“Accordingly, I respectfully request that you publish no further information of this character and advise me that you have made arrangements for the return of these documents to the Department of Defense.”

Instead, The Times advised the Justice Department that it had no plans to comply.

“The Times must respectfully decline the request of the attorney general, believing that it is in the interest of the people of this country to be informed of the material contained in this series of articles,” the newspaper said in a statement. “We have also been informed of the attorney general’s intention to seek an injunction against further publication. We believe that it is properly a matter for the courts to decide. The Times will oppose any request for an injunction for the same reason that led us to publish the articles in the first place. We will of course abide by the final decision of the court.”

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The injunction came the next day in a complaint that named as defendants the seven reporters and editors credited with the series and the 15 executives listed on the newspaper’s masthead. John Crewdson and Barbara Dubivsky of the Washington bureau quickly came up with a retort, printing hundreds of buttons that said, “Free The Times XXII” and “Free The Times 22.”

To the astonishment of everyone involved, the case made its way to the Supreme Court in less than two weeks. Oral arguments by The Times’s legal team, headed by Alexander M. Bickel, were heard on Saturday, June 26.

The subsequent 6-to-3 decision was something of a muddle. In their haste to decide a fast-moving case, the justices barely had time to write their own concurring or dissenting opinions, much less build the consensus needed for a unified voice.

Nonetheless, the resolution of the Pentagon Papers case seemed to blunt prior restraint as a government tool for dealing with stories it does not want you or me to read. The most prominent exception was a 1979 case in which the government tried to prevent the Progressive magazine from publishing an article about the hydrogen bomb, said George Freeman, the executive director of the Media Law Resource Center.