“It’s an honor to receive an award that carries the name of one of the First Amendment’s great champions, especially when that guy also happens to have kept my grandfather out of prison. 

And to Rick – and everyone at Harper’s – congratulations on this remarkable anniversary. I owe you my thanks as well. One hundred and seventy four years ago, this magazine permitted its first managing editor, Henry Jarvis Raymond, to take on a little side project: founding and editing the newspaper we now know as The New York Times. It’s testament to the value of good journalism that, after all these years, both Harper’s and The Times continue to carry out the essential mission of America’s free press. 

But first a few words about Jim Goodale. 

Let me take you back, for a moment, to the Nixon era. An American president was expanding the powers of his office; abusing it to reward supporters and punish critics; and targeting the free press with particular ferocity. Much of the press did not exactly distinguish itself under pressure. Instead, many news organizations quietly capitulated, handing over reporters’ notebooks, revealing the identities of confidential sources, and allowing themselves to be bullied into self-censorship.   

It was in this context that The Times got a scoop with little precedent in scale and significance. It was a trove of top secret documents that laid out the hidden history of the war in Vietnam, a damning account that upended the military’s insistence that the war was just and winnable. This account, thousands of pages long, later became known as the Pentagon Papers. To the young publisher of The Times, Punch Sulzberger, they – quote – “smelled of 20 years to life.”

Now, my grandfather wasn’t a lawyer. But his lawyers, it turns out, thought the same thing. They warned him that he did indeed risk prison if The Times published the papers. Even so, he decided to take the risk. He believed that an American public that had already lost tens of thousands of young men to the war deserved to know it was being lied to. 

As the first installments of the Pentagon Papers hit newsstands, things escalated quickly. The Attorney General demanded an end to the publication. The Times refused. The Nixon administration asked the courts to block further articles. Losing its nerve amidst the pressure, The Times’ law firm of nearly 25 years announced that it would no longer represent the paper. By this point, my grandfather had taken to carrying a toothbrush in his pocket in case he was hauled off to jail.

In that dark moment, Jim Goodale stepped into the breach. He spent the night chasing down outside lawyers who might represent us on such short notice. And by sunrise, Jim had assembled a team of attorneys and was already briefing them on the finer points of the case.