Today in History, June 13th
On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers. Plus Miranda v. Arizona and Thurgood Marshall's nomination.
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June 13 is best known for 1971, when The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, the secret government history of the Vietnam War. The date also saw the Supreme Court’s Miranda v. Arizona decision in 1966 and Thurgood Marshall’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1967.
The big story: The New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers (1971)
On June 13, 1971, readers of The New York Times found the first installment of a secret Defense Department study of the Vietnam War. The full report ran 47 volumes and traced how the U.S. had been drawn deeper into Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1967, laying out private memos and decisions from the Kennedy and Johnson years, and Eisenhower’s diplomacy before them. The source was Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst who had turned against the war. He first tried to interest antiwar senators in the papers, and when that went nowhere, he went to the Times. President Richard Nixon fought publication, arguing it endangered sources and would further erode support for the war. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that the paper could keep printing. The fallout didn’t end there. Nixon’s White House set up a unit to stop leaks, the “Plumbers,” and their illegal work grew into the Watergate scandal that ended his presidency in August 1974.
More events on June 13
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1381 | Rebels in the Peasants’ Revolt, led by Wat Tyler, marched into London and burned and looted parts of the city. |
| 1777 | The Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French aristocrat, arrived in South Carolina to join the American Revolution. |
| 1805 | Meriwether Lewis and four men reached the Great Falls of the Missouri River, proof the expedition was on the right route. |
| 1807 | President Thomas Jefferson was subpoenaed in Aaron Burr’s treason trial. |
| 1944 | Nazi Germany launched the V-1 flying bomb, an early use of a cruise missile in war. |
| 1966 | In Miranda v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court set rules for police questioning of arrested suspects, the basis of the “Miranda rights.” |
| 1967 | President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. |
| 1983 | NASA’s Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Neptune and headed beyond the known planets. |
| 2000 | South Korea’s Kim Dae-Jung and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il met in the first summit between the leaders of the two Koreas. |
| 2017 | American student Otto Warmbier returned to the United States in a coma after imprisonment in North Korea. |
| 2023 | Donald Trump was arraigned in Miami, the first former U.S. president to face federal criminal charges. |
Born on June 13
- 1865: William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and dramatist, born in Dublin.
- 1928: John Nash, American mathematician and Nobel laureate in economic sciences, born in Bluefield, West Virginia.
- 1944: Ban Ki-moon, South Korean diplomat who served as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations.
Sources
- The New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers, History.com
- This Day in History: June 13, History.com
- On This Day: June 13, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- W. B. Yeats: Biographical, The Nobel Prize
- John F. Nash Jr.: Biographical, The Nobel Prize
- Ban Ki-moon, Encyclopaedia Britannica
