Katharine Graham on Publishing the Pentagon Papers

several moments of crisis in your career you have the pentagon papers when you were decided to publish against the very real threat of a court order you had the obviously the running battle with the Nixon White House during Watergate and in both cases you were betting the future of the Washington Post again what is it like how alone do you feel what gets you through it creates thank you for asking that question I have stressed many times that Watergate was really never a decision because I was backing the editors and we went into it gradually and it became we were alone I must say four months and I did back the editors but I believed in them and so there was really no choice it started very small and it grew now in the Pentagon Papers which for most of you you don't remember what the Pentagon Papers were they were they were the history commissioned by Bob McNamara when he left the Pentagon of the Vietnam War and the decisions made therein of course which the general was part of lower down and a very brave and terrific one and in the Pentagon Papers had been given by Daniel Ellsberg to the New York Times and the New York Times had published them after thinking about it for three months and then they had been enjoined by the administration and taken to court and stopped on the theory that the government could use prior restraint against a newspaper and so they had been stopped and in the meantime just as they were stopped we the Pentagon Papers were delivered to us and so we were writing the story of the Pentagon Papers all day long but we just had one day and the editors and the reporters really thought we had to resume where the Times left off and that momentum was very important to keep up and I was giving a farewell cocktail party for an executive who was leaving so I was at my house and they were at Ben Brown please house and with them was my colleague it was chairman of our board Fritz Beebe who was a lawyer and so it never occurred to me that anything would happen to us and I thought we were going to go ahead and publish and we were in the very act of going public our stock had gone to the brokers on Wall Street but had not been sold and so I was called to the phone after at when we were right on deadline because what an in fact happened was that the editors and the publisher said of course we're going to publish and the business the lawyer said really you can't because this is really double jeopardy in the face of The Times being enjoined and so I got on the phone and I said why can't we think it over the times thought it over for three months and the editors and the reporters convinced me that momentum and the idea that you couldn't enjoin the press in an you couldn't stop the press in advance of publication was very important and that they had to print that night and so I had to make up my mind on the phone and I said to Fritz BB at the other house what would you do because I got along with him wonderfully I loved his judgment and he said I guess I would not because I can understand that we were going public it was very risky and the administration was threatening us and I really was convinced by the editors and the reporters that they were right and that we really had to go ahead and so I really gulped and I really was not what your heroic leader is I just said oh go ahead I mean and Ben Bradlee who is a really truly wonderful figure and a great colleague of mine turned around to his colleagues and said she said I say we print so you know but in effect I did say that but after I got and and we did print and we did win in front of the Supreme Court after ten days of going right up there very fast and it was a very mixed decision in a very difficult one and a lot of split sort of opinions on the court but we did win that issue when it was very important and the really wonderful thing about this decision as I had to make it in 30 seconds and I stood a 50% chance of being right [Laughter]

Channel: CTFORUM

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Keywords: The Connecticut Forum, The CT Forum, Katharine Graham, Washington Post, Pentagon Papers, The Post Movie, Washington Post publisher, journalism, media, fake news, Tom Hanks The Post, Meryl Streep The Post, Katharine Graham The Post, the pentagon papers movie

Id: m0Pb5tqX7e4

Length: 4min 51sec (291 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2018