Practically everyone in the journalistic process, from owner to reporter, claims that personal values do not influence the news, but I think that is clearly untrue. Otherwise I would not have been in the hotel room that night. Some reporters would consider it unpatriotic or too risky. Nor would my paper have approved the project. After it became public, more than one newspaper condemned The Washington Post.

But that night in 1971, these were not the thoughts that came to mind as I looked at the formidable pile of Pentagon documents on the twin beds.

At that moment, I was not even concerned whether I was right or wrong in doing what my government had said publicly would cause my country "grave and irreparable harm." I had already decided about that earlier.

What concerned me at that moment was something more absurd. I was afraid that the attempt to smuggle the papers undetected into Washington would fail because trying to carry the weight of more than ten thousand pieces of paper might throw out my vulnerable back.

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