# The Story how Neil Sheehan got the Pentagon Papers



## Deleted User (Jan 9, 2021)

In 2015, at a reporter’s request, Neil Sheehan agreed to tell his story on how he had obtained the Pentagon Papers under the condition that it not be published while he was alive.
Pentagon Papers contain 7,000 pages of classified government documents on the Vietnam War.
The publication led to a 1971 showdown between the Nixon administration and the press, and to a Supreme Court ruling that is still seen as a milepost in government-press relations.
Now the New York Times posted the story they got from the 4-hour interview.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/pentagon-papers-neil-sheehan.html


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## notimp (Jan 9, 2021)

Story is even juicier than that. Neil Sheehan (reporter with the NYT) died recently and had given the interview under the condition to only release it posthumously.

He basically involves and accuses the NYT of/in actively endangering sources, and breaching contracts of trust made with Daniel Ellsberg, while actively working towards getting him caught - driving Ellsberg to go public, before he got caught by the state.

Fun.



> The full story reveals that Sheehan was never actually “given” the papers by Ellsberg but that he had took them out of an apartment where Ellsberg’s own copy was kept and secretly copied them to hand over to Times editors and colleagues, just as Ellsberg had copied the Pentagon Papers to tip off the press.





> Sheehan further strung Ellsberg along as to what the Times’ plans were for publication as he diligently worked to finish his initial report, and he dodged some of Ellsberg’s calls when the first installment of the papers were published on June 13, 1971.





> The article goes into further detail about how Sheehan used aliases while checking into motels and stashed papers in the lockers of a bus station as he moved about. And it further explains Sheehan’s relationship with Ellsberg, who feared going to prison and was reluctant to hand over full copies of the papers to the Times, leading to Sheehan’s plan to disobey his wishes and make copies for himself.



src: https://www.thewrap.com/neil-sheeha...y-from-source-daniel-ellsberg-to-break-story/

When they published, he didnt even return Ellsbergs calls. Left him out in the cold.

Fun.


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