主题：Pentagon Papers & War Logs -- pxpxpx

Summer 1971, New York Times turned the then–classified “Pentagon Papers” to the public. For the first time, Americans shockingly recognized how their presidents misled the public on Vietnam War.

As the papers indicated, President Lyndon Johnson actually made up his mind to expand the Vietnam War while promising “we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign. Once elected, Lyndon Johnson sent more troops to Vietnam even after he knew the war was not winnable. More ironically, a memo from Defense Department stated the reasoning for American persistence as:

.70% - To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat.

.20% - To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.

.10% - To permit the people [of South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life.

.ALSO - To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.

.NOT - To 'help a friend'

On Nixon’s watch, the “Pentagon Papers” came out and, not surprisingly, the public were furious. Actually, Nixon was even more furious than the public. Almost immediately, the U.S. government obtained a federal court injunction forcing New York Times to stop publishing the papers after failed to persuade Times to voluntarily cease publication.

Believing having the First Amendment right to publish information significant to the people's understanding of their government's policy, New York Times appealed the injunction. Soon, the New York Times Co vs United States case rose to the Supreme Court.

The rest is history.

Unable to prove the reports actually jeopardized the national security therefore failed to meet the required burden of proof, the government lost the case.

As a result, from then on, generally, the press can actually publish the government’s classified reports as long as no one gets hurt. In terms of the sources, legal or not, it doesn’t really matter. In other words, although the “deep throats” will most likely still end up in massive lawsuits, the press will be immune from any censorship if the reports were prepared carefully, e.g. removing names, locations, date/time, etc.

So, in this month, while New York Times published the war logs provided by wikileaks, no one will expect the government would take any actions against it.

And, more importantly, the impact of war logs is not even close to the “Pentagon Papers” in that the war logs actually verified public understanding of war in Afghanistan. From heat-seeking missiles, corrupted local officials, unreliable corporations with Pakistani intelligence service, to civilian casualties and war crimes, the public heard more or less about them since the war started in 2001. Relatively, there is no shocking news in the war logs at all.

So, in this particular case, the honesty of the government has been basically verified. But never trust it. You will never know until the next peek hole is accidentally open somewhere in the future. Until then, all the information you received from the government, even the press sometimes, should be labeled “pending verification”.