitly recognizes, that the public interest is not served by classification and retention in secret form of vast amounts of information, 99.5 per cent of which a retired senior civil servant recently testified “could not be prejudicial to the defense interests of the nation.”
Out of this case should surely come a total revision of governmental procedures and practice in the entire area of classification of documents. Everyone who has ever had anything to do with such documents knows that for many years the classification procedures have been hopelessly muddled by inertia, timidity and sometimes even stupidity and venality.
Beyond all this, one may hope that the entire exercise will induce the present Administration to re-examine its own attitudes toward secrecy, suppression and restriction of the liberties of free man in a free society. The issue the Supreme Court decided yesterday touched the heart of this republic; and we fully realize that this is not so much a victory for any particular newspaper as it is for the basic principles of freedom on which the American form of government rests. This is really the profound message of yesterday’s decision, in which this newspaper rejoices with humility and with the consciousness that the freedom thus reaffirmed carries with it, as always, the reciprocal obligation to present the truth to the American public so far as it can be determined. That is, in fact, why the Pentagon material had to be published. It is only with the fullest possible understanding of the facts and of the background of any policy decision that the American people can be expected to play the role required of them in this democracy.
It would be well for the present Administration, in the light of yesterday’s decision, to reconsider with far more care and understanding than it has in the past, the fundamental importance of individual freedoms—including especially freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly—to the life of the American democracy. “Without an informed and free press,” as Justice Stewart said, “there cannot be an enlightened people.”
—July 1, 1971
The Court’s Decision
The decision of the Supreme Court allowing The Times and other newspapers to continue to publish hitherto secret Pentagon documents on the Vietnam war is in our view less important as a victory for the press than as a striking confirmation of the vitality of the American democratic form of government.
Despite the potentially far-reaching significance of doubts and reservations expressed in the confusing welter of individual opinions—each of the nine Justices wrote his own—the outcome of this case is a landmark for the press in its centuries-old battle against the efforts of Governmental authority to impose prior restraints. But we believe its real meaning goes deeper than that, in the context of the present time and place. We believe that its more profound significance lies in the implicit but inescapable conclusion that the American people have a presumptive right to be informed of the political decisions of their Government and that when the Government has been devious with the people, it will find no constitutional sanction for its efforts to enforce concealment by censorship.
For this is the essential justification of The Times’ grave decision to take on itself the responsibility of publishing the Pentagon papers. It was a decision not taken lightly; but The Times felt that the documents, all dating from 1968 or earlier, belonged to the American people, were now part of history, could in no sense damage current military operations or threaten a single life, and formed an essential element in an understanding
by the American people of the event that has affected them more deeply than any other in this generation, the Vietnam war.
The decision had to be made whether or not the embarrassment to individuals, or even to governments, outweighed the value to the American public of knowing something about the decision-making process that led into the war and its subsequent escalation. Furthermore, it was evident that Governmental documents have been so generally overclassified and misclassified for so many years that the mere fact of labeling bore no necessary relationship to the national security. An intensive review of classification procedures is sure to be one beneficial result of this affair.
But there will be other results. We hope that the great lesson to have been learned from publication of the Pentagon papers is that the American Government must play square with the electorate. We hope that this Administration and those to come will realize that the major decisions have to be discussed frankly and openly and courageously; and that the essence of good government as of practical politics is, in Adlai Stevenson’s phrase, to “talk sense to the American people.”
The Pentagon papers demonstrate the failure of successive Administrations to carry out this policy in respect to Vietnam. We do not think it is a question of personal morality, but rather of private attitudes. We do not think that the respective officials involved made recommendations or took decisions that they did not conscientiously believe to be in the public interest. As an early opponent of the escalation of American military force in Vietnam, this newspaper has never attacked the motives of those leaders, but we have criticized and we continue to criticize their wisdom, their sense of values and their failure fully to apprise the people and Congress of the implications of decisions taken in secret.
