Issues of the Case

The issue of the case, in short, was “Did the Nixon administration's efforts to prevent the publication of what it termed ‘classified information’ violate the First Amendment?” (www.oyez.org) Was allowing the New York Times to publish the “Pentagon Papers” a matter of national security? Is the First Amendment absolute or does National security over ride that right? The “Pentagon Papers” were actually a Top Secret document known formally as "History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy." They were stolen by a former US Department of Defense employee, Daniel Ellsberg, and his friend, Anthony Russo, Jr. “Ellsberg and Russo passed these studies on to two newspapers, the New York Times in New York City and the Washington Post in Washington, D.C. Neither paper was involved in the theft of government documents.” (http://law.jrank.org/) The US had marked these documents as Top Secret because “that publication would threaten national security because other nations would be reluctant to deal with the U. S. if their dealings couldn't be kept secret.” (http://www.law.umkc.edu/) This really does become a complicated matter. How far does the First Amendment reach? Is this really a matter of National security? And even if it is, isn’t the First Amendment in place to prevent the government from controlling what the media is allowed to print or say about the government in general?

This was also happening during the Viet Nam war, when much of America was angry with how the government was conducting itself. Originally, Nixon just wanted to ignore the papers, believing they were only embarrassing to previous administrations, “but with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, Nixon also realized that publication imperiled his own policies, his patterns of secrecy, and his credibility. Most important, Nixon feared that future presidents would lose control over classified documents and thus potentially embarrass their predecessors.” (www.answers.com)That is the point in which the administration was able to obtain a lower court order to temporarily refrain publication. They were unable to obtain a permanent injunction, but the papers were stopped from further publication until the government could file their appeal. Ten days after the initial restraining order was put in place, the Supreme Court agreed to take an expedited appeal, bypassing the intermediate court all together