Daniel Ellsberg Vietnam War

Daniel Ellsberg worked on documents that showed the U.S’s actions during Vietnam the document had very secret and important information, he was an early supporter of the U.S.’s role in indochina but by the time he finished working he was against the U.S.’s involvement. He felt like he had to expose the U.S.’s actions so he leaked the papers. In 1971 he copied more than seven thousand pages of documents that revealed the government's actions during the Vietnam war. The documents exposed the government, the documents showed that the government was using controversial tactics during the Vietnam War . The documents became known as the” pentagon papers”.
Ellsberg thought that the American People should be informed of these reports and he decided to make the documents public. When he made the documents public he broke several laws. He gave the documents to the New York Times who began to release excerpts from the documents on June 13, 1971.The …show more content…
The New York Times went to the District Court and they decided to accept the order that would force them to stop printing articles that had information about the Pentagon Paper, but the District Court rejected the government administration's request to to obtain such an order. But the case went to the Court Of Appeals and they granted the government administration the order until June 25th. The Washington Post went to court at the Court for the District of Columbia and the government's request was rejected , then they went to Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the government's request was rejected again. There was an inconsistency between the courts so the Supreme Court decided to hear the case. The case went to the Supreme Court and after hearing arguments from all the sides involved on June 25 and 26th, they ruled in a 6-3 decision to uphold the rights of both newspaper companies and allowed them to continue publishing the