Pentagon Papers Vs Wikileaks

WikiLeaks and the Pentagon Papers WikiLeaks has been most commonly compared to the 1971 Pentagon Papers case (New York Times Company v. United States). In this case, the Nixon Administration tried to prevent the New York Times and the Washington Post (United States v. Washington Post Co.) from publishing documents and other classified materials pertaining to United States activities in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The administration said that further publication of the papers would be "inimical to the national interest" (Rudenstein 4), and that prior restraint was necessary for the protection of national security (not dissimilar to what has been said about the WikiLeaks documents). However, the Court decided against the Nixon Administration, ultimately ruling in favor of the New York Times, and agreeing that the government had not "overcome the 'heavy presumption against' prior restraint of the press" ("New York Times Company v. United States"). They also said that the use of the

The Pentagon Papers were carefully selected documents chosen for release because they told a coherent story about the war. They included high-level analysis from Pentagon and other high-ranking government officials and showed that the government had been intentionally misleading the public (or at least not giving all the information) about the war in Vietnam. WikiLeaks released thousands of documents without a specific narrative in mind. Some of the documents were potentially harmful, others were just embarrassing and showed that the U.S. was unprepared for war. Most of the documents did not include important analysis, but rather were first-person accounts from people on the ground. And the WikiLeaks documents do not show important differences between what the government is telling the people about the War on Terror and what it is saying behind closed doors (Farhi