 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Resources
Books about the Pentagon Papers
Performances about the Pentagon Papers
Key Articles about the Pentagon Papers
Books by the Participants
Administration Generally
Secrecy Generally
Books on the Pentagon Papers
The Day the Presses Stopped: A History of the Pentagon Papers Case. David Rudenstine. University of California Press, 1996.
This is one of the most comprehensive accounts of the Pentagon Papers, and is the most definitive account from the perspective of an historian and legal scholar. David Rudenstine, who is dean of the Cardozo School of Law, was in the courtroom of Murray Gurfein on the day of the arguments described in Top Secret. He was one of the first authors to obtain a declassified record of the government's secret briefs and affidavits used to prove their assertion of danger to national security, and has come to believe that the interests weighed in the case were less clear-cut than widely believed, with the danger to national security being, at least in the minds of the witnesses at the time, genuinely dangerous. This meticulously-researched volume is indispensable and understanding the events. The first chapter of the book is available online, and it has been favorably be reviewed by the New York Times, among many others. It was also the subject of a symposium held by Cardozo Law School in 1997 which included contributions from scholars, as well as attorneys for the press (William Glendon) and the prosecutor's office (Whitney North Seymour, Jr.), the proceedings of which were published in Volume 19, Issue 4 of that school's Law Review. The book grew out of a law review article Rudenstine wrote in 1991: The Pentagon Papers Case: Recovering its Meaning Twenty Years Later. 12 Cardozo L. Rev. 1869. (1991)
The Papers & The Papers: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle Over the Pentagon Papers. Sanford Ungar. E.P. Dutton, 1972.
This George Polk Award-winning history of the case, written by former Washington Post reporter, later head of Voice of America, and current Goucher College President Sanford Ungar, is an extraordinary account of the events that transpired both before and during the legal battle over publication, and features excellent sourcing on the entire episode, from the newsrooms to the courtrooms. As a beat reporter assigned to the D.C. federal courts, and as a member of the team that reported on the Pentagon Papers events as they unfolded, Ungar's unique perspective is invaluable in interpreting the events in context and providing the flavor of conversations and decision-making at the New York Times and Washington Post. Because this book was published within a year of the events taking place, the urgency and drama of the events is palpable in this fast-paced narrative.
Inside the Pentagon Papers. John Prados and Margaret Pratt Porter. University of Kansas Press, 2004. Edited by staff members from the Vietnam Veterans of America and the National Security Archive at George Washington University, this volume was the result of a symposium held on the 30th anniversary of the events of the Pentagon Papers case held by the Vietnam Veteran's Association of America, this volume is comprised of retrospective accounts from, among others: leakers Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo; reporters Sanford Ungar, Hedrick Smith, Don Oberdorfer; Pentagon Papers authors Mel Gurtov, Herbert Schandler, and Howard Margolis; attorneys James Goodale and William Glendon; historian and law dean David Rudenstine; and former Senator Mike Gravel. The edition also includes excerpts from the classified briefs filed before the Supreme Court by Solicitor General Griswold, transcripts of telephone tapes of President Nixon, and other source materials. A small portion of the symposium itself, held at the National Press Club, is available here. Anthony Lewis, legendary Times columnist and First Amendment defender, provided this piece in the New York Review of Books.
The Pentagon Papers as Published by the New York Times. Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, E. W. Kenworthy and Fox Butterfield. Gerald Gold, Allan M. Siegal and Samuel Abt, eds. Quadrangle Books, 1971.
Edited by the man who had his byline on the Times stories and led the team that won the Pulitzer for their publication, this is the book version of the Papers. It includes the articles, additional documents, maps, photographs, timelines, all creating a solid recounting of the contents of the papers and their implications for American history in a single condensed volume. Max Frankel, Times Washington Bureau Chief, concludes with an essay blending lessons of Vietnam with the lessons that came from publishing the Papers. The volume also includes the court documents.
The Senator Gravel Edition. The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam. Five Volumes Beacon Press, 1971.
Published by the Beacon Press and subject to its own publication battle which also reached the United States Supreme Court, the 'Gravel edition' represents the document entered into the Congressional Record by anti-war Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, who was given a copy of the Papers by Ben Bagdikian of the Washington Post. Gravel himself excised information he deemed sensitive from the contents and used his power as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Works and Grounds to enter the papers into the record on the day the Supreme Court issued its decision lifting its injunction on the newspapers. He sought to use his 'Speech and Debate Clause' protection, to release as much of the full report as he could as part of his filibuster of the military's conscription. These volumes are the most comprehensive available, though they still do not reflect the entirety of the contents of the papers. The final volume in this series includes interpretive essays by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.
The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The "Negotiating Volumes" of the Pentagon Papers. George Herring, ed. University of Texas Press, 1983. The Negotiating Volumes are the final chapters of the Pentagon Papers that were not fully published under the Senator Gravel edition or the New York Times edition because it was feared that accounts the negotiations themselves would endanger national security. Reaching nearly 900 pages, this work puts into the public arena the documentary history, identifies the operatives individually, and provides the full details that can be disclosed once 'current affairs' became 'history'.
The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. George Herring, ed. McGraw-Hill, 1983. University of Kentucky Professor, Guggenheim Fellow, and military and diplomatic historian George Herring uses this volume to edit an abridged version of the papers with analysis that differs in tone from the of the newspaper's accounts, and enjoys the benefits of ten years of distance from the their first publication, allowing additional sources and revelations to be included, as well the declassification of subsequent documents.
The Pentagon Papers and the Courts: A Study in Foreign Policy-Making and Freedom of the Press. Martin Shapiro, ed. Chandler, 1972.
A slim volume by a constitutional law and political science professor looks back at the Pentagon Papers case in the same way the Pentagon Papers themselves examined the Vietnam War: by examining the events from different perspectives (in this case the foreign policy establishment, the military, the newspapers, the classification and intelligence systems, and 'news management' aspects) laying out the documentary history (here the relevant foreign policy and government theorists and the decisions of the Supreme Court), and detailed timelines. Also similarly, the concise volumes lets the conclusions be drawn by the reader, rather than pronouncing summary conclusions on the events.
The New York Times Company v. United States: A Documentary History of the Pentagon Papers Litigation. Compiled and with an introd. by James C. Goodale, Arno Press, 1971. Prepared by former New York Times Vice-President and General Counsel, this volume contains all the legal papers and briefs filed in the District Court, Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court, as well as transcripts of all arguments except for those proceedings held in camera from the injunction motion to the final Supreme Court decision on June 30, 1971. It includes are Washington Post case documents, and the articles themselves, but not the subsequent Ellsberg Trial.
Parsing the Pentagon Papers. Frederick Schauer. Joan Shorenstein Center (Harvard University) Research Paper R-3, 1991. This study by former Guggenheim Fellow and current Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the Kennedy School of Government and 2007-2008 George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford University was one of the first works generated by a center devoted to the study of the interplay between the press and public policy, based in the Kennedy School of Government. Notably, it was at the Kennedy School of Government that, in 1966, the idea for the Pentagon Papers study was first conceived by Secretary McNamara after he was greeted by demonstrators before lecturing at a class to be given by Henry Kissinger. This volume was published during the 20th Anniversary of the Pentagon Papers.
Let's Go! Let's Publish: Katherine Graham and the Washington Post. Nancy Whitelaw. Morgan Press, 1999. A young-adult title for middle school students, this focuses on the personal challenges faced by Graham, and deals with the gender hurdles she had to overcome, the personal tragedy of the loss of her husband, and her courage in steering the newspaper's course.
New York Times v. United States: National Security and Censorship. Landmark Supreme Court Cases Series. D.J. Herda. Enslow Publishing, 1994. This young adult title, for grades six and higher, also focuses less on the newspapers and more on the Supreme Court arguments. It features timelines, photos, and basic instruction in the legal issues involved.
The Pentagon Papers: National Security or the Right to Know. Supreme Court Milestones Series. Susan Dudley Gold. Benchmark Books, 2004. Another young adult title, this title, for ages 12 and above, examines the case history as it leads up to the Supreme Court
The Pentagon Papers: National Security Versus the Public's Right to Know. Geoffrey Campbell. Lucent Books, 2000. This book, primarily for high school students, is part of the 'Famous Trials: Words that Changed History' series published by Lucent, and provides a basic text of the narrative of the case. It also traces in some detail the arguments behind the parties' legal positions.
The Pentagon Papers Trial. Kenneth Salter. Justa Publications, 1975. Developed as an educational volume for a pre-law undergraduate curriculum, this book focuses on the actual prosecution of charges against Ellsberg during his trials in California, and presents a simplified version of evidence presented (it deals only with the theft charges, not the conspiracy or espionage elements of the case). The reproduction of documentary evidence, testimony from witnesses, and motions gives a focus on trial practice.
Test of Loyalty: Daniel Ellsberg and the Rituals of Secret Government. Peter Schrag. Simon & Schuster, 1974.
Told in a distinctively ironic and perceptive voice, in a tone more akin to fiction than non-fiction, Peter Schrag, a California reporter who covered the Ellsberg Trials, brings to life the personalities and events of the Pentagon Papers events, and shares his insights and suspicions about the whirl of motivations and machinations that surrounded the case and the Nixon Administration's involvement with it. A 1971 Guggenheim Fellow, former executive editor of Saturday Review, and Sacramento Bee editorial page editor, Schrag's account is lively and colorful.
Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg. Tom Wells. Palgrave, 2002. This biography of Ellsberg ties his actions and the subsequent cases into the larger effects on the Nixon Administration's collapse in the years following the publication of the Papers. A useful review was published in Reason.
Performances about the Pentagon Papers
Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers. Radio drama, script by Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Adams. Produced by L.A. Theatre Works, 1991. Featuring Ed Asner, Hector Elizondo, and Marsha Mason, and directed by Tom Moore, this was the original audio version of Top Secret was the winner of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's 1992 Gold Award for the outstanding radio production of the year.
The Pentagon Papers, FX Television Network, March 2003. Written by Jason Horwitch, directed by Rod Holcomb, this television drama was redistributed as a DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment, featuring James Spader as Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was not consulted during the production, but reviews the film here.
Key Articles about the Pentagon Papers:
Cardozo Law Review Symposium on The Day the Presses Stopped. David Rudenstine, Dean of Cardozo Law School, wrote The Day the Presses Stopped, and in 1997, the school hosted a Symposium on the topic, with the following articles published in Volume 19, Issue 4 of the Law Review: David Rudenstine. The Book in Retrospect. 1283. Dean Rudenstine here reviews reactions to his book and discusses in detail the meaning of the term 'national security,' the amount of discretion given to the newspaper editors by the courts, and subsequent cases in which the difference between obtaining information and publishing it has shown the press to be responsible as gatekeepers.
William Glendon. The Pentagon Papers-Victory for a Free Press. 1295. Glendon was lead counsel for the Washington Post and delivered its arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. This concise and vivid first-person account of events provides a thorough yet intimate recounting of the events.
Joel Gora. The Pentagon Papers Case and the Path Not Taken: A Personal Memoir on the First Amendment and the Separation of Powers. 1311. Told by a former ACLU staff member who contributed to that organization's amicus brief in favor of the newspapers, this article examines the separation of powers argument, which argued that any prior restraint is unconstitutional not only because of the First Amendment, but because prior restraint is not within the power of the Executive Branch's inherent authority in the first place.
Fredrick Lawrence. The Collision of Rights in Violence-Conducive Speech. 1333. This more theoretical article discusses the rights of speakers to advocate speech that refrains from dismissing violence.
Whitney North Seymour, Jr. At Last, the Truth Is Out. 1359. Written by the lead counsel for the Government in the New York federal district court and Second Circuit cases, this vigorous and acerbic defense of the government's position argues that the 'Special Appendix' filed to the Second Circuit gave more than enough evidence to substantiate the national security risk of publication, on military, diplomatic, and intelligence grounds.
Aviam Soifer. Born Classified, Born Free: An Essay for Henry Schwarzschild. 1385. This article, written by First Amendment Scholar and University of Hawaii Law Dean, examines the case from the premise of how both the legal issues 'classified' the case into a pure prior restraint case when so many other issues were also contested (such as separation of powers), and how the governments 'classification' of the documents themselves changes the prospects in litigation.
Peter D. Junger. Down Memory Lane: The Case of the Pentagon Papers, 23 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 3 (1971). This law review article discusses in detail the separation of power legal concerns which were never fully settled by the court.
Stanley Godofsky and Howard Rogatnick. Prior Restraints: The Pentagon Papers Case Revisited. 18 Cumb. L. Rev. 527 (1987). Media litigators from Rogers & Wells review the effect of Pentagon Papers on the law of prior restraint until 1987.
Richard A. Falk. The Nuremberg Defense in the Pentagon Papers Case. 13 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 210 (1974). Eminent Princeton legal and human rights scholar Richard Falk considers whether Ellsberg and Russo's actions in leaking the Pentagon Papers could be considered, under international law, an effort to limit their participation in what they viewed an illegal war as Nuremberg precedent urges civilians to do.
A. M. Rosenthal. The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers: An Address by A. M. Rosenthal. University of Arizona Press, 1971. Rosenthal, then the Managing Editor of the Times, received the University of Arizona's John Peter Zenger Award for freedom of the press on behalf of the New York Times' publication of the Papers.
A. M. Rosenthal. "Thanks to Bold Counsel, the Pentagon Papers Made It Into Print." Editorial. Los Angeles Daily Journal 19 June 1991, 16.
Erwin Griswold. "The Pentagon Papers Case." Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook. 1984. 1112. In the reprint of this speech to the 1972 Association of American Law Schools Convention in New York, Griswold discussed his experiences as Solicitor General of the United States, including his involvement with the Pentagon case.
Erwin Griswold. "Secrets Not Worth Keeping." Washington Post. 15 Feb. 1989, A25. In this much-cited op-ed, Griswold, who had argued for the government, admitted that in his estimation he had never really seen a danger to national security from the publication of the Papers.
William Glendon. "Fifteen Days in June that Shook the First Amendment: A First Person Account of the Pentagon Papers Case." New York State Bar Journal. Nov. 1993: 24. Glendon represented the Washington Post from the District to Supreme Court; in this article, he retells his experiences as well as how he became involved. This article was reprinted in the Cardozo Law Review's symposium issue.
Whitney North Seymour, Jr. "Press Paranoia -- Delusions of Persecution in the Pentagon Papers Case." New York State Bar Journal. Feb. 1994: 10. Seymour supports the government's actions during the Pentagon case and sharply criticizes the conduct of the newspapers. This article was reprinted in the Cardozo Law Review's symposium issue.
Books by the Participants:
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg. Viking, 2002. Reviewed favorably by the Dean of Columbia's Journalism School in the New Yorker. Papers on the War. Daniel Ellsberg. Simon & Schuster, 1972. Collected speeches and articles of the noted leaker.
Personal History. Katherine Graham. Knopf, 1997. Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for biography, this autobiography describes her years explains the public and personal triumphs of one of history's most memorable Washingtonians. A Nora Ephron review appeared in the Times.
A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures. Ben Bradlee. Simon & Schuster, 1996. The Post's executive editor, after the Pentagon Papers, went on to lead the Post through its next press-government crisis during the Watergate break-in. The recounting of these and other public milestones make up this textured autobiography.
First Rough Draft: A Journalist's Journal of Our Times. Chalmers Roberts. Praeger, 1973. As the Washington Post's chief diplomatic correspondent at the time of the Pentagon Papers, Chalmers was in the action and wrote many of the stories that would become history.
United States Attorney: An Inside View of 'Justice' in America Under the Nixon Administration. Whitney North Seymour, Jr. William Morrow, 1975. The U.S. Attorney prosecuted the New York Times for their publication. This autobiography also reveals disagreements between his office and the office of the Attorney General.
Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment. Floyd Abrams. Viking, 2005. The Pentagon Papers case, early in Abrams career, made him one of the nation's most sought-after First Amendment attorneys. This volume does not cover the Judith Miller/Valerie Plame cases. First Amendment scholar Geoffrey Stone reviewed it here, and the first Amendment Center also carried a review.
In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. Robert McNamara (with Brian VanDeMark). Random House, 1995. Selected excerpts are available.
Lyndon B. Johnson. The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963-1969. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.
Henry Kissinger, White House Years. Little, Brown and Company, 1979.
Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. Gossett & Dunlap, 1978.
Citizen Power. Mike Gravel. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. This is the 1972 platform of the former Alaskan Senator who released the Pentagon Papers to the public record. He discusses the dangers of classification and his experience as an intelligence officer.
Administration Generally:
Robert Dallek. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960 (1991); Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973 (1998); Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (2007)
Robert Caro. The Years of Lyndon Johnson (3 volumes as of 2006): The Path to Power (1982); Means of Ascent (1990); Master of the Senate(2002).
David Halberstam. The Best and the Brightest. Random House, 1972.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days. Simon & Schuster, 1976.
Stephen Ambrose. Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972. Simon & Schuster, 1989.
Seyom Brown, The Crisis of Power. Columbia, 1979.
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment Oxford, 1982.
Raymond Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation. Brookings, 1985.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream New American Library, 1977.
David Kaiser. American tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the origins of the Vietnam War. Belknap, 2000.
Secrecy Generally:
Top Secret: National Security and the Right to Know. Morton Halperin and Daniel Hoffman. New Republic Books, 1977.
Secrecy Wars: National Security, Privacy, and the Public's Right to Know. Philip Melanson. Brassey's Inc., 2001.
Presidential Secrecy and the Law. Robert Pallitto and William Weaver. Johns Hopkins, 2007.
Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life. Ted Gup. Doubleday, 2007.
Executive Privilege: Dilemma of Secrecy and Democratic Accountability. Mark Rozell. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Governmental Secrecy and the Founding Fathers: A Study in Constitutional Controls. Daniel Hoffman. Greenwood Press, 1981.
The Politics of Executive Privilege. Louis Fischer. Carolina Academic Press, 2004.
Performances about the Pentagon Papers
Key Articles about the Pentagon Papers
Books by the Participants
Administration Generally
Secrecy Generally
Books on the Pentagon Papers
The Day the Presses Stopped: A History of the Pentagon Papers Case. David Rudenstine. University of California Press, 1996.This is one of the most comprehensive accounts of the Pentagon Papers, and is the most definitive account from the perspective of an historian and legal scholar. David Rudenstine, who is dean of the Cardozo School of Law, was in the courtroom of Murray Gurfein on the day of the arguments described in Top Secret. He was one of the first authors to obtain a declassified record of the government's secret briefs and affidavits used to prove their assertion of danger to national security, and has come to believe that the interests weighed in the case were less clear-cut than widely believed, with the danger to national security being, at least in the minds of the witnesses at the time, genuinely dangerous. This meticulously-researched volume is indispensable and understanding the events. The first chapter of the book is available online, and it has been favorably be reviewed by the New York Times, among many others. It was also the subject of a symposium held by Cardozo Law School in 1997 which included contributions from scholars, as well as attorneys for the press (William Glendon) and the prosecutor's office (Whitney North Seymour, Jr.), the proceedings of which were published in Volume 19, Issue 4 of that school's Law Review. The book grew out of a law review article Rudenstine wrote in 1991: The Pentagon Papers Case: Recovering its Meaning Twenty Years Later. 12 Cardozo L. Rev. 1869. (1991)
The Papers & The Papers: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle Over the Pentagon Papers. Sanford Ungar. E.P. Dutton, 1972.This George Polk Award-winning history of the case, written by former Washington Post reporter, later head of Voice of America, and current Goucher College President Sanford Ungar, is an extraordinary account of the events that transpired both before and during the legal battle over publication, and features excellent sourcing on the entire episode, from the newsrooms to the courtrooms. As a beat reporter assigned to the D.C. federal courts, and as a member of the team that reported on the Pentagon Papers events as they unfolded, Ungar's unique perspective is invaluable in interpreting the events in context and providing the flavor of conversations and decision-making at the New York Times and Washington Post. Because this book was published within a year of the events taking place, the urgency and drama of the events is palpable in this fast-paced narrative.
Inside the Pentagon Papers. John Prados and Margaret Pratt Porter. University of Kansas Press, 2004. Edited by staff members from the Vietnam Veterans of America and the National Security Archive at George Washington University, this volume was the result of a symposium held on the 30th anniversary of the events of the Pentagon Papers case held by the Vietnam Veteran's Association of America, this volume is comprised of retrospective accounts from, among others: leakers Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo; reporters Sanford Ungar, Hedrick Smith, Don Oberdorfer; Pentagon Papers authors Mel Gurtov, Herbert Schandler, and Howard Margolis; attorneys James Goodale and William Glendon; historian and law dean David Rudenstine; and former Senator Mike Gravel. The edition also includes excerpts from the classified briefs filed before the Supreme Court by Solicitor General Griswold, transcripts of telephone tapes of President Nixon, and other source materials. A small portion of the symposium itself, held at the National Press Club, is available here. Anthony Lewis, legendary Times columnist and First Amendment defender, provided this piece in the New York Review of Books.
The Pentagon Papers as Published by the New York Times. Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, E. W. Kenworthy and Fox Butterfield. Gerald Gold, Allan M. Siegal and Samuel Abt, eds. Quadrangle Books, 1971.
Edited by the man who had his byline on the Times stories and led the team that won the Pulitzer for their publication, this is the book version of the Papers. It includes the articles, additional documents, maps, photographs, timelines, all creating a solid recounting of the contents of the papers and their implications for American history in a single condensed volume. Max Frankel, Times Washington Bureau Chief, concludes with an essay blending lessons of Vietnam with the lessons that came from publishing the Papers. The volume also includes the court documents.The Senator Gravel Edition. The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam. Five Volumes Beacon Press, 1971. Published by the Beacon Press and subject to its own publication battle which also reached the United States Supreme Court, the 'Gravel edition' represents the document entered into the Congressional Record by anti-war Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, who was given a copy of the Papers by Ben Bagdikian of the Washington Post. Gravel himself excised information he deemed sensitive from the contents and used his power as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Works and Grounds to enter the papers into the record on the day the Supreme Court issued its decision lifting its injunction on the newspapers. He sought to use his 'Speech and Debate Clause' protection, to release as much of the full report as he could as part of his filibuster of the military's conscription. These volumes are the most comprehensive available, though they still do not reflect the entirety of the contents of the papers. The final volume in this series includes interpretive essays by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.
The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The "Negotiating Volumes" of the Pentagon Papers. George Herring, ed. University of Texas Press, 1983. The Negotiating Volumes are the final chapters of the Pentagon Papers that were not fully published under the Senator Gravel edition or the New York Times edition because it was feared that accounts the negotiations themselves would endanger national security. Reaching nearly 900 pages, this work puts into the public arena the documentary history, identifies the operatives individually, and provides the full details that can be disclosed once 'current affairs' became 'history'.
The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. George Herring, ed. McGraw-Hill, 1983. University of Kentucky Professor, Guggenheim Fellow, and military and diplomatic historian George Herring uses this volume to edit an abridged version of the papers with analysis that differs in tone from the of the newspaper's accounts, and enjoys the benefits of ten years of distance from the their first publication, allowing additional sources and revelations to be included, as well the declassification of subsequent documents.
The Pentagon Papers and the Courts: A Study in Foreign Policy-Making and Freedom of the Press. Martin Shapiro, ed. Chandler, 1972. A slim volume by a constitutional law and political science professor looks back at the Pentagon Papers case in the same way the Pentagon Papers themselves examined the Vietnam War: by examining the events from different perspectives (in this case the foreign policy establishment, the military, the newspapers, the classification and intelligence systems, and 'news management' aspects) laying out the documentary history (here the relevant foreign policy and government theorists and the decisions of the Supreme Court), and detailed timelines. Also similarly, the concise volumes lets the conclusions be drawn by the reader, rather than pronouncing summary conclusions on the events.
The New York Times Company v. United States: A Documentary History of the Pentagon Papers Litigation. Compiled and with an introd. by James C. Goodale, Arno Press, 1971. Prepared by former New York Times Vice-President and General Counsel, this volume contains all the legal papers and briefs filed in the District Court, Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court, as well as transcripts of all arguments except for those proceedings held in camera from the injunction motion to the final Supreme Court decision on June 30, 1971. It includes are Washington Post case documents, and the articles themselves, but not the subsequent Ellsberg Trial. Parsing the Pentagon Papers. Frederick Schauer. Joan Shorenstein Center (Harvard University) Research Paper R-3, 1991. This study by former Guggenheim Fellow and current Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the Kennedy School of Government and 2007-2008 George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford University was one of the first works generated by a center devoted to the study of the interplay between the press and public policy, based in the Kennedy School of Government. Notably, it was at the Kennedy School of Government that, in 1966, the idea for the Pentagon Papers study was first conceived by Secretary McNamara after he was greeted by demonstrators before lecturing at a class to be given by Henry Kissinger. This volume was published during the 20th Anniversary of the Pentagon Papers.Let's Go! Let's Publish: Katherine Graham and the Washington Post. Nancy Whitelaw. Morgan Press, 1999. A young-adult title for middle school students, this focuses on the personal challenges faced by Graham, and deals with the gender hurdles she had to overcome, the personal tragedy of the loss of her husband, and her courage in steering the newspaper's course.
New York Times v. United States: National Security and Censorship. Landmark Supreme Court Cases Series. D.J. Herda. Enslow Publishing, 1994. This young adult title, for grades six and higher, also focuses less on the newspapers and more on the Supreme Court arguments. It features timelines, photos, and basic instruction in the legal issues involved.
The Pentagon Papers: National Security or the Right to Know. Supreme Court Milestones Series. Susan Dudley Gold. Benchmark Books, 2004. Another young adult title, this title, for ages 12 and above, examines the case history as it leads up to the Supreme Court
The Pentagon Papers: National Security Versus the Public's Right to Know. Geoffrey Campbell. Lucent Books, 2000. This book, primarily for high school students, is part of the 'Famous Trials: Words that Changed History' series published by Lucent, and provides a basic text of the narrative of the case. It also traces in some detail the arguments behind the parties' legal positions.
The Pentagon Papers Trial. Kenneth Salter. Justa Publications, 1975. Developed as an educational volume for a pre-law undergraduate curriculum, this book focuses on the actual prosecution of charges against Ellsberg during his trials in California, and presents a simplified version of evidence presented (it deals only with the theft charges, not the conspiracy or espionage elements of the case). The reproduction of documentary evidence, testimony from witnesses, and motions gives a focus on trial practice.
Test of Loyalty: Daniel Ellsberg and the Rituals of Secret Government. Peter Schrag. Simon & Schuster, 1974. Told in a distinctively ironic and perceptive voice, in a tone more akin to fiction than non-fiction, Peter Schrag, a California reporter who covered the Ellsberg Trials, brings to life the personalities and events of the Pentagon Papers events, and shares his insights and suspicions about the whirl of motivations and machinations that surrounded the case and the Nixon Administration's involvement with it. A 1971 Guggenheim Fellow, former executive editor of Saturday Review, and Sacramento Bee editorial page editor, Schrag's account is lively and colorful.
Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg. Tom Wells. Palgrave, 2002. This biography of Ellsberg ties his actions and the subsequent cases into the larger effects on the Nixon Administration's collapse in the years following the publication of the Papers. A useful review was published in Reason.
Performances about the Pentagon Papers
Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers. Radio drama, script by Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Adams. Produced by L.A. Theatre Works, 1991. Featuring Ed Asner, Hector Elizondo, and Marsha Mason, and directed by Tom Moore, this was the original audio version of Top Secret was the winner of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's 1992 Gold Award for the outstanding radio production of the year.
The Pentagon Papers, FX Television Network, March 2003. Written by Jason Horwitch, directed by Rod Holcomb, this television drama was redistributed as a DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment, featuring James Spader as Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was not consulted during the production, but reviews the film here.
Key Articles about the Pentagon Papers:
Cardozo Law Review Symposium on The Day the Presses Stopped. David Rudenstine, Dean of Cardozo Law School, wrote The Day the Presses Stopped, and in 1997, the school hosted a Symposium on the topic, with the following articles published in Volume 19, Issue 4 of the Law Review: David Rudenstine. The Book in Retrospect. 1283. Dean Rudenstine here reviews reactions to his book and discusses in detail the meaning of the term 'national security,' the amount of discretion given to the newspaper editors by the courts, and subsequent cases in which the difference between obtaining information and publishing it has shown the press to be responsible as gatekeepers.
William Glendon. The Pentagon Papers-Victory for a Free Press. 1295. Glendon was lead counsel for the Washington Post and delivered its arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. This concise and vivid first-person account of events provides a thorough yet intimate recounting of the events.
Joel Gora. The Pentagon Papers Case and the Path Not Taken: A Personal Memoir on the First Amendment and the Separation of Powers. 1311. Told by a former ACLU staff member who contributed to that organization's amicus brief in favor of the newspapers, this article examines the separation of powers argument, which argued that any prior restraint is unconstitutional not only because of the First Amendment, but because prior restraint is not within the power of the Executive Branch's inherent authority in the first place.
Fredrick Lawrence. The Collision of Rights in Violence-Conducive Speech. 1333. This more theoretical article discusses the rights of speakers to advocate speech that refrains from dismissing violence.
Whitney North Seymour, Jr. At Last, the Truth Is Out. 1359. Written by the lead counsel for the Government in the New York federal district court and Second Circuit cases, this vigorous and acerbic defense of the government's position argues that the 'Special Appendix' filed to the Second Circuit gave more than enough evidence to substantiate the national security risk of publication, on military, diplomatic, and intelligence grounds.
Aviam Soifer. Born Classified, Born Free: An Essay for Henry Schwarzschild. 1385. This article, written by First Amendment Scholar and University of Hawaii Law Dean, examines the case from the premise of how both the legal issues 'classified' the case into a pure prior restraint case when so many other issues were also contested (such as separation of powers), and how the governments 'classification' of the documents themselves changes the prospects in litigation.
Peter D. Junger. Down Memory Lane: The Case of the Pentagon Papers, 23 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 3 (1971). This law review article discusses in detail the separation of power legal concerns which were never fully settled by the court.
Stanley Godofsky and Howard Rogatnick. Prior Restraints: The Pentagon Papers Case Revisited. 18 Cumb. L. Rev. 527 (1987). Media litigators from Rogers & Wells review the effect of Pentagon Papers on the law of prior restraint until 1987.
Richard A. Falk. The Nuremberg Defense in the Pentagon Papers Case. 13 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 210 (1974). Eminent Princeton legal and human rights scholar Richard Falk considers whether Ellsberg and Russo's actions in leaking the Pentagon Papers could be considered, under international law, an effort to limit their participation in what they viewed an illegal war as Nuremberg precedent urges civilians to do.
A. M. Rosenthal. The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers: An Address by A. M. Rosenthal. University of Arizona Press, 1971. Rosenthal, then the Managing Editor of the Times, received the University of Arizona's John Peter Zenger Award for freedom of the press on behalf of the New York Times' publication of the Papers.
A. M. Rosenthal. "Thanks to Bold Counsel, the Pentagon Papers Made It Into Print." Editorial. Los Angeles Daily Journal 19 June 1991, 16.
Erwin Griswold. "The Pentagon Papers Case." Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook. 1984. 1112. In the reprint of this speech to the 1972 Association of American Law Schools Convention in New York, Griswold discussed his experiences as Solicitor General of the United States, including his involvement with the Pentagon case.
Erwin Griswold. "Secrets Not Worth Keeping." Washington Post. 15 Feb. 1989, A25. In this much-cited op-ed, Griswold, who had argued for the government, admitted that in his estimation he had never really seen a danger to national security from the publication of the Papers.
William Glendon. "Fifteen Days in June that Shook the First Amendment: A First Person Account of the Pentagon Papers Case." New York State Bar Journal. Nov. 1993: 24. Glendon represented the Washington Post from the District to Supreme Court; in this article, he retells his experiences as well as how he became involved. This article was reprinted in the Cardozo Law Review's symposium issue.
Whitney North Seymour, Jr. "Press Paranoia -- Delusions of Persecution in the Pentagon Papers Case." New York State Bar Journal. Feb. 1994: 10. Seymour supports the government's actions during the Pentagon case and sharply criticizes the conduct of the newspapers. This article was reprinted in the Cardozo Law Review's symposium issue.
Books by the Participants:
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg. Viking, 2002. Reviewed favorably by the Dean of Columbia's Journalism School in the New Yorker. Papers on the War. Daniel Ellsberg. Simon & Schuster, 1972. Collected speeches and articles of the noted leaker.
Personal History. Katherine Graham. Knopf, 1997. Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for biography, this autobiography describes her years explains the public and personal triumphs of one of history's most memorable Washingtonians. A Nora Ephron review appeared in the Times.
A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures. Ben Bradlee. Simon & Schuster, 1996. The Post's executive editor, after the Pentagon Papers, went on to lead the Post through its next press-government crisis during the Watergate break-in. The recounting of these and other public milestones make up this textured autobiography.
First Rough Draft: A Journalist's Journal of Our Times. Chalmers Roberts. Praeger, 1973. As the Washington Post's chief diplomatic correspondent at the time of the Pentagon Papers, Chalmers was in the action and wrote many of the stories that would become history.
United States Attorney: An Inside View of 'Justice' in America Under the Nixon Administration. Whitney North Seymour, Jr. William Morrow, 1975. The U.S. Attorney prosecuted the New York Times for their publication. This autobiography also reveals disagreements between his office and the office of the Attorney General.
Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment. Floyd Abrams. Viking, 2005. The Pentagon Papers case, early in Abrams career, made him one of the nation's most sought-after First Amendment attorneys. This volume does not cover the Judith Miller/Valerie Plame cases. First Amendment scholar Geoffrey Stone reviewed it here, and the first Amendment Center also carried a review.
In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. Robert McNamara (with Brian VanDeMark). Random House, 1995. Selected excerpts are available.
Lyndon B. Johnson. The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963-1969. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.
Henry Kissinger, White House Years. Little, Brown and Company, 1979.
Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. Gossett & Dunlap, 1978.
Citizen Power. Mike Gravel. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. This is the 1972 platform of the former Alaskan Senator who released the Pentagon Papers to the public record. He discusses the dangers of classification and his experience as an intelligence officer.
Administration Generally:
Robert Dallek. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960 (1991); Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973 (1998); Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (2007)
Robert Caro. The Years of Lyndon Johnson (3 volumes as of 2006): The Path to Power (1982); Means of Ascent (1990); Master of the Senate(2002).
David Halberstam. The Best and the Brightest. Random House, 1972.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days. Simon & Schuster, 1976.
Stephen Ambrose. Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972. Simon & Schuster, 1989.
Seyom Brown, The Crisis of Power. Columbia, 1979.
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment Oxford, 1982.
Raymond Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation. Brookings, 1985.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream New American Library, 1977.
David Kaiser. American tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the origins of the Vietnam War. Belknap, 2000.
Secrecy Generally:
Top Secret: National Security and the Right to Know. Morton Halperin and Daniel Hoffman. New Republic Books, 1977.
Secrecy Wars: National Security, Privacy, and the Public's Right to Know. Philip Melanson. Brassey's Inc., 2001.
Presidential Secrecy and the Law. Robert Pallitto and William Weaver. Johns Hopkins, 2007.
Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life. Ted Gup. Doubleday, 2007.
Executive Privilege: Dilemma of Secrecy and Democratic Accountability. Mark Rozell. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Governmental Secrecy and the Founding Fathers: A Study in Constitutional Controls. Daniel Hoffman. Greenwood Press, 1981.
The Politics of Executive Privilege. Louis Fischer. Carolina Academic Press, 2004.