Mr. Sheehan, believing the papers have been “the property of the people” and had been paid for with “the blood of their sons,” as he mentioned, broke the deal, had copies made and took a set to New York, the place groups of Times reporters and editors labored in a lodge suite across the clock for weeks to arrange the trove of nationwide secrets and techniques for publication. Mr. Ellsberg didn’t be taught of Mr. Sheehan’s duplicity till June 13, 1971, when The Times revealed the primary of 9 installments of excerpts and analytical articles on the Pentagon Papers. The response was swift.

Attorney General John N. Mitchell, citing espionage and conspiracy statutes, warned The Times that it had jeopardized nationwide safety and mentioned the newspaper confronted ruinous authorized motion. Editors, legal professionals and The Times’s writer, Arthur O. Sulzberger, conferred, and publication resumed. After the third installment, nonetheless, the Justice Department obtained an injunction, halting publication.

Mr. Ellsberg, meantime, leaked the papers to different publications, together with The Washington Post. The authorities sued. The Times and The Post carried their circumstances to the Supreme Court, which lifted the injunction on June 30, permitting publication to renew. The case strengthened a constitutional doctrine that the press, absent a nationwide emergency, shouldn’t be topic to prepublication censorship.

Damaging Disclosures

The Pentagon Papers revealed not solely that successive presidents had widened the struggle, but additionally that that they had been conscious that it was not more likely to be gained. The paperwork additionally disclosed rife cynicism amongst excessive officers towards the general public and disrespect for the big casualties of the struggle. Mr. Ellsberg referred to as the battle “an American war almost from the beginning.”

The White House quickly started to pursue Mr. Ellsberg, who had gone into hiding. Under President Nixon’s home affairs adviser, John D. Ehrlichman, a unit referred to as the “plumbers” was fashioned to plug leaks and perform covert operations, together with burglaries on the workplace of Mr. Ellsberg’s psychiatrist (no damaging recordsdata have been discovered), and in 1972 on the Democratic Party headquarters on the Watergate complicated in Washington. The arrest of the burglars there started an unraveling that led to Mr. Nixon’s resignation in 1974.