New York Times Co. v. United States

403 U.S. 713 (1971), argued 26 June 1971, decided 30 June 1971 by vote of 6 to 3; Douglas, Stewart, White, Marshall, black, and Brennan writing separately, Burger, Blackmun, and Harlan in dissent. On 13 June 1971 the New York Times published the first installment of the “Pentagon Papers,” a classified, seven thousand page document commissioned by President Lyndon Johnson's secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. It revealed that secrecy had been the handmaiden of deception. Other newspapers quickly serialized the documents, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a dissident former bureaucrat in the national security apparatus.

Nixon administration officials initially regarded the documents as embarrassing only to previous administrations. President Richard Nixon himself thought that the “opposition” had an interest in forgetting the papers, but “ours is to play it up.” 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.

The administration secured a lower court order on 15 June temporarily restraining publication. Three days later, the judge denied a permanent injunction, but a circuit judge blocked further publication pending the government's appeal. On 25 June the Supreme Court agreed to take an expedited appeal, bypassing the intermediate court, yet did not lift the restraining order. Justices Hugo Black, William Brennan, William O. Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall protested the maintenance of the prior restraint. Arguments were heard the next day, and in conference, the justices voted 6 to 3 to deny the government's request for a permanent order. The Court issued a brief per curiam decision on 30 June, stating that the government had not met the burden of proving a need for prior restraint.

The government had contended that publication would endanger lives, the release of prisoners of war, and the peace process—arguments that most of the justices readily dismissed as transparent. Solicitor General Erwin Griswold himself had serious doubts about the argument the Administration insisted on making; later, he said that the decision “came out exactly as it should.”

The haste of hearing arguments and deciding inevitably led to fragmentation among the justices. Black, Brennan, and Douglas insisted that any injunction constituted prior restraint, and the Court never should have allowed any halt to publication. Justices Byron White, Marshall, and Potter Stewart agreed that prior restraint was unnecessary in this case but rejected the absolutist position of their majority colleagues. Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices Harry Blackmun and John M. Harlan dissented, each objecting to the rush of the proceedings. Burger also emphasized his belief that publishers could be prosecuted for criminal violations of security statutes for printing classified information, but only after publication.

The Court, however divided, largely agreed that prior restraint was extraordinary. Nevertheless, the Burger Court soon allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to require former employees to submit proposed writings to review (Marchetti v. United States, 1968; Snepp v. United States, 1980). Criminal statutes abounded for dealing with security breaches; indeed Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the documents, eventually was indicted and tried for his role in the case. Ironically, the administration's own illegal behavior resulted in a mistrial and, eventually, the dropping of the indictment.

The Supreme Court's decision legitimated the media's assaults against governmental secrecy and its self‐assumed status as the people's paladin against official wrongdoing. The incident intensified an already sharpened adversarial relationship between the press and the administration, a relationship that was to deteriorate even more, and with devastating results for Nixon.

See also First Amendment; Speech and the Press; Vietnam War.

— Stanley I. Kutler

• 403 U.S. 713 (1971)
• Vote: 6–3
• For the Court: per curiam opinion; Douglas, Stewart, White, Marshall, Black, and Brennan writing separately
• Dissenting: Burger, Blackmun, and Harlan

In June 1971, the New York Times and the Washington Post started to publish a series of articles based on U.S. government documents that became known as the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, the compiler of these documents, which included information about U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and federal government policies on the Vietnam War that was classified as top secret. Federal officials did not want the Pentagon Papers released to the public and printed only 15 copies. Daniel Ellsberg, a researcher involved in compiling and editing the Pentagon Papers, made a photocopy of these documents and gave most of them to Neil Sheehan of the New York Times.

A team of Times reporters wrote a series of articles on U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War based on the top secret information in the Pentagon Papers. A short time later, Daniel Ellsberg also provided materials from the Pentagon Papers to the Washington Post, and articles based on these documents began to appear in that paper, too.

The federal government objected to the publication in daily newspapers of information it classified as top secret. Government officials claimed that wide distribution of information in the Pentagon Papers would be damaging to national security. So the government brought legal action against the New York Times and the Washington Post to stop them, and other newspapers, from publishing articles about the Pentagon Papers.

The Issue

Representatives of the New York Times said the federal government's attempt to stop publication of articles about the Pentagon Papers was an example of prior restraint—when the government restricts a publication in advance from publishing certain information—and a violation of freedom of the press guaranteed in the 1st Amendment. The federal government argued that publication of this top secret information would put the lives of soldiers in danger and give assistance during wartime to enemies of the United States. Do the needs of national security during wartime outweigh the value of free and open communication of information? Does the President's constitutional duty as commander in chief of the armed forces require that he have power to restrict publication of military secrets? What are the constitutional limits on a free press during wartime?

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court rejected the federal government's arguments for prior restraint on the publication of information from the Pentagon Papers. The Court concluded that the government failed to show that publication of this information about the Vietnam War would cause such serious harm as to outweigh the value of free expression of information.

Dissent

Chief Justice Warren Burger emphasized the complexity of this kind of case. He agreed in principle with constitutional limits on prior restraint. But he also argued that there are limits on 1st Amendment freedoms. He said, “[T]he imperative of a free and unfettered press comes into collision with another imperative, the effective functioning of a complex modern government and specifically the effective exercise of certain constitutional powers of the Executive.” He referred to the constitutional powers of the President pertaining to conduct of foreign policy and command of military forces.

Significance

The Supreme Court decision in this case was a clear defeat for advocates of prior restraint under conditions of wartime or other national crises. The decision also encouraged the media in their efforts to check federal government officials or hold them accountable by obtaining and publishing information that the government wants to keep from public view.

See also Freedom of speech and press; Prior restraint

New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 91 S. Ct. 2140, 29 L. Ed. 2d 822 (1971), often referred to as the Pentagon Papers case, concerned the government's attempt to prohibit the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing portions of a secret government study on the Vietnam War. The documents in the study became known as the Pentagon Papers. The United States contended that publication of the Pentagon Papers could prolong the Vietnam War and hinder efforts to return U.S. prisoners held in Vietnam. The Times and the Post claimed that the government was engaging in censorship. Thus, the case pitted the rights of the newspapers under the First Amendment against the duty of the executive branch to protect the nation. The case drew significant national attention as it sped through the judicial system and the nation wondered what the Pentagon Papers contained.

The Pentagon Papers case addressed whether a prior restraint on the press can be justified under the First Amendment. A "prior restraint" is the imposition of a restraint on the publication of information before the information is published. There are two basic types of prior restraints. One consists of a government order or court injunction that prohibits a person from communicating certain information. The other basic type of prior restraint occurs when a license or permit is required before a particular type of expression may be used. New York Times v. United States involved the first type of prior restraint, since the government sought a court injunction prohibiting the newspapers from publishing portions of the Pentagon Papers. Other than the Pentagon Papers case, the most important Supreme Court case discussing prior restraints is Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, 51 S. Ct. 625, 75 L. Ed. 1357 (1931), which held that under the First Amendment, prior restraints on free speech are justified only in "exceptional cases," such as when the information to be published would include "the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops."

In the Pentagon Papers case a divided Supreme Court, in a decision that contains a separate opinion from each of the nine justices, refused to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers, emphasizing the First Amendment's strong presumption against any prior restraint on free speech. The justices' reasons for their decisions varied widely. Two justices believed that any prior restraint on the press amounts to censorship in clear violation of the First Amendment, whereas three justices believed that publication of the Pentagon Papers should have been delayed until the courts had more time to evaluate the impact of publication on national security. Because the case sped through the judicial system and the justices' opinions varied widely, it does not provide a clear statement of First Amendment law on prior restraint. For example, the Court failed to specify when, if ever, a prior restraint on the press might be allowed. The case is of great significance, however, as a statement that a prior restraint on the freedom of speech is almost never justified.

From June 12 to 14, 1971, the New York Times published a series of articles about the origins of the Vietnam War. The articles were based on a forty-seven-volume Defense Department study covering the years 1945 to 1968, which had been leaked to the Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst. Although the study contained only information regarding events that occurred before 1968, the government contended that the study contained "secret" and "top secret" information. Further, the government alleged that publication of the information could prolong the Vietnam War and threaten the safe return of U.S. prisoners of war. On June 15, 1971, the government sued in New York federal district court, seeking an injunction prohibiting the Times from continuing to publish information from the Pentagon Papers. Soon after, the Washington Post began publishing material from the study; accordingly, the government sought a similar injunction against the Post in the District of Columbia.

The actions against the Times and the Post were rushed through the courts because of the unique national importance of the issues and the widespread public attention the cases were receiving around the nation. Although the federal district courts both refused to issue a permanent injunction against publication of the Pentagon Papers, publication was temporarily enjoined pending appeals by the United States. Less than two weeks after the Times published its first articles, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the cases, and five days later, on June 30, 1971, issued its decision.

The Supreme Court decided on a 6-3 vote that a prior restraint could not be imposed on publication of the Pentagon Papers. In a brief opinion the whole Court noted that the government "carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint" and stated that the government had failed to meet that burden. The brief opinion reflected the widely varying views of the nine justices. The Court could not agree on a precise standard for determining when the government may impose a prior restraint on free speech, or even whether the government could ever impose a prior restraint.

In concurring opinions Justices Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas both stated, in very strong language, that prior restraints on the freedom of expression are never justified, no matter what the circumstances. Black, commenting on the government's argument that prior restraints might be justified in certain circumstances, stated, "I can imagine no greater perversion of history… . Both the history and language of the First Amendment support the view that the press must be left free to publish news, whatever the source, without censorship, injunctions or prior restraints." Black and Douglas both believed that "every moment's continuance of the injunctions … amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment."

The other four justices who concurred in the judgment, Justices William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron R. White, and Thurgood Marshall, each believed that the government could impose a prior restraint in certain extraordinary circumstances, such as where the publication of information could endanger U.S. soldiers, but that those circumstances were not present in the Pentagon Papers case. Stewart was the only justice who offered a standard for determining when a prior restraint could be imposed, stating that a prior restraint would be appropriate only where publication "will surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our Nation or its people." White, while agreeing that the circumstances did not warrant a prior restraint on the publication of the Pentagon Papers, opined that the newspapers might be criminally liable under espionage laws if they published sensitive national secrets. Marshall based his argument on the separate powers of the three branches of the government. He believed that, because Congress had declined to pass a statute authorizing the courts to enjoin publication of sensitive national secrets, the Supreme Court lacked authority to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Justices John Marshall Harlan, and Harry A. Blackmun dissented, all strongly objecting to the "unseemly haste" with which the courts heard and decided the case. Harlan stated, "With all respect, I consider that the Court has been almost irresponsibly feverish in dealing with these cases." Blackmun commented,

this, in my opinion, is not the way to try a lawsuit of this magnitude and asserted importance. It is not the way for federal courts to adjudicate, and be required to adjudicate, issues that allegedly concern the Nation's vital welfare. The country would be none the worse off were the cases tried quickly to be sure, but in the customary and properly deliberative manner.

The dissenting justices thus believed that the publication of the Pentagon Papers should have been enjoined until the courts had adequate time to evaluate carefully the legal issues and the impact of publication of the documents on the interests of the United States.

The decision was hailed as a great victory for advocates of freedom of the press. For the first time in the nation's history, the government had succeeded, if only during the appeals of the case, in precluding the press from publishing news in its possession. At least in the circumstances presented by the case, however, the Supreme Court held that such a prior restraint on freedom of speech violates the First Amendment. The practical effect of the decision, which carefully avoided any mention of the contents of the Pentagon Papers, was far less dramatic than suggested by the attention it received. The newspapers never did publish the portions of the Pentagon Papers that the government claimed were the most sensitive. In addition, further publication of the Pentagon Papers by newspapers around the country did not attract a great deal of attention or significantly affect the United States' policy on Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers case remains, however, an important precedent in support of freedom of the press under the First Amendment.

This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (November 2007)

New York Times Co. v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued June 26, 1971 Decided June 30, 1971
Full case name	New York Times Co. v. United States,
Citations	403 U.S. 713 (more)
Subsequent history	444 F.2d 544, reversed and remanded.
Holding
In order to exercise prior restraint, the Government must show sufficient evidence that the publication would cause a “grave and irreparable” danger.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan, Jr Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun
Case opinions
Per curiam.
Concurrence	Black, joined by Douglas
Concurrence	Douglas, joined by Black
Concurrence	Brennan
Concurrence	Stewart, joined by White
Concurrence	White, joined by Stewart
Concurrence	Marshall
Dissent	Burger
Dissent	Harlan, joined by Burger, Blackmun
Dissent	Blackmun
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I

New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court per curiam decision. The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.

Then-U.S. President Richard Nixon had claimed executive authority to force the Times to suspend publication of classified information in its possession. The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press under the First Amendment was subordinate to a claimed Executive need to maintain the secrecy of information. The Supreme Court ruled that First Amendment did protect the New York Times' right to print said materials.

Contents 1 Background of the Case 1.1 Section 793 of the Espionage Act 1.2 Restraining order sought 2 Decision 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

Background of the Case

Section 793 of the Espionage Act

Section 793 of the Espionage Act was cited by Attorney General John N. Mitchell as cause for the United States to sue to bar further publication of stories based upon the Pentagon Papers. The statute was spread over three pages of the United States Code Annotated and the only part that appeared to apply to the Times was 793(e), which made it criminal for:

Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it.^[1]

Based on this language, Alexander Bickel^[who?] and Floyd Abrams felt there were three preliminary arguments to raise. First, the wording of the statute was very broad. Was each article about foreign policy one "relating to the national defense"? What was the significance of "reason to believe" that the Pentagon Papers "could be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of any foreign nation"? If the motivation was to educate the public, was that a defense that served to help, not hinder, the country? Would the public be "a person not entitled to receive" the information? Of equal import was what the statute did not say: No references to "publication" (as Attorney General Mitchell's cease-and-desist order referenced), no reference to classified information, and no support for Mitchell's reliance on the top secret classification to justify restraint on publication. Additionally, there was no statutory language providing authority for prior restraint on publication at all.

Second, was the relevance of Mitchell's reliance on a criminal statute in a civil proceeding seeking prior restraint. There was Supreme Court precedent that lent support to the idea that bans on the publication of information by the press to be unconstitutional. In 1907 Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the "main purpose" of the First Amendment" was "to prevent all such previous restraints upon publications as had been practiced by other governments." In 1931 the Court wrote that only the narrowest circumstances—such as publication of the dates of departure of ships during wartime—were permissible. In 1969 John Marshall Harlan II wrote the Supreme Court "rejected all manner of prior restraint on publication." This second line of reasoning made it seem the statute should only be dealt with in passing, making the case a First Amendment one and the relief the government wanted—a bar on publication—unavailable.

The third possible approach was a very broad view of the First Amendment, one not focused on the impact of a government victory on the life of a democratic society if prior restraint were granted; but that the publication of just these sorts of materials—governmental misjudgments and misconducts of high import—is exactly why the First Amendment exists.

Restraining order sought

The government filed a restraining order that barred the Times from publishing any further articles based upon the Pentagon Papers. In addition to The New York Times Company, the Justice Department named the following defendants: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, president and publisher; Harding Bancroft and Ivan Veit, executive vice presidents; and Francis Cox, James Goodale, Sydney Gruson, Walter Mattson, John McCabe, John Mortimer and James Reston, vice presidents, John Oates, editorial page editor, A. M. Rosenthal, managing editor, Daniel Schwarz, Sunday editor, Clifton Daniel and Tom Wicker, associate editors, Gerald Gold and Allan Siegal, assistant foreign editors, Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, E. W. Kenworthy and Fox Butterfield, reporters, and Samuel Abt, a foreign desk copy editor.

Federal judge Murray Gurfein heard arguments. Michael Hess, chief of the Civil Division of the United States Attorneys Office, argued "serious injuries are being inflicted on our foreign relations, to the benefit of other nations opposed to our foreign relations, to the benefit of other nations opposed to our form of government."^[2] Hess relied on Secretary of State William P. Rogers's statement reported earlier that day that a number of nations were concerned about the Papers publication and an affidavit from general counsel of the Navy that alleged irreparable injury if publication did not cease. Hess asked for a temporary restraining order.

Bickel argued that the separation of powers barred the court from issuing the restraining order, since there was no statute authorizing such relief. He further argued that there was no exception to the general unavailability of prior restraint that applied in this case. Gurfein called all counsel to his chambers and asked Bickel and Abrams to have the Times cease publication of the Papers until he could review them. Bickel responded that Gurfein would be the first judge in American history to enter a prior restraint enjoining publication of news if he granted the government's request. The Times refused to cease publication. Gurfein granted the request and set a hearing for June 18.

The New York Times agreed to abide by the restraining order.

By 1971, the US had been overtly at war with North Vietnam for six years. At this point, 59,000 American soldiers had died and the administration was facing widespread dissent from large portions of the American public. In 1967 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara commissioned a “massive top-secret history of the United States role in Indochina”. The resulting 2.5 million word classified work was obtained by the New York Times within three years, which immediately began publishing articles outlining the findings.

The first article appeared in the Times' Sunday edition, June 13, 1971. By the following Tuesday, the Times received an order to cease further publication from a District Court judge, at the request of the Administration. The Government claimed it would cause "irreparable injury to the defense interests of the United States" and wanted to "enjoin the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing the contents of a classified study entitled History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on the Vietnam Policy.” Seen from a constitutional perspective, the Government was expressing its intent to enforce prior restraint upon a newspaper with regards to publishing the findings of a study that the Government itself had made.

On the 19th, the District Court rejected the administration’s request for an injunction. After several battles within numerous courts with no clear victory for any party, both the Times and the Government appealed to the Supreme Court.

Floyd Abrams, counsel to the New York Times

Along with the issue of how the Times obtained the documents (which was being investigated by a federal grand jury elsewhere) the real issue for the Court was whether there was a sufficient justification for prior restraint, which would be a suspension of the newspapers’ First Amendment rights to freedom of the press. The First Amendment states that no federal law can be made abridging the freedom of the press, but a few landmark cases in the 20th century had established precedents creating exceptions to that rule.

The most recent incarnation of the exception was the grave and probable danger rule, established in Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951). During this case, the wording was changed to the grave and irreparable danger standard. The idea behind the numerous versions of the rule is that if a certain message will likely cause a “grave and irreparable” danger to the American public when expressed, then the message’s prior restraint could be considered an acceptable infringement of civil liberties. The Supreme Court was therefore charged with determining if the Government had sufficiently met the “burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint” .

The Supreme Court heard arguments from the Executive Branch, the Times, the Post, and the Justice Department on June 25th and 26th 1971. On June 30th, with six Justices concurring and three dissenting, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the two newspapers to publish the material.

In its decision, the court first established the legal question with the use of precedents. It first stated that “Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity”. The purpose of this statement was to make the presence of the inherent conflict between the Government’s efforts and the First Amendment clear. The decision then stated that the Government “thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint”. This reinforced the idea that it was the Nixon Administration's responsibility to show sufficient evidence that the newspapers’ actions would cause a “grave and irreparable” danger.

Decision

The 6-3 decision finally stated that the Supreme Court agreed with the two lower courts which had originally decided that the Government had not met that burden, so the prior restraint was not justified. This final decision was not signed by any particular justice.

The Per Curiam opinion itself in this case was very brief because all the Court wanted to state was that it had concurred with the decisions of the two lower courts to reject the Government’s request for an injunction. The Justices' opinions included different degrees of support for the clear superiority of the First Amendment and no Justice fully supported the Government’s case. Because of these factors, no clear and exclusive verdict appears to have come out of this case. Nevertheless, the significance of the case and the wording of the Justices’ opinions have added important statements to the history of precedents for exceptions to the First Amendment, which have been cited in numerous Supreme Court cases since.

Justice Hugo Black wrote an opinion that elaborated on his view of the absolute superiority of the First Amendment. He was against any interference with freedom of expression and largely found the content of the documents to be immaterial. Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980) largely concurred with Black, citing the need for a free press as a check on government.

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. explained how the publication of the documents did not qualify as one of the three exceptions to the freedom of expression established in Near v. Minnesota (1931).

Justice Potter Stewart and Justice Byron R. White agreed that it is the responsibility of the Executive to ensure national security through the protection of its information. However, in areas of national defense and international affairs, the President of United States possesses great constitutional independence that is virtually unchecked by the Legislative and Judicial branch. "In absence of governmental checks and balances", per Justice Stewart, "the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in [these two areas] may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government."

Justice Thurgood Marshall established the notion that the term "national security" was too broad when legitimizing prior restraint, and also argued that it is not the Court’s job to create laws where the Congress cannot.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, dissenting, argued that "the imperative of a free and unfettered press comes into collision with another imperative, the effective functioning of a complex modern government", that there should be a detailed study on the effects of these actions. He argued that in the haste of the proceedings, and given the size of the documents, the Court was unable to gather enough information to make a decision. He also argued that the Times should have discussed the possible societal repercussions with the Government prior to publication of the material. The Chief Justice did not argue that the Government had met the aforementioned standard, but rather that the decision should not have been made so hastily.

Justice John M. Harlan and Justice Harry A. Blackmun joined the Chief Justice in arguing the faults in the proceedings, and the lack of attention towards national security and the rights of the Executive.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 403
• Westmoreland v. CBS
• Judith Miller
• Valerie Plame affair

References

1. ^ Text of Espionage Act at Findlaw.com
2. ^ Fred Graham, Court Here Refuses to Order Return of Documents Now, The New York Times, June 16, 1971.

Further reading

• Edgar, Harold; Schmidt, Benno C., Jr. (1973). "The Espionage Statutes and Publication of Defense Information". Columbia Law Review 73 (5): 929–1087. doi:10.2307/1121711. 
• Prados, John; Porter, Margaret Pratt (2004). Inside the Pentagon papers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0700613250.  → Abrams is quoted as saying the book is the "most complete, incisive, and persuasive study of those documents yet published."
• Sheehan, Neil; et al. (1971). The Pentagon Papers. New York: New York Times Co.. 
• Shapiro, Martin (1972). The Pentagon Papers and the Courts. Toronto: Chandler Publishing Company. 
• Schmidt, Steffen; Shelley, Mack; Bardes, Barbara (2005). American Government and Politics Today. Toronto: Thompson Wadsworth. ISBN 0534631622. 
• Schwartz, Bernard (1992). Freedom of the Press. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 0816025053. 

External links

• Text of New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971) is available from:  · Enfacto · Findlaw · LII

• "Top Secret: Battle for the Pentagon Papers" a resource site that supports a currently-playing docu-drama about the Pentagon Papers. The site provides historical context, time lines, bibliographical resources, information on discussions with current journalists, and helpful links.
• First Amendment Library entry for New York Times Co. v. United States

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