The inside story of freedom of the press and the Pentagon Papers

JAMES GOODALE

Published, leaked top secret documents and freedom of the press rights have captured the headlines most recently as WikiLeaks and the NSA’s meta collection program. But our guest, attorney and author, JAMES GOODALE, comes in to remind us of the role the 1971 Pentagon Papers has in newsgathering and the First Amendment. He was the chief counsel for the New York Times when the paper published the top secret Defense Department documents exposing the U.S. government’s policy history in the middle of the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court (New York Times v United States) decided, in its first kind of case, the First Amendment protected the Times’ publication. Goodale’s new book is “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles.” We’ll talk to him about why he thinks President Obama is worse for press freedom than former President Nixon and how Julian Assange isn’t a leaker but a person who “gets the information.”