National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On

One of the most vexing and perennial questions facing any democracy is how to balance the government\u27s legitimate need to conduct its operations-especially those related to protecting the national security-in secret, with the public\u27s right and responsibility to know what its government is doing. There is no easy answer to this issue, and different nations embrace different solutions. In the United States, at the constitutional level, the answer begins exactly half a century ago with the Supreme Court\u27s landmark 1971 decision in the Pentagon Papers case. The final decision, though, left many important questions unresolved. Moreover, the issue of leaks and secrecy has cropped up repeatedly since, most recently in the Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning cases. In National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press , two of America\u27s leading First Amendment scholars, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, have gathered a group of the nation\u27s leading constitutional scholars-including John Brennan, Eric Holder, Cass R. Sunstein, and Michael Morell, among many others-to delve into important dimensions of the current system, to explain how we should think about them, and to offer as many solutions as possible.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1359/thumbnail.jp