What role did the “Pentagon Papers” play in the history of the 1970’s?

Question

How was the First Amendment guarantee of “free speech” implicated? Bonus: how was William Rehnquist, now Chief Justice, involved in this issue?

Answer 1

Hmmm ... this is from memory, and I have to scratch my brain a bit. As I recall, William Rehnquist was a political appointee in the Nixon Administration -- perhaps in the Justice Department, and he might have been named as a special prosecutor in the Ellsberg case ... either to investigate the leak or as lead prosecutor. Elliott Richardson's name also comes into my mind, but he may not have been involved.

Daniel Ellsberg was a Defense Department analyst who had access to a lengthy classified report that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. This report detailed the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, including many intelligence estimates that were frankly pessimistic, but which were suppressed as being contrary to U.S. policy. Within the DoD and the administration, dissent concerning Vietnam policy was not tolerated, as this report made clear.

Ellsberg surreptitiously photocopied the report and leaked it to the Washington Post and the New York Times, each of which printed it serially. (It was very long.)

Publication of the Pentagon Papers was big news at the time. It was embarrassing in the extreme to the Pentagon and the White House, because it showed that successive administrations -- Nixon, Johnson, and probably Kennedy -- had intentionally deceived the American public. Robert McNamara, Defense secretary for JFK and LBJ, was a central figure. Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Kennedy; William Westmoreland, ground commander under LBJ; and Henry Cabot Lodge, ambassador to South Vietnam at the time of the Diem assassination, were also featured. I don't remember if it got up to the time of Henry Kissinger. I don't think it did.

Just before the Post and Times published, the Washington administration got word of what was in the offing, and they tried to quash it beforehand, on the grounds of national security. (Rehnquist could have been involved in that.) Washington put a lot of pressure on the publishers.

Ben Bradlee and Katherine Graham of the Post, and (probably) Arthur Ochs Sulzberger of the Times resisted the pressure and decided to go ahead. Perhaps there was an attempt to secure a restraining order or an injunction to prevent publication; it was an issue of prior restraint (first amendment).

The case went to the Supreme Court as "New York Times v. Sullivan" as I recall, and it ended up as a landmark victory for freedom of the press. Maybe Rehnquist argued the case for the government.

As for Ellsberg, they finally found out who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press. Somehow, Ellsberg's psychiatrist was involved. Maybe they raided the psychiatrist's files.

Ellsberg thought he was performing a civic duty as the quintessential whistle blower. He saw that the government was pulling the wool over American eyes, and he felt he had a duty to set the record straight. The other side of the coin, of course, was that in spite of his security clearance, he deliberately disclosed Top Secret government security documents.

I think Ellsberg spent some time in jail, but probably not too long. Maybe about the same time as Martha Stewart.

Answer 2

The Pentagon Papers were exposed by Danial Ellsberg who obtained them from the Rand Corp. Only 15 copies of the 7000 page study about the Vietnam war existed.
The Supreme Court allowed the study to be published in spite of it being stolen fro Rand.
Bonus. Another Nixon foray was the break in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office looking for damaging info on him.

Answer 3

Pentagon Papers exposed the US involvement up to and including the Vietnam War to the daylight.

The Supreme Court case showed that the government was not above the law in trying to suppress documents eventually released to the public.

Rehnquist was the Assistant AG who didn't want to see the documents published.