Pentagon Papers

Publishing
Hurdles
Overcome:

Remembering
The Struggle


* How the Pentagon Papers Came to be Published by the Beacon Press: A
Remarkable Story Told by Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Dem Presidential
Candidate Mike Gravel and Unitarian Leader Robert West *

Thirty-five years ago this weekend, Beacon Press lost a Supreme Court case
brought against it by the US government for publishing the first full
edition of the Pentagon Papers. It is now well known how the New York Times
first published excerpts of the top-secret documents in June 1971. But less
well known is how the Beacon Press - a small, nonprofit publisher affiliated
with the Unitarian Universalist Association - came to publish the complete
7,000 pages that exposed the true history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Their publication led the Press into a spiral of two and a half years of
harassment, intimidation, near-bankruptcy, and the possibility of criminal
prosecution.

Today, we hear the story from three men at the center of the storm: Former
Pentagon and RAND Corporation analyst, famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Mike Gravel - the
former Alaska Senator who is now a Democratic Presidential candidate - who
tells the dramatic story of how he entered the Pentagon Papers into the
Congressional record and got them to the Beacon Press. And Robert West, the
former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association which owned the
Press and agreed to risk publication of the Pentagon Papers.


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Via Democracy Now