Photo from the Times-Mirror and Observer This cartoon exemplifies how different generations had interpreted what had unfolded in Vietnam.

Then as now the Warren newspaper didn’t publish on Sunday so the next installment — and the first local editorial — came in the June 21, 1971 edition of the Times-Mirror.

The news story that day focused on the fact that the Times and Post were set to be back in court. While a district judge had sided with the Post and Times, the government appealed and an appeals court instituted a temporary restraining order to stop publication.

It also included a brief summary of the Times’ third installment before the pause — “They said the United States had conducted clandestine warfare against North Vietnam before the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1964, that the Johnson administration had decided before the 1964 election to bomb North Vietnam and that Johnson in early 1965 decided to use American ground troops offensively in secret.”

The June 20 edition also had Ellsberg’s first comments: “I’m flattered to be suspected of having leaked it” and he claimed that the government “had virtually unlimited (capacity) to lie to the public.”

The White House punched back by saying foreign affairs can’t happen “unless it can deal with foreign powers in a confidential way.”

The first local editorial on the subject was entitled “We Should See Those Documents.”

It’s the local commentary on these national issues that I find most interesting so I’ve included the entire editorial here in italics.

We are a small-town newspaper in pastoral northwestern Pennsylvania, far removed from and relatively untouched by the major machinations of big-city journalism and high government decision-making.

Yet, we support, encourage and defend the New York TImes and Washington Post in their efforts to publish the now-famous documents detailing how top government officials in the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations took the decisions that so tragically embroiled this country in the Vietnam War.

For our citizens who have fought and died in this war; our students have engaged in the campus controversies it has engendered; our economy has jerked and jolted in reaction to the fiscal demands of the military law it has spawned; and our lives and futures are at stake as much as any other citizens’ should our national administration enter into other hostilities that conceivably could cause the horror of nuclear war.

From excerpts we have read, and summaries of excerpts currently being withheld from publication under court order, it is obvious that these papers tell a tragic story of government decision by approximation, public officials often talking what they knew to be absolute falsehoods to Congress and the public, and waging war by guesstimation that is inimical to the way most of us believed the decisions about this war were being taken.

It is easy to understand the government’s anxiety to repress these documents, though they relate to a previous administration. For nobody likes to see his dirty linen aired in public and the Nixon administration doubtless fears a similar revelation about policy decisions taken during its term in office.

But it by now almost universally accepted opinion that our entanglement in the Vietnam war to the extent and the purposes involved was a mistake; indeed, we are now engaged in the monumental task of extricating ourselves from that mistake while still giving those Vietnamese who fought with us a “reasonable chance” of surviving without an immediate Community takeover.

Asked how, if “we the people” are indeed the basis of this government, are we to prevent future aberrations of decision-making from occurring unless we know how this mistaken policy evolved? True, government officials may be embarrassed or dishonored by the revelations of these documents. But we suspect that, had they not acted indiscreetly or dishonorably in the past, they would have nothing to fear now.

To prevent such disclosures, the government has shown a reflex tendency to stamp “Classified” on documents that have no more bearing on national security than the number of polliwogs in the Allegheny River does. Nothing so far revealed by the Times or the Post can be construed as materially damaging to national security, our troops’ safety in Vietnam or anything except the reputation of several government officials.

Indeed the government attorneys involved in the hearings to suppress further publication have admitted as much, stating that the government’s purpose in seeking the injunctions is to establish a precedent for future actions and some evidence for possible criminal prosecution. In a word, Censorship.

The Times and the Post obtained these documents, so far as is known, from individuals, who did not steal them, but who had a right to copies in the course of their duties. And it is our opinion that had the editors of these publications not wanted to publish these documents, they would nonetheless have been forced to do so by the nature of their contents and the nature of their function in this society.

It appears that Attorney General Mitchell, acting no doubt on direct instructions from President Nixon, has been so busy reading these documents that he has forgotten another document bearing on the issue. TO refresh his memory, and establish just how much legal freedom the press has in this country, we herewith quote from it in part:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assembly and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

That’s Amendment I of the Constitution of the United States; and that alone is justification, defense and reason enough for the courts to clear the way for the Times and Post to resume the publication of these documents.

A ruling came down the following day that made the front page of the Times-Mirror and included the assertion by a district judge that “the government has not presented… any showing that the documents at the present time and in present form are top-secret.”

The papers were winning on the merits but couldn’t avoid injunctions while the cases were under review and the Boston Globe became the third newspaper to get chilled from further reporting on the papers.

That was reported in the Times-Mirror on June 23 along with comments from Defense Secretary Melvin Laird who said the DOJ would be moving “as rapidly as we possibly can” to declassify study, estimating it would take 90 days to do so.

Laird said, per the Times-Mirror’s article, that the papers had been “stolen” and that “it is necessary for us to move as rapidly as possible with the classification review.”

He also didn’t shut the door that there would be criminal prosecutions once the dust settled — “I would assume on stolen papers there would be some action.”

The specific reporting from the Papers that got the Globe in trouble was an account of a 1964 meeting where military brass, per the article, argued for the freedom to use tactical nukes.

The Globe also reported one source informing them that Ellsberg “expects to comment publicly in a week or two on his role in the unearthing of the… study….”

“Unearthing” is certainly an interesting word choice.

The Times-Mirror in that article also reported on some interesting reporting from the Baltimore Sun: “The Baltimore Sun reported unnamed South Vietnamese officials were afraid publication of the study might result in a faster U.S. pullout. It quoted a finance official as saying, “Senators and congressmen are going to feel they have been played for fools… but the only people who are left on whom they can take out their anger is the South Vietnamese.”

Shifting to the following day, the pressure was starting to mount on the White House.

The Times-Mirror’s June 24 edition reported that Nixon was going to give the study to Congress.

“The decision to turn over the study resulted from fears Congress would make decisions on the basis of partial publication of the papers that ‘could give a distorted impression of the report’s contents,’ said White House press secretary Ronald L. Ziegler,” that article stated. “Ziegler said Nixon’s decision to open the documents to congressional scrutiny would not halt further government efforts to prevent publication of secret material.”