Essay --

On Friday, 19, 1971, Cornelius â€Å"Neil† Sheehan of the New York Times received copies of a Defense Department study labeled â€Å"Top Secret – Sensitive† regarding U.S. foreign affairs in Vietnam. At that time, the U.S. was deeply involved in the Vietnam War, with no foreseeable end. Sheehan had received the documents, entitled â€Å"United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967,† from Daniel Ellsberg, a defense analyst formerly employed at RAND Corporation. As Sheehan and his colleagues examined the study, an argument sparked over whether the papers would ever be released. Some argued it was treasonous to publish stories based on critical parts of a 7,000-page, 47-volume, top-secret government study. Others believed that it was the duty of the Times to release the truth about what truly was happening in Vietnam. Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the newspaper, was far less than eager about publication. He was uneasy about a dissertation so obviously critical to national security. Finally, on June 11, Sulzberger called Times executives to his office and announced he had decided to go ahead as planned. On June 13, 1971, The New York Times ran the stories covered up by four presidents: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. Less than three weeks after the release of the stories, the Supreme Court would issue a landmark ruling. In any case involving classified government material, the right of the people to know the information must be weighed against the responsibility of the government to protect its citizens. In this particular case, the right of the people to know what has been hidden from them by countless officials for dozens of years severely outweighs the responsibility of the government to protect old ... ...r 7, 1964, that air raids would be necessary to win the Vietnam War. Apparently, the Nixon Administration reached a similar conclusion, because toward the end of the war, because right after the Pentagon Paper were released President Nixon ordered an extensive bombing campaign on the North Vietnamese. The study also revealed that President Johnson secretly paved the way for ground combat in Vietnam. Based on the evidence, it seems that Johnson, or at least his administration were interested in escalating the war in Vietnam, not ending it, as they had announced to the public. The entirety of the Pentagon Papers suggests that the United States escalated the Vietnam War, instead of trying to bring it to an end. It was the responsibility of the press to exercise its right of free speech, and the right of the public to know that the government they trusted had lied.