“The Post,” Steven Spielberg’s political thriller of a film, centering on the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, initially by the New York Times, then the Washington Post, appears to be a smash hit.
Over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, the film generated $18.6 million from North American theaters, coming in second behind “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.” “The Post” is additionally being met with enthusiastic reviews from a number of film critics.
Among other accolades, at the 75th Golden Globe Awards, the film received six nominations: Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Actress – Drama for Streep, Best Actor – Drama for Hanks, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.
Much like he did with “Lincoln” (in nabbing Daniel Day-Lewis to play President Abraham Lincoln), Spielberg went to the top of the mountain in search of star-studded talent, this time convincing Tom Hanks to play the tough as nails executive editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, and Meryl Streep to unveil her interpretation of Katharine “Kay” Graham, publisher of the Post.
How believable were they in their roles?
Author and journalist, Sally Quinn, the third wife of Ben Bradlee, who writes a blog about religion , responding though an email, wrote that she enjoyed “The Post” immensely and thought Hanks did an incredible job portraying her former husband, so much so that she cried while watching the film.
Author and Washington based journalist, Jim Mann, who worked briefly on the Watergate scandal while at the Washington Post, thought Streep's “rendition of Graham was close to perfect.”
Even actor Michael Stuhlbarg's depiction of Abe Rosenthal, the irascible managing editor of the New York Times, met with rousing approval from a family member.
Andrew Rosenthal, former Editorial Page editor of the New York Times, (now a regular Op-Ed columnist ), thought Stuhlbarg was magnificent, but admitted his disappointment that a larger scene in the movie involving his dad, was left on the cutting room floor.
With a hefty $50 million budget to work with, Spielberg didn’t spare any expense, going to great lengths to make sure select scenes and the general landscape presented in the film was a true reflection of the early 1970s.
The newsrooms of both the Washington Post and New York Times, for example, depicting predominantly white men in white shirts, clacking away at their typewriters, using their rotary dial phones, while flipping a lighter, and firing up a cigarette, was convincingly presented.
Even the film’s exterior panoramas of the New York Times former building at 229 West 43rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue near Times Square in Manhattan (from 1913 through 2007), looked like it was the real deal. Through the magic of Hollywood, however, Spielberg’s production company used The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen building in mid-Manhattan (20 West 44th Street, New York) as the Times’ former headquarters. The Times signature 300-foot-long array of globe lights, that was prominently featured outside its old building, were the original fixtures kept by the Times.
Incredibly, it’s been almost 50 years since the Pentagon Papers were published, and what an uproar it caused at the time, pitting the Government against press freedoms provided by the First Amendment.
Many of the press liberties that are taken for granted today, came as the result of hard fought, gutsy battles, of two newspapers and their indomitable editors.
When Neil Sheehan’s first batch of revelations from the Pentagon Papers splashed across the front page of the New York Times on June 13, 1971, newspapers were put on a collision course with the Richard Nixon administration.
After the third instalment of the Times expose, the U.S. Department of Justice secured, through the U.S. District Court, a restraining order on the Times’ from publishing classified material (on the grounds the material would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to U.S. national defense interests”), essentially shutting down the paper from publishing the Pentagon documents.
Bradlee thundered that the ruling represented, "a black mark on the history of democracy.”
Five days later, the Post, undaunted, despite the temporary restraining order imposed on the Times, decided to charge ahead and publish their own analysis of the Pentagon Papers, which unlike the Times, did not reprint classified documents, but paraphrased or quoted select sentences from the study. In particular, the Post articles highlighted the deep divisions between the State and Defense Departments with its policy in Vietnam. The Post analysis also cast President Johnson in an unfavorable light, documenting the lengths to which he went to escalate the war.
As enlightening as the publication of the Pentagon Papers proved to be, things, nonetheless, looked mighty bleak for the Times and Post and the freedoms once taken for granted under the First Amendment.
15 stormy days would ensue before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision, a favorable ruling (6-3) for the press, ruling that prior restraint was unconstitutional and further asserting, that “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
Ben Bradlee and Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham celebrated the 1971 ruling allowing publication of the Pentagon Papers. Photo Credit: Associated Press
As brilliant as the Times and the Post’s reporting was, it’s worth emphasizing that such an expose wasn’t possible, but for a brave, courageous Pentagon analysist (superhawk turned superdove), Daniel Ellsberg, stepping forward and going public with 4,000 pages, and 2.5 million words of critical Pentagon history, releasing copies first to the Times, then to the Post.
It was Ellsberg’s hope that the release of this Pentagon study, officially titled, “History of the United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy" commissioned in 1967 by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, would convince President Nixon to change his Vietnam policy.
Among other troubling revelations, the Pentagon Papers showed that the Truman Administration provided military aid to France in its colonial war against the communist-led Viet Minh, directly involving the United States in Vietnam; and that President Lyndon B. Johnson ramped up the war against North Vietnam, while planning to wage a covert war in 1964, a full year before the U.S. involvement was publicly revealed. The Pentagon study additionally documented disturbing cases of deception by the Johnson administration, by, for example, withholding vital information from Congress and the public, critical information, which raised serious questions about the effectiveness of the U.S. government’s course of action in Southeast Asia.
Knowing his treasonous actions would more than likely land him in jail, Ellsberg wasn’t surprised when he was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, which carried a total maximum sentence of 115 years.
The charges against the former RAND Corp. employee, however, were dismissed on May 11, 1973. on grounds of "improper Government conduct shielded so long from public view," as ruled by United States District Court Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr.
Another highly invasive abuse of power directed at Mr. Ellsberg happened on September 3, 1971, shortly after the Pentagon Papers went public, when H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's top advisor, ordered the break in of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. The burglars photographed files, but found nothing damaging on the former Pentagon analyst. The Nixon administration rationalized such action on the peculiar grounds that Ellsberg threatened national security.
After seeing the film, I now understand why Mr. Spielberg made the Washington Post the center of this film, and not the New York Times.
The Pentagon Papers clearly raised Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post’s stature to new heights, demonstrating their fearless resolve not to be bullied by the White House in withholding the truth from its readers.
Prior to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Washington Star had a higher circulation than the Post. Kay Graham’s paper was no longer a local paper, they were now a prominent national paper.
Though the Times would win a Pulitzer Prize for the Pentagon Papers in 1972, only a year later, the Post would scoop its chief rival and win a Pulitzer for the Watergate scandal, a triumphant moment for the Post in which Bradlee roared, ''Eat your heart out, Abe Rosenthal, eat your heart out!"
The Post's decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, permanently changed "the ethos of the paper and crystallized for editors and reporters everywhere how independent and determined and confident of its purpose the new Washington Post had become,’’ Bradlee would wrote in his memoirs.
Bradlee also wrote that the Post had become, “a paper that stands up to charges of treason, a paper that holds firm in the face of charges from the president, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, never mind an assistant attorney general. A paper that holds its head high, committed unshakably to principle.”
Katharine Graham, the heroic publisher, who ultimately gave the green light to publish the papers (“OK...let's go, let's publish”), writes in a book she wrote about the Pentagon Papers, that when national editor Ben Bagdikian came back to Washington with a suitcase full of Pentagon documents from Boston (given to him by Ellsberg) and called the executive editor to ask whether they should publish, Bradlee purportedly responded, "If we don't publish, there's going to be a new executive editor at the Washington Post."
That quote, Graham readily admits, might be apocryphal, but she said it certainly sounded like something Ben would say.
--Bill Lucey
January 18, 2018
Further Resources
- Pentagon Papers (National Archives)
- Time Magazine, June 28, 1971: The Pentagon Papers: The Secret War
