THE PAPERS & THE PAPERS: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle Over the Pentagon Papers

by Sanford J. Ungar ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 1972

This reads right along like a good read should read about the papers and The Papers by a reporter reporting on what, where, when, why, and how the reporters reported,/the publishers published, and the printers printed Those Papers in their papers and what happened to whom how much. The whole cast is here: the assorted heroes who gave you the Pentagon Papers (Robert McNamara, Daniel Ellsberg, the Xerox machine, Timesmen Neil Sheehan and Arthur Sulzberger, the Washington Post's Katharine Graham, the Constitution) and the heavies who almost buried them (former Attorney General John Mitchell, TOP SECRET classification, Chief Justice Warren Burger). Ungar, a Post correspondent, is best when he's that little mouse in the editorial office, witnessing the internecine bickering at the Times after the Ellsbergian coup. Sulzberger finally ordered that ""the goddamn stuff has to be in much better shape in the next four or five days,"" unhappy with the ""eccentric and brooding"" Sheehan's first draft. Meantime Reston threatened to publish The Papers in his recently acquired Martha's Vineyard Gazette if the Times didn't get cracking. And there's a hitherto untold anecdote about Burger greeting two Post reporters at his door one night with gun in hand (""a long-barreled steel weapon""). The larger constitutional and political issues, identified but not analyzed, are subsumed by Ungar's natural interest in fourth estate gossip. So this is one insider's view of l'affaire Pentagon Papers with a heavy presumption on prior interest.

Pub Date: May 23, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION