The importance of the actual content of the papers to U.S. policy-making was disputed, but the window that they provided into the flawed decision-making process at the highest levels of the U.S. government opened the issue for other questions. Their publication was a news event and the government's legal (Nixon lost to the Supreme Court) and extra-legal efforts (the "Plumbers" break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist committed to gain material to discredit him, was one of the first steps on the road to Watergate) carried out to prevent their publication—mainly on national security grounds—then went on to generate yet more criticism and suspicion of the government by the American public.