William Byrne, 75, Judge in Pentagon Papers Case
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
William Matthew Byrne Jr., the federal judge who presided over the 1970s Pentagon Papers trial of Daniel Ellsberg, died Thursday according to court officials. He was 75.
The cause of death was not given.
Although he worked as a federal prosecutor and was named in 1970 to head President Nixon’s Commission on Campus Unrest, Byrne is best remembered as the Pentagon Papers judge. He got the case the same year he arrived on the bench.
Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg and a co-defendant, Anthony J. Russo Jr., were charged with espionage,theft,and conspiracy for leaking a secret study to the New York Times of American in volvement in the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers.
Byrne dismissed the case in 1973, ruling the government was guilty of misconduct, including a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s Beverly Hills psychiatrist that was orchestrated by White House officials seeking to discredit him.
