Artist/Author/Producer: Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara
Confronting Bodies: The United States Justice Department
Dates of action: 1971
Location: United States
Description of the Art Work
The Pentagon Papers, mid-1967: Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara
commissioned a massive top-secret history of the United States role in
Indo-China. It was completed about the end of 1968, in 3,000 pages of
narrative and more than 4,000 pages of documents covering the history
from the 1940s to May 1968.
Description of incident
1971 United States: The New York Times obtained most of the material, and
began June 13, 1971 to publish a series of articles based on them with
selected, key documents. On June 15 the Justice Department obtained from
a U.S. District Court in New York a temporary restraining order against
further publication.
Results of incident
1971 United States: The New York Times and the Washington Post, which had
also begun publishing articles on the history, appealed, and on June 30,
1971 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the right to free press
overrode any subsidiary legal considerations, and permitted publication.
In July, 1971, Bantam Books issued a paperback edition of the New York
Times articles and documents.
Source: Banned Books 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D., by Anne Lyon Haight, and Chandler B.
Grannis, R.R. Bowker Co, 1978.
