# data[].attributes.headline
October Revolution

 It was named Russian Revolution. It happened
in October 1917. It because the government didn’t do very well and the economy
went down. Also, many people lost their jobs. In addition, the rate of salary
went down. Also, it was during the war that Russian was tiring to win. The workers
start this revolution to get equal in every thing because the corruption was so
wide. Finally, the revolution won and established a new government.

# data[].attributes.subject
October Revolution

 It was named Russian Revolution. It happened
in October 1917. It because the government didn’t do very well and the economy
went down. Also, many people lost their jobs. In addition, the rate of salary
went down. Also, it was during the war that Russian was tiring to win. The workers
start this revolution to get equal in every thing because the corruption was so
wide. Finally, the revolution won and established a new government.

# data[].attributes.headline
Bryson Mellitus a man who is burning an American flag. " I would like to one day feel a sense of pride toward my nationality again" Mellitus said. It was definitely a tantrum. From here we can realize that the importance of freedom of expression issue to deal with any unexpected action as result to any angry emoticon. It's really one of the most important rights that to allow freedom of speech to know what people are thinking. We can find a solution for them or at least anticipate reactions sudden as in this case. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Bryson Mellitus a man who is burning an American flag. " I would like to one day feel a sense of pride toward my nationality again" Mellitus said. It was definitely a tantrum. From here we can realize that the importance of freedom of expression issue to deal with any unexpected action as result to any angry emoticon. It's really one of the most important rights that to allow freedom of speech to know what people are thinking. We can find a solution for them or at least anticipate reactions sudden as in this case. 

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While Richard Nixon was running for reelection, he was found connection with the burglars who broke into the office of the Democratic National Committee and attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents. The office is located in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. so we call this incident Watergate Scandal. Richard Nixon resigned affter that because he did not want to be impeached but his successor pardon him.

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This was a case about the right of Freedom Speech during the Vietnam War. On Apr. 26, 1968, the defendant, Cohen, had been convicted with a misdemeanor as disturbing the peace of the public and sentenced to 30 days in jail by California Court for Appeal because he worn a jacket with words of "Fuck the Draft" during the Vietnam War. The US Supreme Court overruled the adjudication of first trial by a vote of 5-4 and supported Cohen's freedom speech right.

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Pentagon Paper was secretly conduct by Department of Defense regarding the Vietnamese War from 1945 to 1967. The paper revealed that the role of U.S. government was vital and active, which was contradict to the claim made by the government. The Nixon government indicted the New York Times in the name of national security for publishing the paper. However, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Court dismissed it.

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A CIA map of dissident activities in Indochina, published as part of the Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled The History of U.S. Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1945-1968, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study, they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that Lyndon B. Johnson's administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress."

The Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with coastal raids on North Vietnam and Marine Corps attacks-none of which were reported in the mainstream media. For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property; charges were later dismissed, after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.

In June 2011, the documents forming the Pentagon Papers were declassified and publicly released.

Shortly after their release in June 1971, the Pentagon Papers were featured on the cover of Time magazine for revealing "The Secret War" of the United States in Vietnam.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara created the Vietnam Study Task Force on June 17, 1967, for the purpose of writing an "encyclopedic history of the Vietnam War". McNamara claimed that he wanted to leave a written record for historians, to prevent policy errors in future administrations, although Leslie H. Gelb, then director of Policy Planning at the Pentagon, has said that the notion that they were commissioned as a "cautionary tale" is a motive that McNamara only used in retrospect. McNamara told others, such as Dean Rusk, that he only asked for a collection of documents rather than the studies he received. Motives aside, McNamara neglected to inform either President Lyndon Johnson or Secretary of State Dean Rusk about the study. One report claimed that McNamara had planned to give the work to his friend, Robert F. Kennedy, who was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. McNamara later denied it, though he admitted that he should have informed Johnson and Rusk.

Instead of using existing Defense Department historians, McNamara assigned his close aide and Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton to collect the papers. McNamara wanted the study done in three months. McNaughton died in a plane crash one month after work began in June 1967, but the project continued under the direction of Defense Department official Les Gelb.

Thirty-six analysts-half of them active-duty military officers, the rest academics and civilian federal employees-worked on the study. They worked to produce 47 studies answering a list of 100 questions that McNamara (via his secretaries) had sent them, which included questions such as "How confident can we be about body counts of the enemy? Were programs to pacify the Vietnamese countryside working? What was the basis of President Johnson's credibility gap? Was Ho Chi Minh an Asian Tito? Did the U.S. violate the Geneva Accords on Indochina?" Some of the analysts included Daniel Ellsberg, Morton Halperin, Paul Warnke, future generals Paul F. Gorman and John Galvin, historian Melvin Gurtov, economists Hans Heymann and Richard Moorstein, and future top diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who drafted a volume.

The analysts largely used existing files in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In order to keep the study secret from others, including National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, they conducted no interviews or consultations with the armed forces, with the White House, or with other federal agencies.

McNamara left the Defense Department in February 1968, and his successor Clark Clifford received the finished study on January 15, 1969, five days before Richard Nixon's inauguration, although Clifford claimed he never read it. Gelb said in 1991 that he presented the study to McNamara in early 1969, when the latter was president of the World Bank, but McNamara did not read it then, and as late as 2018 Gelb did not know if McNamara ever read the study later in his life.

The study consisted of 3,000 pages of historical analysis and 4,000 pages of original government documents in 47 volumes, and was classified as "Top Secret - Sensitive". ("Sensitive" is not an official security designation; it meant that access to the study should be controlled.) The task force published 15 copies; the think tank RAND Corporation received two of the copies from Gelb, Morton Halperin and Paul Warnke, with access granted if at least two of the three approved.

Route Packages, areas of bombing over North Vietnam, for Operation Rolling Thunder, mentioned in the Papers

The 47 volumes of the papers were organized as follows:

I. Vietnam and the U.S., 1940-1950 (1 Vol.)

II. U.S. Involvement in the Franco-Viet Minh War, 1950-1954 (1 Vol.)

A. U.S., France and Vietnamese Nationalism

B. Toward a Negotiated Settlement

III. The Geneva Accords (1 Vol.)

A. U.S. Military Planning and Diplomatic Maneuver

B. Role and Obligations of State of Vietnam

C. Viet Minh Position and Sino-Soviet Strategy

D. The Intent of the Geneva Accords

IV. Evolution of the War (26 Vols.)

A. U.S. MAP for Diem: The Eisenhower Commitments, 1954-1960 (5 Vols.)

1. NATO and SEATO: A Comparison

2. Aid for France in Indochina, 1950-54

3. U.S. and France's Withdrawal from Vietnam, 1954-56

4. U.S. Training of Vietnamese National Army, 1954-59

5. Origins of the Insurgency

B. Counterinsurgency: The Kennedy Commitments, 1961-1963 (5 Vols.)

1. The Kennedy Commitments and Programs, 1961

2. Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961-63

3. The Advisory Build-up, 1961-67

4. Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces in Vietnam, 1962-64

5. The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, May-Nov. 1963

C. Direct Action: The Johnson Commitments, 1964-1968 (16 Vols.)

1. U.S. Programs in South Vietnam, November 1963-April 1965: NSAM 273 - NSAM 288 - Honolulu

2. Military Pressures Against NVN (3 Vols.)

3. Rolling Thunder Program Begins: January-June 1965

4. Marine Combat Units Go to DaNang, March 1965

5. Phase I in the Build-Up of U.S. Forces: March-July 1965

6. U.S. Ground Strategy and Force Deployments: 1965-1967 (3 Vols.)

a. Volume I: Phase II, Program 3, Program 4

b. Volume II: Program 5

c. Volume III: Program 6

8. Re-emphasis on Pacification: 1965-1967

10. Statistical Survey of the War, North and South: 1965-1967

V. Justification of the War (11 Vols.)

VI. Settlement of the Conflict (6 Vols.)

A. Negotiations, 1965-67: The Public Record

B. Negotiations, 1965-67: Announced Position Statements

C. Histories of Contacts (4 Vols.)

1. 1965-1966

2. Polish Track

3. Moscow-London Track

4. 1967-1968

As laid out by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the Chinese containment policy of the United States was a long-run strategic effort to surround Beijing with the USSR, its satellite states, as well as:

Although President Johnson stated that the aim of the Vietnam War was to secure an "independent, non-Communist South Vietnam", a January 1965 memorandum by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton stated that an underlying justification was "not to help friend, but to contain China".

On November 3, 1965, Secretary of Defense McNamara sent a memorandum to Johnson, in which he explained the "major policy decisions with respect to our course of action in Vietnam". The memorandum begins by disclosing the rationale behind the bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965:

The February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.

McNamara accused China of harboring imperial aspirations like those of the German Empire, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union. According to McNamara, the Chinese were conspiring to "organize all of Asia" against the United States:

To encircle the Chinese, the United States aimed to establish "three fronts" as part of a "long-run effort to contain China":

There are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR "contains" China on the north and northwest):

(a) the Japan-Korea front;

(b) the India-Pakistan front; and

However, McNamara admitted that the containment of China would ultimately sacrifice a significant amount of America's time, money and lives.

Years before the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred on August 2, 1964, the U.S. government was indirectly involved in Vietnam's affairs by sending advisers or (military personnel) to train the South Vietnamese soldiers:

Under President Harry S. Truman, the U.S. government aided France in its war against the communist-led Viet Minh during the First Indochina War.

Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the U.S. government played a "direct role in the ultimate breakdown of the Geneva settlement" in 1954 by supporting the fledgling South Vietnam and covertly undermining the communist country of North Vietnam.

Under President John F. Kennedy, the U.S. government transformed its policy towards Vietnam from a limited "gamble" to a broad "commitment".

Under President Johnson, the U.S. government began waging covert military operations against communist North Vietnam in defense of South Vietnam.

Role of the United States in the rise of President Diem

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower greets South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem, whose rise to power was backed by the United States, according to the Pentagon Papers

In a section of the Pentagon Papers titled "Kennedy Commitments and Programs", America's commitment to South Vietnam was attributed to the creation of the country by the United States. As acknowledged by the papers:

In a sub-section titled "Special American Commitment to Vietnam", the papers emphasized once again the role played by the United States:

Without U.S. support [Ngo Dinh] Diem almost certainly could not have consolidated his hold on the South during 1955 and 1956.

Without the threat of U.S. intervention, South Vietnam could not have refused to even discuss the elections called for in 1956 under the Geneva settlement without being immediately overrun by the Viet Minh armies.

Without U.S. aid in the years following, the Diem regime certainly, and an independent South Vietnam almost as certainly, could not have survived.

More specifically, the United States sent US$28.4 million worth of equipment and supplies to help the Diem regime strengthen its army. In addition, 32,000 men from South Vietnam's Civil Guard were trained by the United States at a cost of US$12.7 million. It was hoped that Diem's regime, after receiving a significant amount of U.S. assistance, would be able to withstand the Viet Cong.

The papers identified General Edward Lansdale, who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as a "key figure" in the establishment of Diem as the President of South Vietnam, and the backing of Diem's regime thereafter. As written by Lansdale in a 1961 memorandum: "We (the U.S.) must support Ngo Dinh Diem until another strong executive can replace him legally."

Role of the United States in the overthrow of Diem's regime

The body of President Diệm after he was assassinated in the 1963 South Vietnamese coup, which was backed by the United States government

According to the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. government played a key role in the 1963 South Vietnamese coup, in which Diem was assassinated. While maintaining "clandestine contact" with Vietnamese generals planning a coup, the U.S. cut off its aid to President Diem and openly supported a successor government in what the authors called an "essentially leaderless Vietnam":

For the military coup d'etat against Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. must accept its full share of responsibility. Beginning in August 1963 we variously authorized, sanctioned and encouraged the coup efforts of the Vietnamese generals and offered full support for a successor government.

In October we cut off aid to Diem in a direct rebuff, giving a green light to the generals. We maintained clandestine contact with them throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational plans and proposed new government.

Thus, as the nine-year rule of Diem came to a bloody end, our complicity in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities and our commitment in an essentially leaderless Vietnam.

As early as August 23, 1963, an unnamed U.S. representative had met with Vietnamese generals planning a coup against Diem. According to The New York Times, this U.S. representative was later identified to be CIA officer Lucien Conein.

The Director of Central Intelligence, John A. McCone, proposed the following categories of military action:

Category 1 - Air raids on major Viet Cong supply centers, conducted simultaneously by the Republic of Vietnam Air Force and the United States Air Force (codenamed Farmgate)

Category 2 - Cross-border raids on major Viet Cong supply centers, conducted by South Vietnamese units and US military advisers.

Category 3 - Limited air strikes on North Vietnamese targets by unmarked planes flown exclusively by non-US aircrews.

However, McCone did not believe these military actions alone could lead to an escalation of the situation because the "fear of escalation would probably restrain the Communists". In a memorandum addressed to President Johnson on July 28, 1964, McCone explained:

Barely a month after the Gulf of Tonkin incident on August 2, 1964, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy warned that further provocations should not be undertaken until October, when the government of South Vietnam (GVN) would become fully prepared for a full-scale war against North Vietnam. In a memorandum addressed to President Johnson on September 8, 1964, Bundy wrote:

The main further question is the extent to which we should add elements to the above actions that would tend deliberately to provoke a DRV reaction, and consequent retaliation by us.

Examples of actions to be considered were running US naval patrols increasingly close to the North Vietnamese coast and/or [] associating them with 34A operations.

We believe such deliberately provocative elements should not be added in the immediate future while the GVN is still struggling to its feet. By early October, however, we may recommend such actions depending on GVN progress and Communist reaction in the meantime, especially to US naval patrols.

While maritime operations played a key role in the provocation of North Vietnam, U.S. military officials had initially proposed to fly a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over the country, but this was to be replaced by other plans.

Daniel Ellsberg knew the leaders of the task force well. He had worked as an aide to McNaughton from 1964 to 1965, had worked on the study for several months in 1967, and Gelb and Halperin approved his access to the work at RAND in 1969. Now opposing the war, Ellsberg and his friend Anthony Russo photocopied the study in October 1969 intending to disclose it. Ellsberg approached Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Senators William Fulbright and George McGovern, and others, but none were interested.

Ellsberg showed some of the documents privately to sympathetic policy experts Marcus Raskin and Ralph Stavins of the Institute for Policy Studies. They declined to publish the papers, but passed on some of them to, and recommended he seek The New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, whom Ellsberg had first met in Vietnam and was reintroduced to by Raskin and Stavins. After discussing them in February 1971, Ellsberg gave 43 of the volumes to Sheehan on March 2. Ellsberg had initially requested that Sheehan only take notes of the study in Ellsberg's apartment; Sheehan disobeyed, frantically copying them in numerous shops in the Boston area at the urging of and with help from his wife Susan Sheehan, and flying with the copies to Washington, where he and an editor there worked in a hotel room at The Jefferson to organize and read them. Editors A. M. Rosenthal and James L. Greenfield had the copies delivered by mail first to Greenfield's apartment, then Greenfield and his wife drove them to multiple rooms at the New York Hilton Midtown, where Sheehan, Rosenthal, Greenfield, deputy foreign editors Gerald Gold and Allan M. Siegal, and a team of three writers Fox Butterfield, Hedrick Smith, and E. W. Kenworthy, and researcher Linda Amster worked around the clock to organize and summarize them for publication. Before publication, The New York Times sought legal advice. The paper's regular outside counsel, Lord Day & Lord, advised against publication, but in-house counsel James Goodale prevailed with his argument that the press had a First Amendment right to publish information significant to the people's understanding of their government's policy.

The New York Hilton Midtown (pictured in 2013), where Times reporters organized the Papers for publication in spring 1971

The New York Times began publishing excerpts on June 13, 1971; the first article in the series was titled "Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Involvement". The study was dubbed The Pentagon Papers during the resulting media publicity. Street protests, political controversy, and lawsuits followed.

To ensure the possibility of public debate about the papers' content, on June 29, US Senator Mike Gravel, an Alaska Democrat, entered 4,100 pages of the papers into the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds. These portions of the papers, which were edited for Gravel by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, and given directly to Gravel by Ben Bagdikian, the then-national editor of The Washington Post in a June 26 meeting in front of the Mayflower Hotel at midnight, were smuggled into Gravel's congressional office and guarded zealously by disabled Vietnam veterans beforehand, and subsequently published by Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. A federal grand jury was subsequently empaneled to investigate possible violations of federal law in the release of the report. Leonard Rodberg, a Gravel aide, was subpoenaed to testify about his role in obtaining and arranging for publication of the Pentagon Papers. Gravel asked the court (in Gravel v. United States) to quash the subpoena on the basis of the Speech or Debate Clause in Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution.

That clause provides that "for any Speech or Debate in either House, [a Senator or Representative] shall not be questioned in any other Place", meaning that Gravel could not be prosecuted for anything said on the Senate floor, and, by extension, for anything entered to the Congressional Record, allowing the papers to be publicly read without threat of a treason trial and conviction. When Gravel's request was reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court denied the request to extend this protection to Gravel or Rodberg because the grand jury subpoena served on them related to a third party rather than any act they themselves committed for the preparation of materials later entered into the Congressional Record. Nevertheless, the grand jury investigation was halted, and the publication of the papers was never prosecuted.

Later, Ellsberg said the documents "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates." He added that he leaked the Papers to end what he perceived to be "a wrongful war"; in an interview in 2015, Neil Sheehan described Ellsberg's state of mind at the time as "totally conflicted" between getting the Papers published and not wanting to go to prison.

The Nixon administration's restraint of the media

President Nixon at first planned to do nothing about publication of the study, since it embarrassed the Johnson and Kennedy administrations rather than his; however, Kissinger convinced the president that not opposing the publication set a negative precedent for future secrets. It has also been suggested that Kissinger's previous work with Ellsberg at Rand would damage his standing in Nixon's eyes and that he therefore sought to distance himself from Ellsberg, in addition Kissinger feared that Ellsberg could leak other defense secrets, including nuclear targeting. The administration argued Ellsberg and Russo were guilty of a felony under the Espionage Act of 1917, because they had no authority to publish classified documents. After failing to persuade The New York Times to voluntarily cease publication on June 14, Attorney General John N. Mitchell and Nixon obtained a federal court injunction forcing The New York Times to cease publication after three articles. The New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger said:

The newspaper appealed the injunction, and the case New York Times Co. v. United States quickly rose through the U.S. legal system to the Supreme Court.

On June 18, 1971, The Washington Post began publishing its own series of articles based upon the Pentagon Papers; Ellsberg had given portions to The Washington Post reporter and former RAND Corporation colleague Ben Bagdikian in a Boston-area motel earlier that week. Bagdikian flew with the portions to Washington and physically presented them to executive editor Ben Bradlee at the latter's house in the Georgetown neighborhood; Bradlee set up a team of writers, lawyers and editors to hide out in his house and organize the portions. Bagdikian later met with Mike Gravel in front of the Mayflower Hotel on June 26 to give him copies. On June 18, Assistant U.S. Attorney General William Rehnquist asked The Washington Post to cease publication. After the paper refused, Rehnquist sought an injunction in U.S. district court. Judge Murray Gurfein declined to issue such an injunction, writing that "[t]he security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know." The government appealed that decision, and on June 26 the Supreme Court agreed to hear it jointly with The New York Times case. Fifteen other newspapers received copies of the study and began publishing it. According to Ellsberg in 2017 and 2021, 19 newspapers in total eventually drew on the Papers for their investigative work; the Post's then-court reporter Sanford J. Ungar wrote in his May 1972 book The Papers and The Papers that aside from the Times and the Post, The Boston Globe and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had also been brought to court by the Nixon administration over coverage of the Papers.

On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court decided, 6-3, that the government failed to meet the heavy burden of proof required for prior restraint injunction. The nine justices wrote nine opinions disagreeing on significant, substantive matters.

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.

Thomas Tedford and Dale Herbeck summarized the reaction of editors and journalists at the time:

As the press rooms of the Times and the Post began to hum to the lifting of the censorship order, the journalists of America pondered with grave concern the fact that for fifteen days the 'free press' of the nation had been prevented from publishing an important document and for their troubles had been given an inconclusive and uninspiring 'burden-of-proof' decision by a sharply divided Supreme Court. There was relief, but no great rejoicing, in the editorial offices of America's publishers and broadcasters.

Artist David Rose's rendering of attorneys during the 1973 trial of Ellsberg and Russo in Los Angeles

Ellsberg surrendered to authorities at the U.S. Attorney's office in Boston on June 28, and admitted that he had given the papers to the press: "I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision". He was indicted by a grand jury in Los Angeles on charges of stealing and holding secret documents. Federal District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr. declared a mistrial and dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo on May 11, 1973, after it was revealed that agents acting on the orders of the Nixon administration illegally broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist and attempted to steal files; representatives of the Nixon administration approached the Ellsberg trial judge with an offer of the job of FBI directorship; several irregularities appeared in the government's case including its claim that it had lost records of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg conducted by the White House Plumbers in the contemporaneous Watergate scandal. Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case." Ellsberg and Russo were freed due to the mistrial; they were not acquitted of violating the Espionage Act.

In March 1972, political scientist Samuel L. Popkin, then assistant professor of Government at Harvard University, was jailed for a week for his refusal to answer questions before a grand jury investigating the Pentagon Papers case, during a hearing before the Boston Federal District Court. The Faculty Council later passed a resolution condemning the government's interrogation of scholars on the grounds that "an unlimited right of grand juries to ask any question and to expose a witness to citations for contempt could easily threaten scholarly research".

Gelb estimated that The New York Times only published about five percent of the study's 7,000 pages. The Beacon Press edition was also incomplete. Halperin, who had originally classified the study as secret, obtained most of the unpublished portions under the Freedom of Information Act and the University of Texas published them in 1983. The National Security Archive published the remaining portions in 2002. The study itself remained formally classified until 2011.

The Pentagon Papers revealed that the United States had expanded its war with the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which had been reported by the American media. The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four administrations (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson) had misled the public regarding their intentions. For example, the Eisenhower administration actively worked against the Geneva Accords. The Kennedy administration knew of plans to overthrow South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem before his death in the November 1963 coup. Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign, including plans to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 United States presidential election. President Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.

In another example, a memo from the Defense Department under the Johnson Administration listed the reasons for American persistence:

70% - To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).

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, although it would be hard to stay in if asked out.

Another controversy was that Johnson sent combat troops to Vietnam by July 17, 1965,[citation needed ] before pretending to consult his advisors on July 21-27, per the cable stating that " Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance informs McNamara that President had approved 34 Battalion Plan and will try to push through reserve call-up."

In 1988, when that cable was declassified, it revealed "there was a continuing uncertainty as to [Johnson's] final decision, which would have to await Secretary McNamara's recommendation and the views of Congressional leaders, particularly the views of Senator [Richard] Russell."

Nixon's Solicitor General Erwin N. Griswold later called the Pentagon Papers an example of "massive overclassification" with "no trace of a threat to the national security". The Pentagon Papers' publication had little or no effect on the ongoing war because they dealt with documents written years before publication.

After the release of the Pentagon Papers, Barry Goldwater said:

Senator Birch Bayh, who thought the publishing of the Pentagon Papers was justified, said:

Leslie H. Gelb's signature, taken from the index (page 7) of the Papers

In 1991, Les Gelb said the following:

But I cannot say that I was pleased. I worried about the turmoil that would enter my life, then as a scholar at the Brookings Institution. I worried about the potential misuse of the papers by doves to stamp government leaders as liars and by hawks to brand war critics as traitors.

What troubled me was that the papers-a vast, undigested mass of fragmentary truths-in the newspapers would become like sticks of historical dynamite, damaging more than illuminating the ongoing struggle over Vietnam policy.

How publication affected that struggle is still unclear. But then and now and above all, the Times' publication insured what mattered most to those of us who wrote the studies and to our democracy-that the papers would live.

Gelb reflected in 2018 that many people have misunderstood the most important lessons of the Pentagon Papers:

Ellsberg created the myth that what the Papers show is that it all was a bunch of lies... [The truth] is, people actually believed in the war and were ignorant about what could and could not actually be done to do well in that war. That's what you see when you actually read the Papers, as opposed to talk about the Papers...

[M]y first instinct was that if they just hit the papers, people would think this was the definitive history of the war, which they were not, and that people would, would think it was all about lying, rather than beliefs. And look, because we'd never learned that darn lesson about believing our way into these wars, we went into Afghanistan and we went into Iraq...

You know, we get involved in these wars and we don't know a damn thing about those countries, the culture, the history, the politics, people on top and even down below. And, my heavens, these are not wars like World War II and World War I, where you have battalions fighting battalions. These are wars that depend on knowledge of who the people are, with the culture is like. And we jumped into them without knowing. That's the damned essential message of the Pentagon Papers...

I don't deny the lies. I just want [the American people] to understand what the main points really were.

Ellsberg at a fundraiser in 2006

On May 4, 2011, the National Archives and Records Administration announced that the papers would be declassified and released to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, on June 13, 2011. The release date included the Nixon, Kennedy, and Johnson Libraries and the Archives office in College Park, Maryland.

The full release was coordinated by the Archives's National Declassification Center (NDC) as a special project to mark the anniversary of the report. There were still eleven words that the agencies having classification control over the material wanted to redact, and the NDC worked with them, successfully, to prevent that redaction. It is unknown which 11 words were at issue and the government has declined requests to identify them, but the issue was made moot when it was pointed out that those words had already been made public, in a version of the documents released by the House Armed Services Committee in 1972.

The Archives released each volume of the Pentagon Papers as a separate PDF file, available on their website.

The Pentagon Papers (2003), directed by Rod Holcomb and executive produced by Joshua D. Maurer, is a historical film made for FX, in association with Paramount Television and City Entertainment, about the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg's involvement in their publication. The film represents Ellsberg's life, beginning with his work for RAND Corporation, and ending with the day on which his espionage trial was declared a mistrial by a federal court judge. The film starred James Spader as Ellsberg, Paul Giamatti as Russo, Alan Arkin as RAND Corporation president Harry Rowen, and Claire Forlani as Patricia Ellsberg.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009) is an Oscar nominated documentary film, directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, that follows Ellsberg and explores the events leading up to the publication of the Pentagon Papers.

(2017) is a historical drama film directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg from a script written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer about a pair of The Washington Post employees who battle the federal government over their right to publish the Pentagon Papers. The film stars Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham. Daniel Ellsberg is played by Matthew Rhys.

The Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg and The Times. PBS. October 4, 2010. Archived from the original on August 28, 2008. "On September 13, 2010, The New York Times Community Affairs Department and POV presented a panel discussion on the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, and the Times. The conversation, featuring Daniel Ellsberg, Max Frankel, former The New York Times executive editor, and Adam Liptak, The New York Times Supreme Court reporter, was moderated by Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times" and former Washington bureau chief, marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling.

1. ^ "The Watergate Story". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on October 16, 2012. Watergate prosecutors find a memo addressed to John Ehrlichman describing in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, The Post reports.

2. ^ "Pentagon Papers Charges Are Dismissed; Judge Byrne Frees Ellsberg and Russo, Assails 'Improper Government Conduct'". The New York Times. May 11, 1973. Archived from the original on February 20, 2023.

3. ^ Gelb, Les and Gladstone, Brooke (January 12, 2018). What the Press and "The Post" Missed Archived August 1, 2019, at the Wayback Machine. On The Media.

4. ^ Prados, John; Porter, Margaret Pratt, eds. (2004). Inside the Pentagon Papers. Modern War Studies (Paperback). ISBN 978-0-7006-1423-3.

5. ^ Correll, John T. (February 2007). "The Pentagon Papers" (PDF). Air Force Magazine. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 23, 2018.

6. ^ Vietnam Task Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense (1969). United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967 (The Pentagon Papers), Index (PDF) (Report). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 8, 2022.

7. ^ Robert McNamara (November 3, 1965). "Draft Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson". Office of the Historian. Archived from the original on May 20, 2017.

8. ^ "Evolution of the War. Counterinsurgency: The Kennedy Commitments and Programs, 1961" (PDF). National Archives and Records Administration. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 August 2013.

9. "The Pentagon Papers, Vol. 2, Chapter 4, "The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, May-November, 1963"" (PDF). National Archives and Records Administration. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 9, 2013.

10. ^ Tim Weiner (June 7, 1998). "Lucien Conein, 79, Legendary Cold War Spy". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 1, 2017. He ran agents behind the Iron Curtain in the early 1950s. He was the C.I.A.'s contact with friendly generals in Vietnam as the long war took shape there. He was the man through whom the United States gave the generals tacit approval as they planned the assassination of South Vietnam's President, Ngo Dinh Diem, in November 1963.

11. ^ McGeorge Bundy (September 8, 1964). "Courses of action for South Vietnam". Office of the Historian. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013.

12. ^ Young, Michael (June 2002). "The devil and Daniel Ellsberg: From archetype to anachronism (review of Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg)". . p. 2. Archived from the original on August 30, 2009.

13. Sanger, David E.; Scott, Janny; Harlan, Jennifer; Gallagher, Brian (June 9, 2021). "'We're Going to Publish': An Oral History of the Pentagon Papers". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 13, 2021.

14. McFadden, Robert D. (March 11, 2016). "Ben H. Bagdikian, Reporter of Broad Range and Conscience, Dies at 96". The New York Times.

15. Schudel, Matt (March 11, 2016). "Ben H. Bagdikian, journalist with key role in Pentagon Papers case, dies at 96". The Washington Post.

16. Goodman, Amy (March 16, 2016). "Remembering Journalist & Media Critic Ben Bagdikian, Author of "The Media Monopoly"". Democracy Now!.

17. "How the Pentagon Papers Came to be Published by the Beacon Press: A Remarkable Story Told by Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Dem Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel and Unitarian Leader Robert West". Democracy Now!. July 2, 2007. Archived from the original on February 25, 2021.

18. Ellsberg, Daniel (2002). "Chapter 29: Going Underground". Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-03030-9.

19. ^ Ungar, Sanford J. (May 1, 1972). The Papers and the Papers: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle Over the Pentagon Papers. New York, NY: E. P. Dutton. ISBN 978-0525041559.

20. ^ Meislin, Richard J. (March 22, 1972). "Popkin Faces Jail Sentence In Contempt of Court Case". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on February 4, 2013.

21. ^ Burke, John; Greenstein, Fred (1989). How Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965. p. 215.

22. ^ Nixon Presidential Historical Materials: Opening of Materials (PDF), 76 FR 27092 (2011-05-10), archived (PDF) from the original on May 5, 2017

23. ^ Jason, Ukman; Jaffe, Greg (June 10, 2011). "Pentagon Papers to be declassified at last". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 30, 2018.

The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam. Boston: Beacon Press. 5 vols. "Senator Gravel Edition"; includes documents not included in government version. ISBN 0-8070-0526-6 & ISBN 0-8070-0522-3.

Neil Sheehan. The Pentagon Papers. New York: Bantam Books (1971). ISBN 0-552-64917-1.

Daniel Ellsberg. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Viking (2002). ISBN 0-670-03030-9.

"Marcus Raskin: For him, ideas were the seedlings for effective action" (obituary of Marcus Raskin), , Jan 29. / Feb 5. 2018, pp. 4, 8. Marcus Raskin in 1971, on receiving "from a source (later identified as ... Daniel Ellsberg) 'a mountain of paper' ... that became known as the Pentagon Papers ... [p]lay[ed] his customary catalytic role [and] put Ellsberg in touch with The New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan ... A longtime passionate proponent of nuclear disarmament, [Raskin] would also serve in the 1980s as chair of the SANE / Freeze campaign." (p. 4.)

Lukas, J. Anthony (December 12, 1971). "After the Pentagon Papers-A Month in the New Life of Daniel Ellsberg". The New York Times.

Prados, John; Porter, Margaret Pratt, eds. (2004). Inside the Pentagon Papers. Modern War Studies (Paperback). ISBN 978-0-7006-1423-3.

Sanford J. Ungar. The Papers and the Papers: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle Over the Pentagon Papers. New York: E. P. Dutton (1972). ISBN 978-0525041559

George C. Herring (ed.) The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill (1993). ISBN 0-07-028380-X.

George C. Herring (ed.) Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers (1983).

[James Risen

THE SECRET HISTORY How Neil Sheehan Really Got the Pentagon Papers https://theintercept.com/2023/10/07/pentagon-papers-daniel-ellsberg-neil-sheehan/]

Pentagon Papers (Complete Gravel ed.). mtholyoke.edu. Archived from the original on August 18, 2018. Complete text with supporting documents, maps, and photos.

"Battle for the Pentagon Papers". Top Secret. Archived from the original on March 6, 2021. a resource site that supports a currently playing docu-drama about the Pentagon Papers. The site provides historical context, time lines, bibliographical resources, information on discussions with current journalists, and helpful links.

Gravel, Mike; Ellsberg, Daniel (July 7, 2002). "Special: How the Pentagon Papers Came to Be Published by the Beacon Press". Democracy Now!. Archived from the original on July 3, 2007. (audio/video and transcript).

"Nixon Tapes & Supreme Court Oral Arguments". gwu.edu.

Trzop, Allison. Beacon Press & The Pentagon Papers. Beacon Press.

Blanton, Thomas S., ed. (June 5, 2001). The Pentagon Papers: Secrets, Lies and Audiotapes (The Nixon Tapes and the Supreme Court Tapes, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 48). Compiled by Prados, John; Meadows, Eddie; Burr, William & Evans, Michael.

Ellsberg's obituaries in:

On the Media episode on the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg and Gelb's roles in them, and the state of Vietnam War reporting: "The Whistleblower Who Changed History - On the Media". WNYC Studios. June 23, 2023.

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The Pentagon Papers , officially titled The History of U.S. Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1945-1968 , is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968.

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The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. As the Vietnam War dragged on, with more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by 1968, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg-who had worked on the study-came to oppose the war, and decided that the information contained in the Pentagon Papers should be available to the American public. He photocopied the report and in March 1971 gave the copy to The New York Times, which then published a series of scathing articles based on the report's most damning secrets.

Who Was Daniel Ellsberg?

In 1967, at the request of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a team of analysts working for the Department of Defense prepared a highly classified study of the U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II until the present day.

The official title of the study was the "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force," though it would later become famous as the Pentagon Papers. In preparing the study-which was labeled "Top Secret"-the analysts drew on classified material from the archives of the Department of Defense, State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Completed in 1969 and bound into 47 volumes, it contained 3,000 pages of narrative along with 4,000 pages of supporting documents.

Daniel Ellsberg, who had served as a U.S. Marine Corps officer from 1954 to 1957 and worked as a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and the Department of Defense, had been an early supporter of U.S. involvement in Indochina and had worked on the preparation of the 1967 study.

Did you know? Though an incomplete version of the Pentagon Papers was published in book form later in 1971, the study remained officially classified until June 2011, when the U.S. government released all 7,000 pages to the public in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of its leakage to the press.

By 1969, however, Ellsberg had come to believe that the war in Vietnam was un-winnable. He also believed that the information contained in the Pentagon Papers about U.S. decision-making regarding Vietnam should be more widely available to the American public. After secretly photocopying large sections of the report, Ellsberg approached several members of Congress, none of whom took action.

Some of the most damning information in the Pentagon Papers indicate that the administration of John F. Kennedy had actively helped overthrow and assassinate South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. The report also contradicted official U.S. government pronouncements about the intensive bombing of North Vietnam, which the report stated as having no real impact on the enemy's will to fight.

In 1971, while working as a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, Ellsberg gave portions of the report to Neil Sheehan, a reporter at The New York Times.

READ MORE: How the Vietnam War Ratcheted Up Under 5 Presidents

New York Times v. United States

Beginning on June 13, 1971, the Times published a series of front-page articles based on the information contained in the Pentagon Papers. After the third article, the U.S. Department of Justice got a temporary restraining order against further publication of the material, arguing that it was detrimental to U.S. national security.

In the now-famous case of New York Times Co. v. United States, the Times and the Washington Post joined forces to fight for the right to publish, and on June 30 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the government had failed to prove harm to national security, and that publication of the papers was justified under the First Amendment's protection of freedom of the press.

In addition to publication in the Times, Post, Boston Globe and other newspapers, portions of the Pentagon Papers entered the public record when Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, read them aloud in a Senate subcommittee hearing.

These published portions revealed that the presidential administrations of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had all misled the public about the degree of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, from Truman's decision to give military aid to France during its struggle against the communist-led Viet Minh to Johnson's development of plans to escalate the war in Vietnam as early as 1964, even as he claimed the opposite during that year's presidential election.

Impact of the Pentagon Papers

Published at a time when support for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was rapidly eroding, the Pentagon Papers confirmed many people's suspicions about the active role the U.S. government had taken in building up the conflict. Though the study did not cover the policies of President Richard M. Nixon, the revelations included within it were embarrassing, particularly as Nixon was up for reelection in 1972.

In supporting the freedom of the press guaranteed in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote: "In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry-in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government."

After the Supreme Court's verdict on June 30, the Nixon administration had Ellsberg and an alleged accomplice, Anthony Russo, indicted on criminal charges including conspiracy, espionage and stealing government property. The trial began in 1973, but ended in a dismissal of the charges after prosecutors discovered that a secret White House team (dubbed "the plumbers") had burglarized Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in September 1971 in order to find information that would discredit him.

The so-called plumbers, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, were later involved in the break-in at the Watergate in 1972 that would lead to Nixon's resignation in 1974.

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The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. As the Vietnam War dragged on, with more than 500,000 U.S.

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One day after Bryton Mellott's photo of himself burning an American flag led to his arrest in Urbana, Ill., the local prosecutor says no charges will be filed against Mellott. The 22-year-old was released Monday, after questions arose over Illinois' flag desecration law.

Enacted in 2013, that law was the basis for Mellott's arrest. But the state's attorney says it contradicts the Supreme Court's ruling on this issue.

Mellott's brush with controversy began after he posted a photo of himself holding a burning flag on Sunday night. As member station WILL reports, "By Monday morning, July Fourth, Urbana Police were receiving calls about it. Some calls complained about the flag-burning, and others expressed concern for Mellott's safety."

Shortly after 1 a.m. Monday, Mellott posted a note to his Facebook page saying, "So it'd be super-duper if the death threats could stop."

Mellott didn't immediately respond to a message from NPR seeking comment and clarification of his post. Citing local newspaper the News-Gazette and other media outlets, WILL reprinted the text that had originally accompanied Mellott's flag photo before the message was deleted. Because it provides context for this story, we'll follow suit in posting it here, unedited:

"I would like to one day feel a sense of pride toward my nationality again. But too little progress has been made. Too many people still suffer at the hands of politicians influenced by special interests. too many people are still being killed and brutlized by a police force plagued with authority complexes and racism. Too many people are allowed to be slaughtered for the sale of gun manufacturer profits. Too many Americans hold hate in their hearts in the name of their religion, and for fear of others. .... I do not have pride in my country. I am overwhelmingly ashamed, and I will demonstrate my feelings accordingly. #ArrestMe."

The Urbana Police Department arrested Mellott on Monday; in a news release issued later that day, the department said that many people who responded to Mellott's Facebook post "threatened violence against Mellott and his place of employment, which fielded a large number of calls regarding the post."

That news release ended with a statement urging the public "to express themselves in a peaceful way and to not retaliate against unpopular speech."

We'll note that according to the News-Gazette, Mellott works at a Wal-Mart.

Citing the volume and specificity of the threats, the department says that after speaking to Mellott and his employer, "Mellott was placed under arrest for flag desecration" - but that he was later released, after a representative of the Champaign County Office of the State's Attorney raised questions about the state's flag law.

Those questions led State's Attorney Julia Rietz to decline to file charges against Mellott on Tuesday, saying that despite the Illinois law, "the act of burning a flag is protected free speech according to the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Texas v. Johnson, 491 US 397 (1989)."

In an update issued Tuesday afternoon, Urbana Police Chief Patrick J. Connolly says that his officers acted in good faith and had reviewed current state law. When officers went to Mellott's workplace to investigate the threats, Connolly says, "they made contact with the poster who declined to assist in deescalating the situation by removing the public postings."

Connolly continues, "Given the nature of the escalating negative landscape and the concern for the poster, fellow employees at the workplace, and innocent customers, the officers took action to take the poster in custody pursuant to the Illinois Flag Desecration statute."

He adds that the Urbana Police Department "recognizes that this is a case where the right of free speech may have been in conflict with the safety of innocent and uninvolved citizens."

After the prosecutor's decision was announced, Connolly issued the news release we quoted above. He finished his note by saying, "We respect the analysis of the State Attorney's Office and their determination not to proceed with the prosecution in this matter."

In addition to the invective that met Mellott's post, there were also some more measured responses. Consider this one, from a man in Columbia, S.C.:

"Since I've served in the military, I suppose I should be angry that you're burning a piece of cloth made in China, but I'm honestly not. I'm more angry at the fact taxpayer money is being wasted to arrest and suppress someone who was speaking his mind. Still, you have to understand that this was in really bad taste. You seem like a good guy, but you should find better ways at channeling your anger to make a positive change. I hope you find happiness bud."

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Illinois Man Is Arrested After Burning U.S. Flag, Won't Face Charges

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One day after Bryton Mellott's photo of himself burning an American flag led to his arrest in Urbana, Ill., the local prosecutor says no charges will be filed against Mellott. The 22-year-old was released Monday, after questions arose over Illinois' flag desecration law. Enacted in 2013, that law was the basis for Mellott's arrest.

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-Hussain

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Flag desecration is a term that is applied to the desecration of flags, violation of flag protocol, or a various set of acts that intentionally destroy, damage, or mutilate a flag in public. I the case of a national flag, such action is often intended to make a political point against a country or its policies.

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The Watergate Scandal - Timeline, Summary & Deep Throat

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A June 1972 break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters led to an investigation that revealed multiple abuses of power by the Nixon administration and a vote by the House Judiciary Committee for impeachment.

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Watergate scandal - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The Watergate scandal happened when United States President Richard Nixon, a Republican, was tied to a crime in which former FBI and CIA agents broke into the offices of the Democratic Party and George McGovern (the Presidential candidate). Nixon's helpers listened to phone lines and secret papers were stolen.

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Vietnam War protests began small among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Anti-war marches and other protests, such as the ones organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), attracted a widening base of support over the next three years, peaking in early 1968 after the successful Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese troops proved that war's end was nowhere in sight.

Vietnam War Protests: The Beginnings of a Movement

In August 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, and President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. And by the time U.S. planes began regular bombings of North Vietnam in February 1965, some critics had begun to question the government's assertion that it was fighting a democratic war to liberate the South Vietnamese people from Communist aggression.

Did you know? Boxer Muhammad Ali was one prominent American who resisted being drafted into service during the Vietnam War. Ali, then heavyweight champion of the world, declared himself a "conscientious objector," earning a prison sentence (later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court) and a three-year ban from boxing.

The anti-war movement began mostly on college campuses, as members of the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) began organizing "teach-ins" to express their opposition to the way in which it was being conducted. Though the vast majority of the American population still supported the administration policy in Vietnam, a small but outspoken liberal minority was making its voice heard by the end of 1965. This minority included many students as well as prominent artists and intellectuals and members of the hippie movement, a growing number of young people who rejected authority and embraced the drug culture.

Widespread Disillusionment

By November 1967, American troop strength in Vietnam was approaching 500,000 and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. The Vietnam War was costing the U.S. some $25 billion per year, and disillusionment was beginning to reach greater sections of the taxpaying public. More casualties were reported in Vietnam every day, even as U.S. commanders demanded more troops. Under the draft system, as many as 40,000 young men were called into service each month, adding fuel to the fire of the anti-war movement.

On October 21, 1967, one of the most prominent anti-war demonstrations took place, as some 100,000 protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial; around 30,000 of them continued in a march on the Pentagon later that night. After a brutal confrontation with the soldiers and U.S. Marshals protecting the building, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. One of them was the author Norman Mailer, who chronicled the events in his book "The Armies of the Night," published the following year to widespread acclaim.

Also in 1967, the anti-war movement got a big boost when the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. went public with his opposition to the war on moral grounds, condemning the war's diversion of federal funds from domestic programs as well as the disproportionate number of African American casualties in relation to the total number of soldiers killed in the war. At a march of over 5,000 protestors in Chicago, Illinois on March 25, 1967, Martin Luther King called the Vietnam War "a blasphemy against all that America stands for."

Vietnam War Protest Songs

The Vietnam War protest inspired many popular songs that became an anthem for their generation. Phil Ochs wrote "What Are You Fighting For?" in 1963 and "I Ain't Marching Anymore" in 1965. Other songs whose very titles were a protest unto themselves included Pete Seeger's "Bring 'Em Home" (1966) and Joan Baez's "Saigon Bride" (1967). Nina Simone's "Backlash Blues" (1967) took a civil rights poem by Langston Hughes and adapted it into a protest of Vietnam: "Raise my taxes/Freeze my wages/Send my son to Vietnam." Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" from 1971 went on to be one of the most popular songs of all time.

John Lennon's first song after leaving the Beatles, "Give Peace a Chance," hit airwaves in 1966. " Imagine," from 1971, has transcended the Vietnam era to continue to be a song of peace and unity.

Political Consequences of Vietnam War Protests

The launch of the Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese communist troops in January 1968, and its success against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, sent waves of shock and discontent across the home front and sparked the most intense period of anti-war protests to date. By early February 1968, a Gallup poll showed only 35 percent of the population approved of Johnson's handling of the war and a full 50 percent disapproved (the rest had no opinion). Joining the anti-war demonstrations by this time were members of the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches. The sight of these men on television throwing away the medals they had won during the war did much to win people over to the anti-war cause.

After many New Hampshire primary voters rallied behind the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Vice President Hubert Humphrey accepted the Democratic nomination in August in Chicago, and 10,000 anti-war demonstrators showed up outside the convention building, clashing with security forces assembled by Mayor Richard Daley. Humphrey lost the 1968 presidential election to Richard M. Nixon, who promised in his campaign to restore "law and order"-a reference to conflict over anti-war protests as well as the rioting that followed King's assassination in 1968-more effectively than Johnson had.

The following year, Nixon claimed in a famous speech that anti-war protesters constituted a small-albeit vocal-minority that should not be allowed to drown out the "silent majority" of Americans. Nixon's war policies divided the nation still further, however: In December 1969, the government instituted the first U.S. draft lottery since World War II, inciting a vast amount of controversy and causing many young men to flee to Canada to avoid conscription. Tensions ran higher than ever, spurred on by mass demonstrations and incidents of official violence such those at Kent State in May 1970, when National Guard troops shot into a group of protesters demonstrating against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, killing four students.

In mid-1971, the publication of the first Pentagon Papers -which revealed previously confidential details about the war's conduct-caused more and more Americans to question the accountability of the U.S. government and military establishments. In response to a strong anti-war mandate, Nixon announced the effective end to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia in January 1973. The Paris Peace Agreement was signed on January 27, 1973.

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The Vietnam War protests began small-among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses-but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Learn how and why young Americans and seasoned veterans protested the war and the consequences of their actions.

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Cohen v. California

Full case name
Paul Robert Cohen, Appellant v. State of California

Citations

403 U.S. 15 (more)

Argument
Oral argument

Prior

Defendant convicted, Los Angeles Municipal Court; affirmed, 81 Cal. Rptr. 503 ( Cal. Ct. App. 1969); rehearing denied, Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District 11-13-69; review denied, Supreme Court of California, 12-17-69

Subsequent

Rehearing denied, 404 U.S. 876 (1971).

The First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth, prohibits states from making the public display of a single four-letter expletive a criminal offense, without a more specific and compelling reason than a general tendency to disturb the peace. The First Amendment places a heavy burden on the justification of prior restraint in order to curtail free speech. Court of Appeal of California reversed.

Chief Justice

Warren E. Burger

Associate Justices

Hugo Black · William O. Douglas
John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan Jr.
Potter Stewart · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun

Majority

Harlan, joined by Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall

Dissent

Blackmun, joined by Burger, Black; White (in part)

U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV;
Cal. Penal Code § 415

Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment prevented the conviction of Paul Robert Cohen for the crime of disturbing the peace by wearing a jacket displaying "Fuck the Draft" in the public corridors of a California courthouse.

The Court ultimately found that displaying a mere four-letter word was not sufficient justification for allowing states to restrict free speech and that free speech can be restricted only under severe circumstances beyond offensiveness. The ruling set a precedent used in future cases concerning the power of states to regulate free speech in order to maintain public civility.

On April 26, 1968, 19-year-old Paul Robert Cohen was arrested for wearing a jacket bearing the words "Fuck the Draft" in a corridor of the Los Angeles Hall of Justice. Cohen was reportedly at court to testify as a defense witness in an unrelated hearing, and had removed his jacket on entering the courtroom.

An officer who had noticed his jacket in the corridor requested that the judge hold Cohen in contempt of court, but the judge did not take any action. The officer then waited until Cohen exited the courtroom and arrested him for disturbing the peace. Cohen claimed that he wore the jacket in an act of protest against the Vietnam War, to inform others of the depth of the feelings. He was convicted of violating section 415 of the California Penal Code, which prohibited " maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person [by] tumultuous or offensive conduct", and sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Cohen appealed the conviction to the Appellate Department of the Superior Court, which in a memorandum opinion ruled that "conduct that is merely offensive is insufficient". The State then requested a rehearing, and the Superior Court then added, in a more lengthy opinion, that according to the California Penal Code, offensive conduct must also be tumultuous. The state then appealed to the California Court of Appeal, which upheld the conviction with the claim that " offensive conduct" means "behavior which has a tendency to provoke others to acts of violence or to in turn disturb the peace".

According to the ruling, Cohen had "carefully chose[n] the forum for his views where his conduct would have an effective shock value" and that he should have known that the words on his jacket could have resulted in violent reactions. The California Court of Appeal also stated that Cohen used words that were below the "minimum standard of propriety and the accepted norm of public behavior". The opinion stated that California could determine what language was not suitable for use in public, an expansion of First Amendment jurisprudence. After the California Supreme Court denied review, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari on June 22, 1970.

The case was argued by Melville Nimmer, representing Paul Robert Cohen, and Michael T. Sauer, representing California. Anthony G. Amsterdam filed an amicus curiae brief for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, in support of Cohen. At the beginning of oral argument, Chief Justice Warren Burger advised Nimmer that it would not be necessary to "dwell on the facts", effectively stating that Nimmer should not state the word on the jacket. Seconds later, Nimmer did exactly that, stating that "What this young man did was to walk through a courthouse corridor wearing a jacket on which were inscribed the words, 'Fuck the Draft.'" Nimmer believed that if he did not say the word, it would concede that there are some places that certain words cannot be uttered and the case would be lost. Nimmer also distinguished what Cohen did from contempt of court, emphasizing that Cohen did not display the jacket in a courtroom while a court was in session.

Sauer's argument was that the conviction should stand as is, that the very words were offensive conduct by themselves, even when there was no objection by anyone present. Sauer also argued that the violation consisted of both speech and conduct, and that the conduct was not protected speech. Sauer noted that the statute read that it was an offense to "disturb the peace of any neighborhood or person" and that since persons were present that could be offended, Cohen's conviction should be upheld. Sauer did concede that the case turned on the display of the "four-letter word" when pressed on it by Justice Potter Stewart.

Justice John Harlan announced the decision of the Court, which reversed the appellate court's ruling in a 5-4 decision. First, Justice Harlan's opinion confirmed that the issue with which the Court was dealing consisted of "a conviction resting solely upon 'speech', [citation], not upon any separately identifiable conduct". Because the conviction was based on speech, Justice Harlan stated that the defendant may be criminally punished only if his speech (the words on his jacket) fell within a specific category of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment. The justice then outlined why the word "fuck" did not fall into one of those categories. As Justice Harlan said in the decision, "...while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric".

Blackmun's dissent

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun, joined by Burger and Black, suggested that Cohen's wearing of the jacket in the courthouse was not speech but conduct (an "absurd and immature antic") and therefore not protected by the First Amendment.

The second paragraph of Blackmun's dissent noted that the Supreme Court of California interpreted section 415 in In re Bushman, 1 Cal.3d 767, 463 P.2d 727 ( Cal, 1970), which was decided after the Court of Appeal of California's decision in Cohen v. California and the Supreme Court of California's denial of review. The appeal court's ruling was cited in Bushman. Blackmun wrote that the case "ought to be remanded to the California Court of Appeal for reconsideration in the light of the subsequently rendered decision by the State's highest tribunal in Bushman" since the interpretation of section 415 used in the appeal court's ruling may no longer be the authoritative interpretation.

The Cohen ruling has been cited in many subsequent court rulings.

The National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie was a 1977 United States Supreme Court case. It concerned the constitutionality of an injunction against members of the National Socialist Party of America prohibiting them from holding a march in Skokie, Illinois, which had a large Jewish population. The Illinois Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit cited Cohen v. California in their respective rulings on the case. The rulings in both courts found that, while the actions of the Nazi marchers were offensive to Jewish Skokie residents, mere offensiveness was not enough to justify curtailing free speech and assembly. In the Illinois Supreme Court ruling, the opinion states, "The decisions of that [Supreme] court, particularly Cohen v. California (1971) ... in our opinion compel us to permit the demonstration as proposed, including display of the swastika."

Specifically, the Cohen ruling was used to justify whether the actions of the Nazi marchers could be classified as " fighting words", which are among several categories of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment. In U.S. Supreme Court case Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), fighting words were defined as "those that inherently cause harm or are likely to result in an immediate disturbance". In the Skokie ruling, the Court instead relied on the ruling from Cohen that stated that offensiveness was not a sufficient justification for curtailing free speech. Subsequently, the Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to prohibit the march on the grounds that a swastika was a "fighting word", as the offense it caused to the audience was irrelevant to the law.

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul was a 1992 United States Supreme Court case which ruled that St. Paul's Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance was unconstitutional because it discriminated by the content of "fighting words". The Court stated that while the law applied to "fighting words", which are not protected under the First Amendment, it was unconstitutional because it specifically targeted fighting words that "insult or incite violence on the basis of race, religion, or gender". In its ruling, the Court acknowledged that while cross-burning was an abhorrent act, the ordinance was nevertheless void and the defendants could be prosecuted by other means. In his opinion on the ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens cited Cohen in his claim that "we have consistently construed the 'fighting words' exception set forth in Chaplinsky narrowly".

In State of Washington v. Marc D. Montgomery, 15-year-old Montgomery successfully won an appeal overturning his convictions for disorderly conduct and possession of marijuana on the grounds of free speech. Montgomery was arrested after shouting obscenities, such as "fucking pigs, fucking pig ass hole" at two police officers passing in their patrol car. Citing Cohen v. California, the Court ruled that Montgomery's words could not be classified as fighting words, and restricting speech based merely on its offensiveness would result in a "substantial risk of suppressing ideas in the process".

In the Supreme Court case Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation (1978), the Court ruled that the commission could regulate broadcasts that were indecent, but not necessarily obscene. In the ruling, the Court stated that while the Cohen ruling disputed that Cohen's speech would offend unwilling viewers, and that no one in the courthouse had actually complained, the commission was responding to a listener's complaint. Furthermore, the ruling noted that the while Cohen was sentenced to 30 days in jail, "even the strongest civil penalty at the commission's command does not include criminal prosecution".

In the dissenting opinion, the ruling cited Cohen to argue that listeners could simply turn the radio off, and therefore offensive speech on the radio did not infringe on people's right to privacy.

In Supreme Court case Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986), the court ruled that public schools had the right to regulate speech that was indecent, but not necessarily obscene. The Court stated that while adults could not be prohibited from using offensive speech while making a political statement, this protection did not extend to public school students. The ruling cited New Jersey v. T.L.O., arguing that "the constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings".

The following is an incomplete list of other court cases that have cited Cohen v. California:

State of Louisiana v. Meyers, 462 So.2d 227 (1984)

Collin v. Smith, 578 F.2d 1197 (7th Cir. 1978)

Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 415 U.S. 130 (1974)

Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518 (1972)

New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985)

In his critique of the Cohen ruling, Professor R. George Wright wrote that it would be reasonable to expect all speakers to maintain at least a minimum level of decorum in their speech, such that they do not disrespect "substantial numbers of reasonably tolerant people". Wright pushed back on claims made by other scholars that Cohen should not be censored because the word "Fuck" in the phrase "Fuck the Draft" expressed the depth of Cohen's emotion, and instead argued that it is risky to assume that a slogan, " profane or otherwise, is likely to be particularly apt in expressing deep frustrations". He further argued that Cohen's emotions should not be assumed from his willingness to offend. Subsequently, Wright claimed that the effect of speech on the level of public discourse should not be ignored. Legal scholar Archibald Cox similarly argued that the expression, "Fuck the Draft", in the Cohen ruling unnecessarily lowered the standard of public debate.

In his retrospective on the ruling, legal scholar Thomas Krattenmaker points out that at the time of the ruling, uttering the word "Fuck" in public, especially in the presence of women, was exceptionally rare, and that it was not unreasonable that Cohen aimed to be offensive in his use of the word. Despite this, Krattenmaker states that the Cohen ruling successfully addresses and disputes arguments that Cohen's speech should not be protected because of the location of the speech, its perceived obscenity, and its potential classification as "fighting words". However, Krattenmaker does argue that governments should perhaps have more power to regulate hurtful speech, and criticizes the Court's treatment of the captive audience problem for providing little direction for future rulings.

Legal scholar William Cohen also noted the limitations of the ruling in providing guidance on whether profanity should still be protected in certain locations or given certain audiences. Cohen argues that because the ruling is "narrowly limited to its facts", it has not been used in future cases pertaining to the regulation of offensive speech, such as FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. As a result, the ruling has been contradicted in future cases that have attempted to interpret the limitations of the First Amendment in specific contexts.

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Cohen v. California Full case name Paul Robert Cohen, Appellant v. State of California Citations 403 U.S. 15 (more ) Argument Oral argument Prior Defendant convicted, Los Angeles Municipal Court; affirmed, 81 Cal. Rptr. 503 ( Cal. Ct. App.

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The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century. The violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, seized power and destroyed the tradition of csarist rule. The Bolsheviks would later become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

When Was the Russian Revolution?

In 1917, two revolutions swept through Russia, ending centuries of imperial rule and setting into motion political and social changes that would lead to the formation of the Soviet Union. While the two revolutionary events took place within a few short months, social unrest in Russia had been simmering for decades.

In the early 1900s, Russia was one of the most impoverished countries in Europe with an enormous peasantry and a growing minority of poor industrial workers.

Much of Western Europe viewed Russia as an undeveloped, backwards society. The Russian Empire practiced serfdom-a form of feudalism in which landless peasants were forced to serve the land-owning nobility-well into the nineteenth century. In contrast, the practice had disappeared in most of Western Europe by the end of the Middle Ages.

In 1861, the Russian Empire finally abolished serfdom. The emancipation of serfs would influence the events leading up to the Russian Revolution by giving peasants more freedom to organize.

Russian Revolution of 1905

Russia industrialized much later than Western Europe and the United States. When it finally did, around the turn of the 20th century, it brought with it immense social and political changes.

Between 1890 and 1910, for example, the population of major Russian cities such as St. Petersburg and Moscow nearly doubled, resulting in overcrowding and destitute living conditions for a new class of Russian industrial workers.

A population boom at the end of the 19th century, a harsh growing season due to Russia's northern climate, and a series of costly wars-starting with the Crimean War (1854-1856)-meant frequent food shortages across the vast empire.

Large protests by Russian workers against the monarchy led to the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1905. Hundreds of unarmed protesters were killed or wounded by the czar's troops.

The massacre sparked the Russian revolution of 1905, during which angry workers responded with a series of crippling strikes throughout the country.

Nicholas II

After the bloodshed of 1905, Czar Nicholas II promised the formation of a series of representative assemblies, or Dumas, to work toward reform.

Russia entered into World War I in August 1914 in support of the Serbs and their French and British allies. Their involvement in the war would soon prove disastrous for the Russian Empire.

Militarily, imperial Russia was no match for industrialized Germany, and Russian casualties were greater than those sustained by any nation in any previous war. Food and fuel shortages plagued Russia as inflation mounted. The economy was hopelessly disrupted by the costly war effort.

Czar Nicholas left the Russian capital of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in 1915 to take command of the Russian Army front. (The Russians had renamed the imperial city in 1914, because the name "St. Petersburg" had sounded too German.)

Rasputin and the Czarina

In her husband's absence, Czarina Alexandra-an unpopular woman of German ancestry-began firing elected officials. During this time, her controversial advisor, Grigory Rasputin, increased his influence over Russian politics and the royal Romanov family.

Russian nobles eager to end Rasputin's influence murdered him on December 30, 1916. By then, most Russians had lost faith in the failed leadership of the czar. Government corruption was rampant, the Russian economy remained backward and Nicholas repeatedly dissolved the Duma, the toothless Russian parliament established after the 1905 revolution, when it opposed his will.

Moderates soon joined Russian radical elements in calling for an overthrow of the hapless czar.

February Revolution

The February Revolution (known as such because of Russia's use of the Julian calendar until February 1918) began on March 8, 1917 (February 23 on the Julian calendar).

Demonstrators clamoring for bread took to the streets of Petrograd. Supported by huge crowds of striking industrial workers, the protesters clashed with police but refused to leave the streets.

On March 11, the troops of the Petrograd army garrison were called out to quell the uprising. In some encounters, the regiments opened fire, killing demonstrators, but the protesters kept to the streets and the troops began to waver.

The Duma formed a provisional government on March 12. A few days later, Czar Nicholas abdicated the throne, ending centuries of Russian Romanov rule.

The leaders of the provisional government, including young Russian lawyer Alexander Kerensky, established a liberal program of rights such as freedom of speech, equality before the law, and the right of unions to organize and strike. They opposed violent social revolution.

As minister of war, Kerensky continued the Russian war effort, even though Russian involvement in World War I was enormously unpopular. This further exacerbated Russia's food supply problems. Unrest continued to grow as peasants looted farms and food riots erupted in the cities.

Bolshevik Revolution

On November 6 and 7, 1917 (or October 24 and 25 on the Julian calendar, which is why the event is often referred to as the October Revolution), leftist revolutionaries led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin launched a nearly bloodless coup d'état against the Duma's provisional government.

The provisional government had been assembled by a group of leaders from Russia's bourgeois capitalist class. Lenin instead called for a Soviet government that would be ruled directly by councils of soldiers, peasants and workers.

The Bolsheviks and their allies occupied government buildings and other strategic locations in Petrograd, and soon formed a new government with Lenin as its head. Lenin became the dictator of the world's first communist state.

Russian Civil War

Civil War broke out in Russia in late 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution. The warring factions included the Red and White Armies.

The Red Army fought for the Lenin's Bolshevik government. The White Army represented a large group of loosely allied forces, including monarchists, capitalists and supporters of democratic socialism.

On July 16, 1918, the Romanovs were executed by the Bolsheviks.

The Russian Civil War ended in 1923 with Lenin's Red Army claiming victory and establishing the Soviet Union.

Impact of The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution paved the way for the rise of communism as an influential political belief system around the world. It set the stage for the rise of the Soviet Union as a world power that would go head-to-head with the United States during the Cold War.

Sources

The Russian Revolutions of 1917. Anna M. Cienciala, University of Kansas.
The Russian Revolution of 1917. Daniel J. Meissner, Marquette University.
Russian Revolution of 1917. McGill University.

PHOTO GALLERIES

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The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century. The violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, seized power and destroyed the tradition of csarist rule.

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October Revolution - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The October Revolution refers to the seizing of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky. The Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky. The revolution started on November 7 ( October 25 o.s.), 1917.

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The roots of socialism in America can be traced to the arrival of German immigrants in the 1850s when Marxian socialist unions began, such as the National Typographic Union in 1852, United Hatters of 1856, and Iron Moulders` Union of North America in 1859. Theodore H. White, author of Fire in the Ashes: Europe in Mid-Century (1953) wrote, "Socialism is the belief and the hope that by proper use of government power, men can be rescued from their helplessness in the wild cycling cruelty of depression and boom."
Progress of socialism
The Socialist Party in America was born and grew dramatically between 1900 and 1912. Under the charismatic leadership of Eugene V. Debs in 1912, 160 councilmen, 145 aldermen, one congressman, and 56 mayors, including Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Berkeley, California, and Schenectady, New York, were elected as Socialists. At the time, Socialists published 300 newspapers, including the Appeal of Reason, which was a Kansas-based publication with 700,000 subscribers. Membership in the Socialist Party totaled 125,000.

Debs converted to socialism while serving jail time for his part in the Pullman Strike in 1897, and began to edit the Appeal to Reason publication. From 1900 to 1920, he ran for president on the Socialist ticket while increasing membership to the Socialist Party tenfold. Although Debs insisted he was a Marxist, he spoke more about poverty and injustice than typical socialist concerns about the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat (Marx).

In 1912, Debs received 900,000 votes, which was six percent of the presidential votes cast that year, principally for his stand against America`s involvement in World War I. Debs appealed to blue collar workers hungry for improved working conditions and higher wages, but also such intellectuals as authors Jack London and Upton Sinclair.

Prominently with President Theodore Roosevelt and through the 20th century`s first years, the Progressive Movement came into view with its belief in "the perfectability of man, and in an open society where mankind was neither chained to the past nor condemned to a deterministic future; one which people were capable of changing their condition for better or worse."

The Socialist Party was included within the Progressive Movement. The party dealt with American problems in an American manner. Unlike the Communist Party, the Socialist Party at that time felt no obligation to adhere to an international party line. For example, socialists and other progressives campaigned at the local level for municipal ownership of waterworks, gas and electric plants, and made good progress in such endeavors. In 1911, there were 18 Socialist candidates for mayor, and they nearly won the Cleveland, Ohio, and Los Angeles, California, mayoral races.

In 1905, Upton Sinclair founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which soon had chapters in the leading universities. Lively young men and women discussed the "New Gospel according to St. Marx." Universities were considered to be favorable ground for progressive thought.

Following the election of 1912, Socialist Party membership began to decline as some members cast their vote for Woodrow Wilson. Others were expelled, such as the Industrial Workers of the World, of which Debs and labor organizer "Mother" Mary Harris Jones had once been members. The IWW had been organized in 1905, grew into a radical, direct-action wing of American socialism by 1910, and had up to 100,000 workers by 1915.

By 1917, Socialist Party membership had slipped to 80,000. Nevertheless, by 1920 Debs managed to garner 919,800 votes for his presidential candidacy, the most a socialist has ever received in America, albeit making up only 3.4 percent of the popular vote. Those votes were representive of Americans` disillusionment with World War I, and of Debs himself, who spoke passionately against the country`s involvement in that war.

The Espionage Act of 1917 was crafted to jail "anyone who interfered with the draft or encouraged disloyalty [to America]" and provided for jail sentences of 10 to 20 years. The Sedition Act of 1918 extended further penalties to those found obstructing the sale of U.S. war bonds, discouraging recruitment, uttering "disloyal or abusive language" about the government, the Constitution, the American flag, or even the U.S. military uniform. Under those acts, the government arrested more than 1,500 people, including Eugene Debs.

The Socialist Party`s strength was further sapped by 1920, because of government suppression and public disapproval during World War I. Such anti-socialist hysteria as the Red Scare, and internal factionalism aggravated by the presence of Communists, took their toll. Fears associated with the Bolsheviks` seizure of power in Russia, bombings in the United States, along with a series of labor strikes, led to the Red Scare in 1919. Suspected socialists and Communists were arrested and thrown into jail. In the end, of the 5,000 people who were given arrest warrants, only slightly more than 600 aliens were actually deported.

In addition, the party`s failure during the 1920s was due to its inability to appeal to the upwardly mobile worker who yearned to be part of the middle class. The party also was divided along racial and ethnic lines. Their broadest appeal was to the well-educated members of society. In 1928, the Socialist presidential candidate, Norman Thomas, received only 267,835 votes. Thomas was a Princeton graduate and Presbyterian minister in New York. He succeeded Debs after the latter`s death as the perennial presidential candidate in the 1928, 1932 and 1936 elections. Thomas stood as more indicative of the Socialist Party member, which was made up of mostly intellectuals and the middle class, rather than a worker`s party that Debs had basically represented.

Socialists were also plagued by extreme doubt on the part of most progressives, who were leading the charge to free America from the economic woes of the Great Depression and were weathering deep hostility from conservatives. By the mid- Twenties, the party was deeply divided and failed to revive itself during the depression years of the 1930s.

During the election of 1932, the Socialist and Communist parties, who had insisted that capitalism had collapsed, pulled less than one million votes combined. American voters had grown weary of Republican policies and therefore Democrats won big in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, illustrating that Americans had faith in their country and its institutions. In that election, Norman Thomas received only 892,000 votes.

During the election of 1936, Republican painted Franklin D. Roosevelt as leading the country towards the platform of the Socialist Party. This bothered both Roosevelt and Norman Thomas, who agreed on one thing, which was that Roosevelt was not a Socialist.

"Creeping socialism," an expression used in modern times to describe America`s so-called drift towards a socialistic society, was coined by author F.A. Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom. Published in 1944, Hayek`s book warned of the dangers of state control over the means of production, which he perceived to be occurring, especially in regards to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), during the New Deal and the Fair Deal administrations of presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, respectively.

Hayek believed that excessive governmental controls on society did not deliver on their promises and that their ideology actually delivered dismal economic results. But more importantly, he averred, it produces a psychological change in the character of the people in that man`s desire to better himself is what drives him to succeed and also improves the way of life for those around him. According to Hayek, socialism strips man of his desire to succeed.

Because of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and dominance of the "Middle American" values, the Communist and Socialist parties virtually disappeared in the 1950s, when membership fell to below 2,000 members. Many Socialists left the party because it was seen that more progressive reform could be achieved through membership in the Democratic Party. Among those who departed were: Walter Reuther, Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin. Life was good for the average American, who worked fewer than 40 hours per week. Most received annual two-week vacations and had twice the income to spend as they had during the nation`s previous economic boom time in the late Twenties.

During the 1960s and `70s, the Socialist Party exerted little influence on American society because of intra-party conflict, as well as a refusal to support the anti-Vietnam War movement that was sweeping across America. In 1968 at the Socialist Party convention, members passed a resolution to support Democrat Hubert Humphrey for president, instead of nominating their own candidate.

And in 1972, the body chose to support George McGovern for president. But then for the first time in 20 years, in 1976, the Socialist Party decided to run its own presidential campaign with former Milwaukee mayor Frank Zeidler (1948-1960) for president and J. Quinn Brisben, a Chicago teacher, for vice president. Since that time, others have been nominated, including Willa Kenoyer ( 1988), J. Quinn Brisben ( 1992) and Mary Cal Hollis in 1996.
Modern socialist movements and organizations
In American society today, socialist groups range in political views from the extreme right to the extreme left. The extreme right wing groups comprise neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic and fascist groups such as the National Socialist Movement or NSM, whose purpose is to "purify" American society through violent and non-violent means. The NSM is said to wear the uniforms and paraphernalia of the Third Reich. According to their website, the NSM is an organization that is "dedicated to the preservation of our Proud Aryan Heritage, and the creation of a National Socialist Society in America and around the world."

Representing the far left wing are such groups as the Socialist Party U.S.A. That party believes in what is called "Democratic Socialism," defined as "a political and economic system with freedom and equality for all, so that people may develop to their fullest potential in harmony with others." The party further states that it is "committed to full freedom of speech, assembly, press, and religion, and to a multi-party system" and that the ownership and control of the production and distribution of goods "should be democratically controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups." Other socialist groups include the Democratic Socialists of America, National Alliance, Young Democrat Socialist, and the Democratic Progressive Party.

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The roots of socialism in America can be traced to the arrival of German immigrants in the 1850s when Marxian socialist unions began, such as the National Typographic Union in 1852, United Hatters of 1856, and Iron Moulders` Union of North America in 1859. Theodore H.

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Debs v. United States , 249 U.S. 211 (1919) was a United States Supreme Court decision, relevant for US labor law and constitutional law, that upheld the Espionage Act of 1917 .