Pentagon Papers

A classified study of the Vietnam War that was carried out by the Department of Defense . An official of the department, Daniel Ellsberg, gave copies of the study in 1971 to the New York Times and Washington Post . The Supreme Court upheld the right of the newspapers to publish the documents. In response, President Richard Nixon ordered some members of his staff, afterward called the “plumbers,” to stop such “leaks” of information. The “plumbers,” among other activities, broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, looking for damaging information on him.

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Example Sentences

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More than fifty years ago, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black also recognized the importance of that freedom after a leak of the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post.

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When I was a child, the New York Times broke the story of the Pentagon Papers.

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Katharine Graham became the first woman to run a major media organization and a key player in the paper’s rise to prominence in the 1970s, first with its role in the publication of the Pentagon Papers and then with its famous investigation of the Watergate break-in.

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By agreeing to publish portions of the Pentagon Papers after a federal court had ordered the New York Times to stop, she risked criminal prosecution, the loss of the company’s television stations and potentially the whole enterprise, which had just gone public in an attempt to shore up financing.

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Members of her board most certainly did not support publishing portions of the Pentagon Papers.

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