for tonight's conversations with great minds i'm joined by someone who played in this central role in one of the most important first amendment cases in modern american history change see good was vice chair and general counsel for the new york times published the pentagon papers and led the paper's legal team in its fight against the nixon administration he's often called the father of reporter's privilege remains to this day powerful advocate for the freedom of the press in addition to his legal work goodale as taught at yale and why you fordham university his new book fighting for the press the inside story of the pentagon papers and other battles is

a must read for anyone who wants an in-depth look at one of the most famous supreme court cases of the past forty years james goodale joins us now from our new york studios. welcome thank you for being with us are wide thank you for having me so let's start out with you before we get to the case and i'm wondering if you were general counsel for the new york times and a vice president as i recall of that well vice chairman that's going to try to write a thank you you all the better. what what brought you to that what made you interested in newspapers in the first amendment and provoked you to you know brought you to be the guy who was arguing this case before the supreme court well i think that if you trace back what people are doing back to their childhood many times not all the times that many times there are connections and i was always interested in politics . in the press when i was eight year old i used to put out my own newspaper as what

you did when. many years ago today you'd be on the net or something. but i split up my own newspaper write the headlines and so it's a lifelong. addiction you might say that's remarkable remarkable it's been. it's been forty years since the supreme court ruled six to three in the new york times case what made that case you call it a case for the ages. what makes that not hyperbole. well here's the way to think about the pentagon papers case without turning off your non lawyers or you know it's very simple what nixon tried to do is he tried to censor the new york times and later the washington post how did he try to censor them the sense of them by going into court and getting order that you can't print

you know it's simple simple censorship what's interesting about it was the only time in american history that ever happened to bring a bet it's not going to happen. well now use the fancy term it's actually called prior restraint when i first heard that term when i worked for went to the new york times i don't know what the heck admit it but it just means it just means censorship and so it's a case for the ages because the only time we have the case and the press one the government lost and the tests or the rule of law or whatever you want to call it the supreme court laid down is very hard to meet almost virtually impossible which means that i don't think it's going to ever happen again and i don't think that caseload would be overruled it's fast i mean if you look at the arc of the history of this in seven hundred ninety eight the day that john adams signed into law the sedition acts he threw into jail ben benjamin franklin bought ben franklin's graham . son. published the war as i recall it was called whatever the newspaper was who

had written because the because bloch had written and a toilet which he called president john adams. toothless and balding i mean that literally that got him thrown in jail and got his newspaper taken away eighteen news papers were shut down by john adams during that time and from then on and yeah we talk about very straight from then until the new york times where there are major any milestones or was this really a presidential case well no i mean this is you know if it had never it had never happened before in a federal court there are some state courts maybe five or six over the period of time that you describe the did try to censor the press through prior restraints but in each case the newspapers disobey them so you know it really was the first time in history now you talk about putting all those papers in jail you know lawyers

like to say things are different there's probably a difference between stopping the press and then after you print something as you describe it go and grab that person and throw him in jail there's a fancy name for prior restraint and subsequent punishment i think where we are today is that i don't think we're going to have another censorship prior restraint case. i'm worried about it and i say so in my book is that the government come around after publication and try to do it john adams did. that issue although the alias addition act disappeared has never been fully resolved it's. open issue but i think that you can't shut a paper down and john adams today couldn't do what he did unless he could show a clear and present danger. to the security of united states from what was said and if you criticize the government as you point out of your example that is going to

meet that test well and then that was that was one of the major animating factors in the election eight hundred and the reason why thomas jefferson referred to it as the revolution of eighteen because it was every putin nation that you know that part of adams presidency but you know well you know what. yeah go ahead but what happens is in most other countries in the world is what happened as you describe it because. any time that you criticize the government there's been a long tradition throughout the world that you might be subject to a jail sentence because you know it's unpatriotic but we're way past that in this country so i think that if you did have a case where. let's take the snowden case for example or or the. new york times published snowden right. the government directly go in and punish

the new york times for doing it after publication but you know i don't think it's going to happen and when it does happen it's going to be a real constitutional battle but i think the press will probably went well and that's that's curious how you think the your your case the new york times case pentagon papers case how that has changed american journalism over the last forty years and is there a straight line or even a. squiggly line between that and we can leaks and and what snow. did with you know working with glenn greenwald and the guardian and those really says. you know what all glenn greenwald we all know he's the former blogger and to whom snowden leaked right i mean he's the sort of the modern day new york times in a way so what is there a straight line between the pentagon papers case and what happens today i think the

straight line goes like this that if you're going to publish something like. the snowden leaks. you'll probably go to the government beforehand and get a reaction to it before you publish and i think that's what greenwald did in fact in effect now. what's the straight line in pentagon papers case where you're not going to go to the government i don't know what you're going to do if the government can go in the in stop you from doing so a major impact of the pentagon papers case is that people open has opened up publication because no one's going to be scared of being stopped the only thing they're worried about is whether they're after it will be a criminal process criminal prosecution so odd that means in the leak world that you're going to get a lot of leaks out there and by the way out there you go to get a lot more you argue and apropos of that if you know to bring this to the to the

current moment in time you argue in your book that president obama's r. is arguably worse than richard nixon was when it comes to press freedoms is that you know first of all it's his we call have well first part of the question is am i accurately characterized in that and or do you want to you know change that or put no and so i think that yeah i think that's generally generally accurate we all remember this last summer. obama had a terrible summer with the with the press he's and did more leakers than anybody in the history of the country. and what i was worried about also. was that he was going to go after wiki leaks and a songe for what i talked about earlier in the program this criminal action and do it on a legal theory that was going to be terribly troublesome the next and try to do that that's to say criminally prosecute the new york times after publication after

he lost the pentagon papers case he wanted to bites out of the apple and he had a grand jury going for eighteen months up in boston but it gave up and what does a palm a done he's convened a grand jury to indict a sourness is very much what and that's it and i say if obama goes forward with that he'll be worse than nixon i think he's given a nixon a pretty good battle anyway but that was my major point now is since then in the last ten days the justice department is floated a statement in which says it may not prosecute and i like to think my book had some influence on that decision but who knows i agree and i'm wondering if you think. obama being worse than nixon and to say it badly is a function of it being president obama. the man or the president or even the party or is it a function of the times is this is this how badly nine eleven has changed america

we saw the bush administration go reactive. you know you could say yes to a lot of your options but i think the last one. is the most important we're in a nine eleven. post nine eleven syndrome still you know my goodness sometimes does that happen but no one wants to take a stab that could be construed later as giving some scope to terror. there. act and do something like nine eleven because you then get blamed for being too generous with respect let's say the press with respect to eavesdropping. if you don't take a hard line and then there is another nine eleven you get blamed for not taking the hard line so the hard line. attitude is what's driving obama i

believe yeah although that didn't happen to the bush administration i mean dick cheney was put in charge of the counterterrorism task force when they became when he became vice president they never met until a week before nine eleven and they had been warned loudly about bin ladin that he was coming to get us so you know some of the blame never materialized it seems like a like you know they're afraid of something has not happened anyhow i want to get into this. this whole issue of you know what how the times in ellsberg time and when you were when you were practicing law might be different from now beyond just the level of you know comparing presidents to presidents if we get into that right after this break stick around for more more of tonight's conversations with great minds with good deals after the birth.

stories others through a few. pictures . i thought. over what. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention of the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy right culver's. role. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across several we've been hydrangeas right handful. of corporations that will profit by the screwing what our founding fathers. are going

to get on this show we were to feel the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identify the problem try rational debate and a real discussion that critical issues facing america if i ever feel ready to join the movement then walk a little bit. although

back to conversations of great minds i'm speaking with james c. goodale former general counsel for the new york times and author of the new book fighting for the press the inside story of the pentagon papers and other battles and. i mention is it as we were hit the break there that i wanted to get into how the time may have changed beyond just nine eleven this is what jim ellsberg had to say on this program. oh about six eight months ago areas. do you see a qualitative difference between what you did and what edward snowden did yes regrettably it's a different country it was a different country i had every reason to expect that eventually i'd be out on bail as i was actually the judge for the out on personal recognizance but with the fifty thousand dollars bond if i didn't show up for trial and that's for the next two years including my trial which less than ultimately four and a half months in court i was free to comment on the case and say why i had done

what i had done and what the paper. today so assuming that what ellsberg was describing was at least a reasonable environment in which to be practicing journalism how do we recapture that if we've become so unreasonable. well i think that we captured with courage. you know this nine eleven post syndrome at some point is going to go away but it won't be tomorrow won't be next year and the only way that you're going to recapture the spirit is to be highly courageous now with respect to the times. and my tarm i thought it was courageous that's what i say in in the book and of course the times had a lot more money than say the new york times today has. the new york times is getting its courage back but it did hold a story that is similar to snowden's for

a year. for which james rise and finally got the pulitzer prize it was all about the wiretapping done by the n.s.a. and one doesn't want to see those things happen because you're but you buy out of the pressure of the times and you have to think about press freedom as something that's goes on a straight line and that doesn't when we get in bad times. for the nation namely now you know goes down it should be it should be the same all over all the time. where do you were do we draw the line in terms of. what can be released i mean chelsea manning did a huge data dump the most famous part was that video clip and one could argue maybe the video clip of the u.s. chopper pilots killing the the reuters journalists and the other locals would have

been enough you know but it was a huge data dump snowden has released large amounts to wiki leaks release releasing large amounts you've talked about sort of the the atomic bomb the world war two threshold as it were but the the germans were working on a bomb the idea that if you had two pieces of highly enriched uranium and you threw them together with some conventional explosives was not a secret at that point in time it was to do was enriching uranium enough to be able to do it they were they were just behind us i mean at what point do we say here's the tripwire where this is something that really shouldn't be revealed and has anything like that come out in our lifetimes. well let me answer the second question first so you think come out like that in our lifetime. well i mean i do think the atomic bomb is an is an example you know it may be for example the secret with respect to the raid on bin laden that killed him.

you wouldn't want that that released so there are some examples but i think that. in our time when we look at the. allegations of breaches of national security when you look at them closely they never turn out to be anything now we talk about chelsea manning. she did breached asked security with that huge data dump i mean it was millions and millions of of this and that you know i went through maybe the only person in america his trial and tried to the best i could see whether he in fact it damaged nasa security so i think that he had so i think that in real terms. there aren't going to be many cases that come up against this exception but i think we always have to admit

there is an exception because we don't want to be arrogant about the first amendment and say that it can never be beaten down but in the real world it's very hard to prove that national security trumps the first amendment i'm curious your thoughts on shield laws that would protect the first amendment or protect acts of journalism there's yeah well you know go ahead. yeah well what is the shield law we had one of the best ones in here and i'm talking from new york city here in new york state and what it what does it do it means when there is a source for a story a reporter does one of his close a reporter doesn't have to do disclose it and that's pretty much the rule in the states but in the federal courts here we have state courts we have federal courts. in the. federal courts there is no such statute i think there should be one. there was a pretty good one party the way hang around before obama came in and he messed it

up by putting in national security exception in it and i think we will have some point on that it may not be to. i've. created a distinction perhaps only in my own mind to get your take on between journalists and acts of journalism it seems that if you're trying to craft a shield law or anything that has to do with journalism and you end up trying to define who is a journalist and this is what dianne feinstein has been trying to do in my. you you are dancing all over and around you may be right through the first amendment saying well this person as a principle or work for an organization or principally you know these kind of thing whereas if you instead say what what the first about tax is not journalists but acts of journalism so it could be anybody who and it could be something as simple

as a twitter you know or as sophisticated as a book or you know publication in a newspaper if it's an act of journalism it's protected your thoughts on that distinction. well i think that's a pretty good argument i think you have to put you down in washington you may be there already but in the senate. and in the senate and argue it out i like your thinking about it i want to talk about dianne feinstein. and she. is a little conservative on these issues and she's been messing shall i say with a bill that would protect reporters a shield law federal shield law and she's got an interesting provision in it where you know you have to work for a standard paper and you sort of have to be a regular a journal. which leaves a lot of people out today because you have bloggers you have going to greenwald so forth and so on and then she has a provision in there but the court is free to decide whether

a particular person is a journalist who doesn't fit that first category you know and she's almost done in a way thinking about it outloud with you in a sense what you've done. your language would be a little better but she's got this interesting idea if the judge feels as a you do he can protect an act of journalism and i think that's the best part of the work she's done in this all year because he's a real bear on this sort of stuff well and unfortunately though leaving it up to a judge. you know this is almost that prior restraint thing you know i mean it's like you're you're going to the judge to find out if this person is going to be determined innocent or guilty and and well i think you know good bye by defining them as you are referring. now you'd prefer not to go to a judge. but i'd have some sympathy for the point of view that the technology has changed the world so much this is

a very difficult question to deal with and so well that would accept journalism but i buy your i buy your argument ok thank you i mean i in fact i could even extend that and say you know is this for example when you look at what chelsea manning did was that an act of journalism or was it an act of treason you know it's you know what kind of kind of behavior was it and i and all the way i would assert that it was an act of journalism. because there was no demonstration of an attempt to destroy your country in fact she was doing it for the most noble reasons it seems. but well it's important to distinguish distinguish between ask. and a communication and what she did she did not commit espionage where is the espionage she would have had to take everything that she had and zipped it over to the russians you know by e-mail. but she didn't do that right she gave it to a song who i think it's

a journalist. so you've got to separate the two out and then you go back and say what she was charged of filing the espionage act and you say you know our laws are really screwed up in this area and we really ought to think of leaking in some respects as a responsible act that doesn't get caught as being espionage it doesn't make any sense and i would think with respect to. chelsea manning that case may be a little more difficult to make than maybe snowden's you know. stones becoming euro can you believe it yeah well i do and and i think maybe one of the reasons is for example recently seymour hersh presented a story of the washington post showing proving demonstrating that the obama administration was cherry picking intelligence with regard to chemical weapons in syria and the post decided not to publish it they said no thanks and so seymour hersh's went out to the world and said look at this that i want to publish i mean

is the is the a traditional media still serving that role of holding the government you know the fourth the state holding the government in china. well they are being challenged severely by the glenn greenwald's of the world glenn greenwald has got twenty or thirty millions or a million dollars to start his own. online newspaper if you will or whatever you want to call it and. the online types are going to win this battle that's a it's an intramural one will who's better the sabs and papers or the new guys because establishment papers as i said a few minutes ago. you know no necessarily have the same courage. that they had x. years ago i can imagine the washington post doing that in the era of ben bradlee. passing on that story and they certainly didn't pass on water.

water and they certainly did not pass the pentagon papers i mean in washington post . you know reputation and histories is very good with respect to these type of stories because you don't want to get blown away by someone who comes in and says you publish that you're going to damage nasa security because you know it never turns out she do there you go and see goodell to think carefully the book is fighting for the press the inside story of the pentagon papers and other bad. thanks so much for being with us tonight sir. here entirely welcome thank you to see this and other conversations the great minds go to conversations great minds. and that's the way it is the night friday some are thirteen twenty thirty don't forget mark he begins with you get out there get active tag your.

political your cultural marginalized. polish face i think you know. a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm researcher. and.

i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question for. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. stay with substory. it's just this guy like you which we're about done started working for the people motivations the mainstream media were pretty much on the right lines days you know . it was.

coming up on r t developing news near denver colorado where three people have been reportedly injured high school campus students were evacuated while police say the gunman is dead it's an eerie scene not too far from columbine and it's been one year since the sandy hook nightmare where the massacre of twenty children and six adults shook the nation to its core today the debate on gun control continues more on our teens gun debate special straight ahead. plus a drone strike at a wedding looking to assassinate al qaeda operatives a u.s. drone hit a wedding envoy instead and yemeni officials say this latest attack was a tragic mistake more details on that coming up.