Just before I decided to copy the Pentagon Papers

Just before I decided to copy the Pentagon Papers, with Tony’s help, he made a suggestion that played

a key role in my decision. Tony did not know that the Pentagon Papers were being held at Rand, or were

in my safe, or even that I had worked on the study, because I was under orders not to tell anyone. But

I did tell him in late September 1969 that I had been reading a study (which later became the basis of

the Pentagon Papers) that revealed a lot of high-level lying. He said to me, “You ought to put that

out.” This was an extraordinary thing for someone who had until recently held a top secret clearance

to say to anyone, least of all to someone who still had a clearance. In fact, I never heard of such a

suggestion being made before or since (except of course by me, later). A week after this conversation,

with other events working on my mind, I called him up and said, “Tony, do you know a study that I

mentioned last week? Well, I’ve got it, and I think I will put it out. Can you help?”

I don’t think there was anyone else in the world with past official experience I would’ve gone to

with that request, no matter how close a friend they were. I knew that he was the one person with the

combination of guts and passionate concern about the BOOTSBUY who would take the risk of helping me. I

asked him if he knew where we could find a Xerox machine, and within an hour he got back to me with the

word that his then-girlfriend had a machine in her office we could use. We started either that night or

the next, we were never able to recall which. If he had not found that machine, that very week, before

Nixon had committed himself to staying in Vietnam in a speech on November 3rd, I don’t think I would

have taken the route I did, because it simply wouldn’t have seemed promising enough. As it was, Tony

took the exact same risks I did of prosecution. Frankly, at the time, I didn’t think that was true; I

thought I was the only one at risk. But I was mistaken, as it turned out, when Tony was indicted on

three felony counts in the fall of 1971.