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May 12, 2020 6:00 am

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The Pentagon Papers were a Defense Department history of the U.S.’ political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, which revealed the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War and that multiple presidential administrations had misled Congress and the public about such actions. Daniel Ellsberg had worked on the study and, along with researcher Anthony Russo, photocopied and shared them with the The New York Times in 1971. For his disclosure of the report, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property. He was indicted by a grand jury on charges of stealing and holding secret documents. But Federal District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr. declared a mistrial and dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo on May 11, 1973, after it was revealed that agents acting on the orders of the Nixon administration illegally broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist and attempted to steal files. Representatives of the Nixon administration also approached the Ellsberg trial judge with an offer of the job of FBI directorship, and there were several irregularities in the government’s case including its claim that it had lost records of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg. Therefore, Byrne ruled government misconduct had mired the prosecution’s case. However, Ellsberg and Russo were not acquitted of violating the Espionage Act.

(Wikipedia)

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