The Post, which comes out in theatres in the United States Friday, recounts the nail-biting behind-the-scenes story of the 1971 publication by The Washington Post of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the lies behind US involvement in the Vietnam War
Lies behind Vietnam War
The Pentagon Papers, leaked by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, was a 7,000-page classified report which determined—contrary to the public assertions of US government officials—that the Vietnam conflict was unwinnable
The New York Times published excerpts until the administration of President Richard Nixon obtained a court injunction barring the newspaper from continuing to do so on national security grounds. It was the first time in US history that a court, on national security grounds, had blocked a newspaper in advance from running a specific article, writes journalist Clyde Haberman in the Times
Taking up the torch
That’s where the Post stepped in, braving legal and financial peril to take up the torch. The drama at the heart of the film revolves around the then Post Publisher Katharine Graham’s decision to go ahead and publish the Pentagon Papers, according to AFP
Landmark judgment on press freedom
The case went to the US Supreme Court. On 30 June 1971, the court upheld the Times’s right to publish. Since then the US government has not sought “to prevent an American newspaper from printing secret information by raising a cry of national security,” adds Haberman