Gerald Gold, editor of The New York Times who helped oversee the Herculean task to sift through a secret of 2.5 million words the story of Defense Department of the Vietnam War, later known as the Pentagon Papers to produce papers showing that officials had lied to the war, died Wednesday at a hospice in Melville, New York 85 years.
The cause was heart failure, his daughter Madeleine said Golden.
After Neil Sheehan, a Times reporter, received 47 volumes of top secret documents, the filling of 7,000 pages, he and Mr. Gold was found in a hotel suite in Washington to evaluate the material. Once it had given its usefulness, he traveled to New York publishers for the best short, buy a house for documents to keep in sight.
The Times has published the first of a series of articles in newspapers on 13 June 1971. The documents showed, among other things, that the Johnson administration "systematically lied" to Congress and the public on "a subject of transcendent national interest and importance," he told The Times in 1996.
After two articles appeared, the government has won a court order that restricts the subsequent publication.
On June 30, the Supreme Court decided in favor of The Times, voting 6-3 to allow the resumption of the publication.
The Pentagon Papers episode was hailed as a great victory for press freedom and has raised skepticism that the new government. But before all that, someone had to do hours of hard work and careful preparation of articles and excerpts of documents for publication. Mr. Gold, assistant editor of Foreign Affairs, shoulders much of the burden.
He has organized a suite at the Hilton New York on Avenue of the Americas, where, Mr. Sheehan and Mr. Allan Siegal, another deputy editor of Foreign Affairs, started the project. Over time, their makeshift office grew to nine rooms.
There were enough computers and copiers - just piles of paper.
Mr. Gold and Mr. Siegal, who later became assistant executive director of The Times, and decide which best reflects the values ??underestimated the fact-rich documents.
They also use titles to address the reader to extract a specific document, which Mr. Gold is described as a kind of footnote.
In an interview Thursday, Mr. Sheehan said Gold rejected the idea of ??a manager to do the job in a motel in New Rochelle, New York, saying. "We were crazy top" Mr. Sheehan said their gratitude to Mr. Golden for his reassuring presence as Mr. Sheehan stayed three days and two nights to finish the second and third series. "Stay with it, man, they do," said Gold is saying.
Gerald Gold, who lived in Beechhurst, Queens, was born January 11, 1927, in Brooklyn. After serving in the Navy in World War II, he earned a degree in English Literature at the University of Long Island.
He earned a master's degree in English literature from New York and earned a doctorate in Elizabethan literature at Columbia, but went unfinished work in his thesis Times.
In the paper, which began as an editor on the desktop of the city before joining the foreign desk. He later worked as art editor, specializing in classical music.
Besides his daughter, Mr. Gold is survived by his wife of 62 years, the former Gloria Daniels, a former school teacher in New York, daughter of another, Gueldenzopf Audrey, a son, Martin, and four grandchildren.
Mr. Gold wrote in Times Talk, an internal company publication, during the 10 weeks that was closed with the Pentagon Papers, he returned home only five times. A neighbor asked Ms. Golden if they had divorced, explaining that "'s so seldom at home, and every time you remove a suitcase."
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