Real Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Book III

New York Times Co. v. United States Part I

New York Times Co. v. UnitedStates, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a landmark decision of theUS Supreme Court on the First Amendment. The ruling made it possiblefor The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers to publishthe then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of governmentcensorship or punishment.

President Richard Nixon had claimedexecutive authority to force the Times to suspend publication ofclassified information in its possession. The question before thecourt was whether the constitutional freedom of the press, guaranteedby the First Amendment, was subordinate to a claimed need of theexecutive branch of government to maintain the secrecy ofinformation. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment didprotect the right of The New York Times to print the materials.

Background

The New York Times Washington BureauChief Max Frankel stated in a 1971 deposition, while the New YorkTimes was fighting to publish the Pentagon Papers, that secrets canbe considered the currency on which Washington runs and that "leakswere an unofficial back channel for testing policy ideas andgovernment initiatives." Frankel recounted for example thatthe Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson used andrevealed secrets purposefully. The Pentagon Papers, however, came tolight not by a high-ranking government official. By 1971, the UnitedStates had been engaged in an undeclared war with North Vietnam forsix years. At this point, about 58,000 American soldiers had died andthe government was facing widespread dissent from large portions ofthe American public. In 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamaracommissioned a "massive top-secret history of the UnitedStates role in Indochina". Daniel Ellsberg, who had helpedto produce the report, leaked 43 volumes of the 47-volume, 7,000-pagereport to reporter Neil Sheehan of The New York Times in March 1971and the paper began publishing articles outlining the findings.

Restraining order sought

The black article appeared in theTimes' Sunday edition, on June 13, 1971. By the following Tuesday,the Times received an order to cease further publication from aDistrict Court judge, at the request of the administration. Thegovernment claimed it would cause "irreparable injury to thedefense interests of the United States" and wanted to "enjoinThe New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing thecontents of a classified study entitled History of U.S.Decision-Making Process on the Vietnam Policy."

The government sought a restrainingorder that prevented the Times from posting any further articlesbased upon the Pentagon Papers. In addition to The New York TimesCompany, the Justice Department named the following defendants:Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, president and publisher; Harding Bancroft andIvan Veit, executive vice presidents; Francis Cox, James Goodale,Sydney Gruson, Walter Mattson, John McCabe, John Mortimer and JamesReston, vice presidents; John B. Oakes, editorial page editor; A. M.Rosenthal, managing editor; Daniel Schwarz, Sunday editor; CliftonDaniel and Tom Wicker, associate editors; Gerald Gold and Allan M.Siegal, assistant foreign editors; Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, E. W.Kenworthy and Fox Butterfield, reporters; and Samuel Abt, a foreigndesk copy editor.

Section 793 of the Espionage Act

Section 793 of the Espionage Act wascited by Attorney General John N. Mitchell as cause for the UnitedStates to bar further publication of stories based upon the PentagonPapers. The statute was spread over three pages of the United StatesCode Annotated and the only part that appeared to apply to the Timeswas 793(e), which made it criminal for: