THREAD:
1) This is the 4th in my continuing Watergate thread series: the “other burglary / Pentagon Papers” thread.

B/c Watergate was reported out over the course of months, people tended to lose track of details, & many forgot (or never realized a connection) that ...

2) in addition to the DNC HQ, another office had earlier been broken into and ransacked. The 2d DNC break-in was by no means a one-off; it’s just the time they got caught.

3) “The Pentagon Papers” were a series of documents, ~7K pages in all, that comprised a candid study, ordered in 1967 by LBJ’s SecDef, Robert McNamara, of government decision-making in the Vietnam War. The Papers, classified “top secret”, exposed lies told to the public by ...

4) the Johnson Admin., essentially hiding the facts that: 1) the Admin knew that, as then resourced, the war c/n be won, but 2) LBJ w/n seek addl resources for it, & 3) w/n pull out w/o a peace treaty in place, so as not to “lose face.”

5) Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst employed by RAND Corporation (which drafted part of the study), personally contributed part, & had access to all, of the Papers. Ellsberg & a colleague made illegal photocopies, then Ellsberg gave the docs to a few people he knew...

6) - including NYT correspondent Neil Sheehan. Sheehan wrote an article about what he knew from the documents, which the NYT published. Then he gave his copy to his editor, &, on 6/13/71, the NYT started publishing the documents *themselves*.

7) The Nixon Admin sought & obtained a restraining order preventing the NYT from further publication. The Second Circuit affirmed the order, and the NYT appealed to SCOTUS.

8) Ellsberg also gave a copy to Ben Bagdikian, a WaPo reporter (&, eventually reporters at 17 other papers, as well). WaPo started publishing Bagdikian’s stories about, & a copy of, the Papers shortly after the NYT stopped. The federal dist court for DC refused to enjoin WaPo.

9) Judge Murray Gurfein’s opinion stated that “The security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority to preserve ...

10) the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.” The government appealed.

On 6/26/71, SCOTUS agreed to hear the cases together. In the meantime, 15 other newspapers started to publish the Papers, as well.

11) SCOTUS found for the NYT on 6/30/71 - the entire legal process having taken just 15 days. In a 6-3 decision, SCOTUS dissolved the restraining order. The lead opinion was per curiam and just 3 paragraphs long; it noted that ...

12) “any system of prior restraints [on publication] comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity” & “the Government thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint”, a std the Admin hadn't met.

13) The NYT won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Papers. Ironically, Sheehan, who had written most of the NYT’s stories, was not mentioned in the Prize.

14) As discussed in the 1st thread in this series, when publication of the Papers began, Nixon d/n care if the Ds ended up looking bad b/c their lies came to light, but (a) he had been responsible for stalling the peace talks prior to his election in ‘68, in order to win, &...

15) (b) LBJ had accused him of it in a recorded telephone call, the tape/transcript of which was removed from the WH when LBJ left office. Nixon DID care about THAT not coming to light.

16) He couldn’t be sure there was no damaging information about HIM in what Ellsberg had leaked; hence, he wanted the leaks and the publication of documents stopped. Thus, after the NYT and WaPo started publication of The Pentagon Papers, the Nixon Admin didn’t just go to court.

17) It also formed “the Plumbers” unit - their job was to “stop the leaks.” One of the plumbers was G. Gordon Liddy, an aide to John Ehrlichman (Nixon’s top domestic affairs advisor).

18) In August ‘71, WH aides Egil Krogh & David Young met with Liddy & Hunt in an office in the basement of the EOEB, next door to the WH. Hunt & Liddy outlined a plan for a covert op to obtain damaging information about Ellsberg’s mental state to be used in the event ...

19) publication c/n be stopped & there was info damaging to Nixon in it. Krogh & Young sent a memo to Ehrlichman seeking his approval, & Ehrlichman approved it in writing, under the condition that “it be done under your assurance that it is not traceable” back to the WH.

20) On 9/9/71, the plumbers - Hunt, Liddy, Bernard Barker (also a Watergate burglar), & 2 others (CIA or former CIA, all) - broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding, & ransacked the place, looking for information that could be used to discredit Ellsberg.

21) They located Fielding’s file on Ellsberg, but left it on the floor of the office; apparently, its contents were deemed not damaging enough to bother with.

However, the Nixon Admin wasn’t done with Ellsberg; the FBI illegally wiretapped his home, without court order.

22) B/C the documents released by Ellsberg had been classified “top secret,” Ellsberg faced charges of espionage, theft, and conspiracy (as he’d had help in copying the documents). His potential sentence was 115 years.

23) Ellsberg publicly & peacefully surrendered himself to the US Attorney’s Office for the Dist of Mass in Boston, admitting having given the documents to the press & others who were not authorized to have them.

24) He stated that he “felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.”

25) Ellsberg’s trial was held in Los Angeles on 1/3/73, with U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr., presiding. Byrne had, prior to trial, but after the case was on his docket, met 2ce w/Ehrlichman - who offered him the position of FBI Director.

26) Byrne refused to consider such an offer while the Ellsberg case was pending; he was criticized afterward for even agreeing to the meetings.

27) Ellsberg was effectively denied a defense. When he tried to claim that the documents had been classified illegally - to keep them from the American public, not from any outside enemy - Byrne ruled that argument “irrelevant” and would not allow it to be made to the jury.

28) In 2014, talking about the case, Ellsberg said that his “lawyer, exasperated, said he ‘had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell the jury why he did what he did.’” Byrne’s reply: “‘Well, you’re hearing one now.’”

29) That ruling likely violated Ellsberg’s 5th Amendment right to due process - notice and an opportunity to be heard.

But things started going better for Ellsberg when the break-in of Fielding’s office was revealed to Judge Byrne in a memo from the government on 4/26/73.

30) Byrne ordered the memo shared w/defense counsel. On 5/9/73, evidence of the illegal wiretapping of Ellsberg’s home was revealed in ct; not only had the bugging been done w/o ct order, the prosecution had planned to use transcripts at trial w/o disclosing same to the defense.

31) Also during this part of Ellsberg’s trial, it was revealed that the FBI, at the request of Henry Kissinger, had also illegally wiretapped the home phone of Morton Halperin, a member of the US National Security Council staff, who the Admit suspected of leaking info about ...

32) the then-secret invasion of Cambodia to the NYT.

33) (Halperin later sued Nixon, Mitchell, & Haldeman, claiming the wiretap violated his 4th Amend rights & Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control & Safe Streets Act of 1968. The court agreed that their rights had been violated, but awarded Halperin only $1 in damages.)

34) On 5/11/73, the government claimed it had “lost” all records of the Ellsberg home wiretap. That same day, Judge Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg because of the gross misconduct of the government, both in using the illegal wiretap in the first place, and ...

35) the conduct of the prosecutors in failing to disclose & then “losing” the evidence.

36) His written opinion states: “The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case.”

37) After the trial, Watergate prosecutor William H. Merrill told Ellsberg that in the docs the Watergate investigators had examined, there were memos re: addl plots by the plumbers against Ellsberg. In his autobiography, Liddy describes the “Ellsberg neutralization proposal”...

38) as having been an idea from Hunt, & states that it would have involved having current or former CIA operatives drug Ellsberg with LSD in his food at a fund-raising dinner at which he was to speak. They wanted him to be incoherent by the time he rose for his speech, ...

39) to make him appear “a near burnt-out drug case”, again, to try to discredit him. The plan had been approved by the WH, but without enough lead time to get the operatives in place at the hotel in DC where the dinner was to occur, so the plan was put off ...

40) to a better opportunity, which never arose. There were also plots to have current or former CIA operatives “totally incapacitate” Ellsberg at a public rally; it’s unclear if they meant to kill him, or just cripple him.

41) Next up: the "investigations" thread! ;)

CORRECTION: tweet # 18 refers to the "EOEB". It should be "OEOB." Sorry for the error!