PENTAGON PAPERS INTRIGUE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200240002-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2004
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 20, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

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and is received more happily in Peking and
entagon mere triu
By MICHAEL GA1tTNER
On June 17, 1967, Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara launched a "Vietnam His-
tory Task Force." "The purpose of the
study," as historian and participant Richard
Ullman has written, "was not to get at larger
questions of right and wrong ... but to pres-
ent an account of how it had cone about that
In the middle of the year. 1967 . .. half a nil-
lion Americans found themselves in South
Vietnam fighting a land and air war against a
dedicated and intransigent Asian enemy." It
was the Secretary's intention that the study
be released "a reasonable time after the war
was over."
Four years later, the war, of course, was
still going on. But on June 13, 1971, The New
York Times began to
print parts of the
study. Under an un-
derstated. three-col-
umn headline ("Viet-
na.m AYchive: Penta-
fon Study Traces 3
Decades of Growing
The
Bookshelf
single instance of military se~urity damage
has been surfaced. Henry Kissinger manages to travel to the Soviet Union and China, and
Paris when reporters think he's at his desk in
Washington. And as far as faith in govern-
ment is concerned, if the Pentagon Papers af-
fected Mr. Nixon's standing in the country,
you certainly can't prove it by the polls on
popularity or conduct of the, var."
But, Mr. Rosenthal goes (in, "Some un-
pleasant things happened, nFA because of the
publication of the papers but because the gov. j
ernment rushed into battle against them.
"By far the most important was that for
the first time, a government of the United
States asked for and courts granted an injunc-
tion against newspapers-and prior restraint,
death to a free press, had a precedent.,"
And that's asad postscript. _ .:
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U.S. Involvement"), it launched a story that
together with official documents took up six
full pages of the bulky Sunday paper. It was
a tremendous story, and it obviously was
based on a tremendous security breach.
The immediate reaction, if there was one,
vas a yawn. But in the next few days, all hell
broke loose. By the end of the week, the Pen-
tagon Papers had evolved into the greatest
issue on freedom of the press since the trial of
John Peter Zenger. The Times and other pa-
pers were enjoined from continuing publica-
tion of the documents, and then the Supreme
Court, in a split vote, ruled that such prior re-
straint on the press was unconstitutional. The
.Pentagon Papers quickly became as big an
issue in America as the war they reported
about.
(Parts of the controversy still continue
today. Pretrial argument Is currently under
way in federal district court in Los Angeles
on the government's attempt to prosecute the
man who provided the documents to the news-
papers. He is charged with 15 counts of steal-
ing, embezzling and converting government
documents to his own use.)
So it is only natural that now we are given
an archive about this archive, k history of the
battles (many of them intramural) surround-
ing the publishing of the secret papers. This
new history is called "The Papers & The Pa-
pers" (Dutton, 319 pages, $7.95), and it's in-
teresting, as far as it goes.
Author Sanford J. Ungar., a reporter for
J The Washington Post, readably relates how
the Pentagon Papers were acquired, provides
a brief biography (and who wants a longer
one?) of culprit-hero Daniel Ellsberg, offers a
fices and judicial chambers. Unfortunately,
he doesn't deal very thoroughly with the is-
sues, perhaps because he feels all that was
pretty well hashed over at the time.
The book has a diverse and famous cast of
characters:
--Here is James Reston, telling the doubt-.
ers at the Times that if they didn't print the
Pentagon Papers he would publish them in
the Vineyard Gazette, the paper he owns on
Martha's Vineyard.
-Here is Chief Justice Warren Burger, an-
swering a knock of two reporters at his subur-
evening--long-barreled
ban home late one
gun in hand. (And here is Benjamin Bradlee,
courageous news boss of The Washington
Post, killing the story about the gun-toting
Chief Justice as being too hot to handle in the
midst of a court case involving the Post.)
-Hero are the lawyers for The New York
Times, dropping out of the case on the eve of
confrontation because they felt the paper
shouldn't print the papers. ("It was like eat-
ing a piece of Mexican food," the Times' in-
house counsel said of the news that the
Times' law firm was dropping out. "It woke
you up a little bit.")
-Here Is the Solicitor General of the
United States, worried that it would be inap-
propriate to appear in a courtroom wearing
brown shoes and a loud tie, calling his wife
and asking her to meet him in the courtyard
of the Justice Department with black shoes, a
somber tie and sonic sandwiches-so he'd
look presentable when he marched in to argue
one of the most important cases of our time.
Air. Ungar has written a book of mystery
and intrigue-accounts of midnight flights, se-
cret meetings, tapped telephones, violent ar-
guments-but definitely not a book about the
First Amendment and freedom of the press.
It's fine as far as it goes, and it's too bad lie
didn't go further.
The New York Times, has provided the post-
script that Mr. Ungar has left out. Writing in
the Times earlier this month, Mr.- Rosenthal
said: '
"After a year, there still are some ques-
tions to be pondered-what happened as the
result of publication of the papers, what did it
all add up to?
"Some interesting things the government
said would happen simply did not... .
"Codes would be broken. Military security
endangered. Foreign governments would be
afraid to deal with us. There would be nothing
secret left, and the government could not
move for fear of having intricate diplomatic
steps made public. The people would lose con-
fidence in government, and inside govern-
ment confidentiality would be destroyed.
fascinating and gossipy account of the fight- "(Today) the electric code machines hum
ing, infighting and agonizing at the Tines and away. No country seems to have pulled its
the Post, and serves up a close look at heroes embassy out of Washington. President Nixon
and villains in newsrooms, government of-. is at the zenith of his diplomatic endeavors
Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-01350R000200240002-6