Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers Source, Had Uneasy Relationship With The Times

The relationship between The New York Times and its most famous source, Daniel Ellsberg, is like a thriller filled with top-secret meetings, classified documents, and a war raging in the background.

This connection was mutually beneficial. For former military analyst Ellsberg, who died Friday at the age of 92, exposing the government’s secret history of the Vietnam War changed public perception of the conflict he was against. And his 1971 release of what became known as the Pentagon Papers further strengthened the Times’ reputation as a government watchdog.

But Mr. Ellsberg had mixed feelings about The Times.

Ellsberg was pleased with the outstanding coverage The Times gave the Pentagon Papers — “the courage to do it and the risk it took,” Ellsberg’s son Robert said in an interview. And he admired Neil Sheehan, the main reporter for this article, and believed he had picked the right person for the leak.

But the young Ellsberg said his father “felt remorse and resentment at the way he was treated. He felt it was very unnecessary.”

Mr. Ellsberg, in particular, was frustrated that Mr. Sheehan had misunderstood him. Ellsberg was also upset that the Times later reported how he provided the documents.

In March 1971, Mr. Ellsberg and Mr. Sheehan thoroughly discussed the Pentagon documents in an hour-long conversation. In the fall of 1969, Mr. Ellsberg smuggled a 7,000-page Pentagon document out of his office past security guards. He enlisted Robert Ellsberg, who was 13 at the time, to help make copies.

Ultimately, Ellsberg granted Sheehan access to the documents, but only on a conditional basis. Sheehan could examine the documents and take notes, but he could not make copies.

Sheehan violated that agreement and enlisted the help of his wife, Susan Sheehan, a former New Yorker reporter, to make a copy of the document. Mr. Sheehan said nothing to Mr. Ellsberg. Over the next few months, he misled Ellsberg about the paper’s plans to run a story about the documents.

When the Times neared publication, Sheehan requested a complete copy of the document from Ellsberg, believing the request would be interpreted as the paper preparing the article for publication. But Mr. Ellsberg missed the signal. He provided the documents, but was surprised when The Times published its first article disclosing them on June 13, 1971.

President Nixon asked the newspaper to stop releasing information contained in the documents. The Times won the Nixon administration in court, setting a precedent for weakening prior government restraint. The government then sought a prison sentence for Ellsberg. A judge dismissed the case against Mr. Ellsberg on the grounds of government misconduct.

Decades later, the day Sheehan died, The Times ran an article about how the Pentagon Papers leak happened. The article is largely based on interviews conducted in 2015 in preparation for Sheehan’s obituary, in which Sheehan spoke publicly for the first time about his role in obtaining the documents. According to Jannie Scott, who wrote the article, he agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his account not be revealed until after his death.

“So no one, including Ellsberg, could run his account until after Sheehan’s death,” said Scott, who left the newspaper years before the article was published.

In an interview, Sheehan said he misled Ellsberg about the timing of the article because he feared Ellsberg was acting irrationally and would do something that would jeopardize the article. said. He said the document was too important to keep.

Ellsberg disagreed with Sheehan’s characterization that she feared a prison sentence and was frustrated that she was not given the opportunity to respond on that and other points in the article.

Ellsberg tweeted his complaint in a tweet shortly after the article was published, noting that the Times gave Sheehan a copy of the document before it published the first issue of the Pentagon Papers.Mr Ellsberg was later criticized for his treatment by The Times in an interview with New Yorkers.

Mr. Ellsberg’s son said his father was willing to turn in documents whenever he got a promise to publish them in The Times, even at the cost of going to jail.

“The implication of not telling him was, among other things, that he was caught unprepared with a copy of the papers in his apartment where the FBI could have broken in and found,” said Robert Ellsberg. said.

The New York Times said Monday it would not comment on Ellsberg’s complaints about the relationship.

A few months after the article on Sheehan, Ellsberg was part of The Times’ 50th anniversary package on the Pentagon Papers. He made many comments on his oral history. He also gave opinion sections and podcast interviews.

Still, he remained baffled by some of his dealings with the newspaper. In his final year, he gave numerous interviews, including former Times editor Jill Abramson and former Times reporter James Risen, now working for The Intercept. Abramson and Risen both said in interviews that they had voiced their dissatisfaction with the Times.

Neither interview has been published. Abramson had been in talks with The Times to write a guest opinion column about Ellsberg’s relationship with the company, but the Times later published an opinion piece by a staff writer instead. Risen also said an article about Ellsberg’s relationship with The Times will soon be published.

In his 2003 memoir, Secrets, Ellsberg revealed that he was thrilled with the culmination of the stories he helped set in motion. When he heard that his first article would be published, he bought the Sunday paper with his wife late Saturday night.

“We felt so good as we walked up the steps of Harvard Square and read the front page with a three-column article about secret archives,” Ellsberg wrote.