That article notes that a total of 16 papers had published stories based on the documents.

“The Times, which printed the first articles from a report on June 13, asked for an immediate Supreme Court hearing because of the ‘profound importance’ the case poses for a free press and because it may lose ground to other newspapers not under court orders barring publication,” the article explained.

The cases against the individual papers had come up through different circuits. The Post had been allowed to publish while the Times had been limited at the circuit level from publishing any material that the government claimed would endanger national security.

One of the roles of the Supreme Court is resolve “circuit splits” — where two circuits come to different conclusions. The case before the court would come to be known as New York Times Company v. United States but the action against the Post was included here.

Photo from the Times-Mirror and Observer The headline that accompanied the first local editorial on the Pentagon Papers.

While the case worked its way to the high court, that same story reported that a grand jury had begun investigating a non-profit think tank — RAND Corp. — which had two of the 15 original copies of the study and had once employed Ellsberg.

The June 28th edition reported that a two-hour oral argument was held before the Supreme Court and that a decision was expected in the “historic freedom-of-the-press battle between the Nixon administration and two newspapers.”

The Times-Mirror editors — with that SCOTUS decision pending — offered their second editorial on the situation and this one, entitled “Only History Will Tell,” takes a darker, more foreboding tone than the paper’s first comments on the issue. Again, I’ve included it here in its entirety in italics.

Will the real traitor please stand up?

If we were to relate our present national problems to the format of a popular television show, this could be the question asked by the moderator.

Would it be No. 1, a bearded longhair who has called out for revolution now, a dismembering of the Establishment, and the take-over of the government by “the people” in a manner reminiscent of a period during the French Revolution?

Or would it be No. 2, a cultured former employee of the government charged with furnishing classified information to the nation’s news media to establish the fact that the public has been duped by four executive administrations in the conduct of an undeclared war?

Or would it be No. 3, a composite form of these four administrations which have grossly misled the public and maligned the news media when they did occasionally uncover an inkling that pointed to deceit in high places? Who consistently supported the views of bureaucratic appointees, and disdained consulting the elected representatives of the people?

Guess, for guess you must. Not a single one of the three will arise to admit his guilt.

No. 1 will rant and rave, spitting out obscenities. But he is 20 or 30 years ahead of his time, for his tactics will not become effective until the American public has completely lost confidence in its government.

No. 2 is even a less likely candidate. For he will remain seated and silent, confident that he has performed a great service to America and the democratic form of government. If a martyr is needed, he volunteers.

So No. 3 remains for our final judgment. And we are reminded that no other traitor in the history of our country has approached in degree the immensity of the crime charged against this composite form — a degrading of public morale and confidence in the government, a flaunting of the Constitution, and a high-handedness in decision making suggestive of total dictatorship.

Only history will mark the “real” traitor. But the warning is clear — let every citizen remain alert.

The Times-Mirror on June 29 included a report that said Ellsberg had turned himself in to the authorities, confirming that he had leaked the papers and said “I am prepared to accept all consequences…. I took the action on my own initiative. I felt as an American citizen — as a responsible citizen I could no longer cooperate with concealing this information from the American people.

Readers in Warren County learned on July 1 that the Supreme Court had sided with the newspapers in a 6-3 decision.

The account in the Times-Mirror said that the majority “held the government had not proved that the national interest would be damaged if parts of the Pentagon papers were not kept from the public.” The dissent, the report said, “said the court had acted too hastily.”

The story included a quote from Justice Byron White: “To sustain the government in these cases would start the courts down a long and hazardous road that I am not willing to travel at least without Congressional guidance and direction.”

According to the National Archives, the papers were released to the public on the 40th anniversary of the Ellsberg Leak in 2011.

The NPR article cited way back at the beginning of these stories explained that Ellsberg turned himself in 11 days after the leak and was charged for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. The charges could have brought 115 year incarceration.

However, the charges were ultimately dismissed in the wake of illegal evidence gathering on the part of the government.

So, you can ask, so what?

The significance of the leak, beyond exposing the flawed premises behind the war in Vietnam, was the test to the free press piece of the First Amendment.

From a concurring opinion by Justice Hugo Black (the majority opinion and concurrences and dissents are available on the National Constitution Center’s website): “In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.

“Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”