Beacon's Anniversary of a Landmark Publication: The Pentagon Papers

Former UUA President Robert West and former Beacon Press Director Gobin Stair at a Boston gathering celebrating the UUA's defense of civil liberties, October 2002.  Photo by Deborah Weiner/UUA.

Rev. Robert N. West, UUA President, and Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) hold a press conference on November 5, 1971. Photo courtesy Robert N. West/UUA.

On October 22, 2006, Beacon Press will commemorate the 35th anniversary of its publication of The Pentagon Papers—the first full edition of the top secret Defense Department studies that exposed decades of U.S. decision making about the war in Vietnam.

In the days leading up to publication, the US government did everything it could to prevent Beacon Press from publishing The Pentagon Papers, but the UUA courageously went ahead with publication. Noted sociologist and author Howard Zinn said, "There's nothing comparable to The Pentagon Papers today…that would blow the whistle on what are the secret things that are being said and done by the government in the so-called war on terrorism…It would be very nice if somebody did for what is happening now, what Ellsberg and Russo did, and what Beacon Press did, at the time of the Vietnam War."

In 1967, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara assembled a team of analysts to draft a "full history of U.S. decision making on Vietnam from the early 1940s through March of 1968." Thirty-six men, including Daniel Ellsberg, worked on the project. Disgusted by the disparity between the internal policymaking he saw and the lies being spoon-fed to the public, Ellsberg began smuggling the documents out of his safe at the Santa Monica-based Rand Corporation in October of 1969.

Ellsberg first leaked copies of the papers to the New York Times, which began publishing excerpts in June of 1971. The Times was enjoined to halt publication, as was The Washington Post. The two newspapers appealed to the Supreme Court in New York Times Co. vs. United States. They won, and established important legal precedent against the government imposing prior restraint.

Ellsberg demanded that Post journalist Ben Bagdikian deliver a copy of the papers to Senator Mike Gravel. Gravel read from the Pentagon Papers during a late night meeting of a subcommittee which he chaired—officially entering the papers in the public realm. Believing that, "Immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war," Gravel wanted to make the papers widely accessible to the public and sought a private publisher to distribute them.

Dozens of commercial and university publishing houses rejected his overtures, but Gravel, a Unitarian Universalist, then contacted Beacon Press, a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Beacon felt compelled by principle to publish the documents, and the Press proceeded with publication despite financial and political risks.

As a result, President Nixon personally attacked Beacon Press, the director of the Press (Gobin Stair) was subpoenaed to appear at Daniel Ellsberg's trial, and J. Edgar Hoover approved an FBI subpoena of the entire denomination's bank records.

In June of 1972, the Watergate break-in drew the FBI's attention, effectively ending the government's campaign of intimidation against Beacon Press. Beacon's Gobin Stair called the Pentagon Papers epic, "A watershed event in the denomination's history and a high point in Beacon's fulfilling its role as a public pulpit for proclaiming Unitarian Universalist principles." Robert West, then-president of the UUA, said, "There is no question in my mind that our denomination performed a truly significant service."

Allison Trzop, in "Beacon Press and the Pentagon Papers" (an M.A. Thesis submitted to Emerson College last spring), wrote, "The effects of publishing the Pentagon Papers remain timely: setting important legal precedents involving constitutionally demarcated congressional and executive powers; holding accountable an increasingly corporatized publishing industry that, by kowtowing to political pressure, abdicated editorial responsibility; drawing the president of the United States out as a power monger, willing to flout the law to destroy his enemies; exposing U.S. policymaking, often no more than rubber-stamped racism, which held little regard for the welfare of the citizens of an occupied nation."

For further information :

• Read Trzop's thesis 
• 10/23/06: "The Pentagon Papers and me" by Allison Trzop, uuworld.org
• Commentary on Beacon Press and The Pentagon Papers
• Documents, photos and audio interviews
• Read The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, online

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