"Would You Have Done What the Times Did?"

While it enjoyed the biggest journalistic beat in years, the New York Times last week found itself in the curious position of reporting and discussing at great length its own role in the controversy over the Pentagon papers. "I feel miserable," said Times Managing Editor A.M. Rosenthal as he watched other papers print parts of the Pentagon mother lode that the Times had polished into an eight-day presentation totalling 250,000 words. "A Xerox machine," he grumbled, "is the only self-breeding mechanical contrivance."

Instead of running its own disclosures, the Times was forced to fill news columns with detailed stories on the progress of court action and public debate. Three times on its editorial page the paper insisted that it had seen its duty and done it. Byliners James Reston, Tom Wicker and Max Frankel contributed eight columns to the verbal defense fund (see THE NATION). To its credit, the Times turned over its Op-Ed page to notable personalities who were invited to argue both sides of the question. More than a dozen dissertations were printed, and each side got fair play. Among those critical of the Times were Senator Barry Goldwater, General Maxwell Taylor and Harvard Law Professor Roger Fisher. Times defenders included Poet-Playwright Archibald MacLeish, M.I.T. Professor Noam Chomsky and former White House Adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

While court action temporarily prevented the Times from publishing more of the Pentagon papers, its rivals were playing catchup. The Washington Post and Boston Globe front-paged other parts of the study. They too were stopped by the courts. "I would have felt left out," said Globe Editor Thomas Winship, "if the Government hadn't moved against us." Later, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the eleven-paper Knight chain turned up still more details. So many papers were printing Pentagon pieces that Editor Kenneth MacDonald of the Des Moines Register lamented: "I'm beginning to feel lonely." For some editors, it was not so much a matter of seeking portions of the papers as simply sitting back and waiting for them to be offered.

Top-Secret Doubts. As leaks continued, TIME polled two dozen editors across the U.S., asking how they would have played the story had they, and not the Times, received the Pentagon papers first. Although most newspapers do not command as much newsprint space as the Times, the great majority of editors, in the words of Denver Post Executive Editor William Hornby, "would have done just what the Times did." The little (circ. 13,500) Daily News in Anchorage, Alaska, has a tiny news-hole, and seldom exceeds 16 pages a day; yet it ran the entire Times package, word for word and spaced out over several days.

The "top-secret" classification bothered some journalists. "We have serious doubts," said Publisher Robert C. Notson of the Portland Oregonian, "whether penetration of the confidential files of the Pentagon should be treated in this manner." The Oregonian subscribes to the New York Times News Service and was offered Neil Sheehan's three resume stories, but it held off more than a week before finally deciding to run them. "The classification would have bothered me a hell of a lot," admitted Chicago Sun-Times Editor James Hoge. "There would have been a lot of discussion. But in the end, like the Times, we'd have gone with it."

TIME'S survey also turned up a scattering of sour gripes. The Chicago Tribune shrugged off the Sun-Times disclosures as a "rehash" because some of its material had previously been published elsewhere. Boston's Herald Traveler ignored the revelations of the rival Globe. Detroit News Editor Martin Hayden, beaten by the Knight's competing Free Press, complained that the Pentagon study was "only offered to the so-called antiwar papers." And the Houston Post did not even mention the dis closures until Attorney General John Mitchell moved against the Times, four days after the story broke. The initial reaction of Post Executive Editor Bill Hobby was: "Aw, that's no story."

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