- President Donald Trump has made attacking the press
a hallmark of his presidency,
railing against what he considers fake news
and calling journalists the enemy of the people.
- These public attacks may be unprecedented,
but when it comes to the press,
he shares at least one thing
in common with his predecessors,
the struggle to keep government secrets from leaking.
The modern battle against leaks can be traced back
to a high stakes attempt to stop them
by President Richard Nixon more than four decades ago.
- [Richard] Right, well, Monday at noon, officially?
Well, let's wait 'til then.
Fine, (breathes sharply) okay.
Nothing else of interest in the world today?
- [Al] Yes sir, very significant.
This goddamn New York Times expose
of the most highly classified documents of the war.
- [Richard] Oh that, I see.
I didn't read the story, but you mean that,
that was leaked out of the Pentagon?
- [Celeste] On June 13th, 1971,
The New York Times began publishing
a trove of secret documents called the Pentagon Papers
exposing how president after president
had misled the American people about their country's role
in escalating the Vietnam War.
- [Richard] What in the world
do responsible publishers think about,
to put out trunkloads of secret documents?
- [Felix] And it's getting worse every day.
- [Richard] It's awful, isn't it?
- The lawyers that represented The Times
had already given dire warning
that publication could subject them
to prosecution under the Espionage Act,
that they could lose their television licenses,
that the publisher could go to jail.
All said with a very high-level of intensity.
- [Celeste] But The Times refused to stop publication,
saying the American people had the right to know
the hidden calculations behind the war.
Nixon turned to the courts to stop them.
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- [Richard] Right to know,
that's, of course, a goddamn code word.
Right to know.
The public has no right to know secret documents.
What The Times has done is placed itself above the law.
- It was very unusual for the government to go to court
to try to stop publication of anything,
but the idea of the government going to court
with respect to an on-going news story was all but unknown.
- [Celeste] For Nixon,
the case was about more than stopping a leak.
He wanted to undercut the press.
- [Richard] Let's make something out of it.
It's an opportunity. - This issue--
- [Richard] Listen, The New York Times, believe me,
The New York Times can be discredited for...
Indefinitely as a result of this.
In fact, I'm going to.
- There's more at stake in this debate
than one newspaper series
or even one major breach of security,
sooner or later we can expect this issue
to come before the Supreme Court and the question there
will be the role of the press in a democracy.
- [Celeste] The answer came quickly,
in a six to three ruling that affirmed the Times' right
to publish the classified reports.
Citing the need for checks on government power,
the Justices said that the Nixon administration
had failed to prove that the release would cause
any imminent harm.
- It was very embarrassing for President Nixon
to have gone to court and lost
and have the Supreme Court write an opinion
vindicating the press that he hated so much.
- [Celeste] But Nixon wasn't finished.
- [Richard] I just say that we've got to keep our eye
on the main ball, the main ball's Ellsberg.
We gotta get this son of a bitch.
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- [Celeste] Using a World War I statute
meant to punish spies,
Nixon's justice department indicted Daniel Ellsberg,
the military analyst responsible
for leaking the Pentagon Papers to The Times.
- I was tried for a violation
of what is commonly described as the Espionage Act
because it's usually used for espionage,
but I was tried under it for a non-espionage offense.
- [Celeste] Unlike a spy, Ellsberg's intention
was not to help a foreign government.
He wanted to reveal the truth about the Vietnam War
to the American people.
- [Fred] Daniel Ellsberg says he leaked the Pentagon Papers
because the government lied
and concealed facts about the Vietnam War.
- We won't the killing, but this trial
will inform the American public,
in ways that it's never heard before,
of how we've governed in the past quarter century
and what censorship and deception do to a democracy.
- I'm not for espionage, I don't know anyone who is,
and I'm not against criminalizing that.
The question is, should it be criminal
to inform your fellow citizens of things that,
on the face, they aught to know.
- [Celeste] That question was left unanswered
as the Watergate Scandal enveloped the Nixon administration.
- The president said that in 1971,
he formed an investigative unit inside the White House
to fight what he called national security leaks.
One of the first things the people in that unit did
was to burglarize the offices
of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
- With Watergate breaking out,
and with the revelation
of the crimes they'd taken against me,
by an almost miraculous set of events,
my charges were dismissed.
- No, not you.
Not you, you're organization's terrible.
Your organization's terrible.
Let's go, go ahead.
- [Jim] Sir, sir--
- Quiet, quiet.
- The press would like-- - Go ahead.
She's asking a question, don't be rude.
- [Jim] Can you give us a--
- Don't be rude.
- [Jim] Give us a question--
- Don't be rude.
No, I'm not gonna give you a,
I'm not gonna give you question.
You are fake news.
(intense instrumental music)
- [Celeste] Almost five decades after the Pentagon Papers,
the Trump administration is waging its own battle.
- I think the media's the opposition party.
- [Celeste] With the press.
- The press has become so dishonest
that if we don't talk about it,
we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people.
- [Celeste] While his public attacks might be unprecedented,
another part of his strategy is not,
going after those who leak to reporters.
- We're gonna find the leakers.
They're gonna pay a big price for leaking.
- [Celeste] But Trump didn't have to look
all the way back to Nixon for a roadmap,
his predecessor provided it.
- If we can root out folks who have leaked,
they will suffer consequences.
- [Celeste] Over a span of four years,
the Obama administration charged eight people
with violating the Espionage Act
for sharing government secrets with the press,
more than all previous administrations combined.
Matthew Miller was a senior official
in the Obama justice department.
- If you look the way, then you only encourage other people
to leak national security secrets.
You do have to show that there are consequences
for leaking information that could harm national security
and the only way to do that is to prosecute
some of the individuals
responsible for the most egregious leaks.
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There are secrets that need to remain secret.
- [Celeste] Miller says that keeping secrets secret
became more challenging in the digital age.
Massive leaks of classified information by Edward Snowden
and WikiLeaks showed how vulnerable secrets had become.
- We begin tonight with that mountain
of secret wartime information exposed in the press today,
more documents than the Pentagon Papers during Vietnam.
- [Celeste] But in trying to control leaks,
Obama moved into territory
that other presidents had largely avoided.
- I'm sitting at my desk and I get an email
that looks like it's from the Department of Justice.
I'm not sure what it is and I look at Matt and I said,
"Matt, what is this, is this spam?"
And I said, "It's not spam.
"The government just took our phone records.
- [Celeste] In May of 2013,
former Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo
and Adam Goldman learned that the government
had seized their phone records during an investigation
into who leaked details of a CIA operation in Yemen.
The dragnet scooped up records from phones
used by more than 100 reporters and editors.
- One thing we heard again and again from prosecutors
was, "Well, of course we took the phone records
"for your editors and your colleagues
"and your bureaus and swept everybody up,
"'cause that's exactly how we would investigate a gang."
Well, we're not a gang, we're a newsroom
and the right to deal drugs isn't in the Constitution,
so there should be a recognition
that what happens in the news gathering process
is a little different.
It felt like it was just an investigation
intended to send the message, don't talk to reporters.
- Yeah.
- It had the desired effect.
- [Celeste] In the case of a classified leak at Fox News,
the Obama justice department went so far
as to imply that correspondent James Rosen,
because of his reporting, could be charged with a crime.
- [Reporter] In court papers, an FBI agent said Rosen,
"asked solicited and encouraged" a source
to give him sensitive information about North Korea
and that he was a possible "co-conspirator"
for violations of the Espionage Act.
- Not 'til that moment had the United States government
ever characterized the behavior of a journalist
as being that of a co-conspirator to a crime
for asking questions about government policy.
- That the Obama-Holder justice department--
- [Celeste] Rosen was never charged,
and following a media outcry,
the Obama administration reigned in
some of the more aggressive tactics
used to obtain journalists' records.
- We must enforce consequences for those who break the law,
but a free press is also essential for our democracy,
that's who we are.
And I'm troubled by the possibility that leak investigations
may chill the investigative journalism
that holds government accountable.
- While there's a necessity to protect national security,
there is also an enormous need for an informed public.
And so, while one can justify
certain prosecutions of leakers,
the risk of them is that it does provide a roadmap
for a hostile administration
to really try to bring the press down.
- [Celeste] Since taking office, the Trump administration
has increased the number of leak investigations
and aggressively prosecuted leakers.
At least five people have been indicted
under the Espionage Act, including Julian Assange.
- The US leveling more than a dozen new charges
against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
- [Celeste] But this is only one way the current president
has worked to change the public narrative
of his administration.
- Fake, fake, disgusting news.
(crowd cheers)
- [Crowd] CNN sucks, CNN sucks, CNN sucks!
- And just remember, what you're seeing
and what you're reading is not what's happening
and I'll tell you--
- I think, in this day and age,
the value of the unofficial story,
the story that has not been sanctioned by the government,
that value is greater than it's ever been.
- [Celeste] Having lived through the Nixon administration,
Daniel Ellsberg says it's critical that no president
is given the power to dictate the truth.
- Can you really have democracy in a real sense
with the government having the final voice
and the total voice as to what citizens
shall know about what they're doing
and whether they're telling the truth
and whether they're obeying the law?
I would say no.
If they have the last word
and the citizens can only know
what the government tells them,
it's a mockery of a democracy.
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