Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ellsberg attended Harvard University, where he studied economics and was elected to the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson. Marine Corps from through Ellsberg worked as an analyst at the Rand Corporation from to and served as a special assistant to John T. McNaughton, the assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs from to He then spent two years as a civilian in Vietnam working for the Department of State.
Ellsberg returned home persuaded that the Vietnam War was misguided and wrong. Decision-Making in Vietnam, — Russo Jr. Soon after the Times published the first installment of the papers on June 13, , Ellsberg and Russo were indicted for conspiracy, misappropriation of government property, violations of the Espionage Act , and other crimes. Not specifically because Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers—which covered only the period up to and therefore did not implicate the Nixon administration—but rather because they feared, incorrectly, that Ellsberg possessed documents concerning Nixon's secret plans to escalate the Vietnam War including contingency plans involving the use of nuclear weapons , Nixon and Kissinger embarked on a fanatical campaign to discredit him.
An FBI agent named G. Lewis Fielding, searching for materials with which to blackmail Ellsberg. Similar "dirty tricks" by "the Plumbers" eventually led to Nixon's downfall in the Watergate scandal. For leaking the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was charged with theft, conspiracy and violations of the Espionage Act, but his case was dismissed as a mistrial when evidence surfaced about the government-ordered wiretappings and break-ins.
Ever since his leak of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg has remained active as a scholar and antiwar, anti-nuclear weapons activist. He has authored three books: Papers on the War , Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision as well as countless articles on economics, foreign policy and nuclear disarmament. In , he received the Right Livelihood Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize," "for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example.
When he chose to leak the Pentagon Papers in , many people both within and outside the government derided him as a traitor and suspected him of espionage. Since that time, however, many have come to regard Daniel Ellsberg as hero of uncommon bravery, a man who risked his career and even his personal freedom to help expose the deception of his own government in carrying out the Vietnam War.
The debate surrounding Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers has recently regained international attention as historical context for the debate over the decision of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, to leak hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables from U.
Ellsberg is an active and outspoken supporter of Assange's efforts. Ellsberg also remains fiercely proud of his decision to leak the Pentagon Papers, which he says not only deligitimized the Vietnam War, but also helped usher in a new era of skepticism about war and government in general. Not everything they say is a lie, but anything they say could be a lie. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
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The papers, a study of US involvement in south-east Asia from to , revealed that president after president knew the war to be unwinnable yet continued to mislead Congress and the public into an escalating stalemate costing millions of lives.
After their release Ellsberg was put on trial for espionage and faced a potential prison sentence of years, only for the charges to be dropped. So, half a century on, is he glad he did it? In the mids he was there on special assignment as a civilian studying counter-insurgency for the state department. He estimates that he and a friend drove about 10, miles, visiting 38 of the 43 provinces, sometimes linking up with troops and witnessing the war up close. And that came to be the majority view of the American people before the Pentagon Papers came out.
In fact, most of them had never met a Vietnamese. Only recently, as he prepares for the 50th anniversary, has Ellsberg dwelled on how doubts about the war went higher in the political hierarchy than is widely understood.
In particular, a very large range of high-level doves thought we should get out and should not have got involved at all. They were lying to the public to give the impression that they were supporting the president when they did not believe in what the president was doing. None of them did that or took any risk of doing it and the price of the silence of the doves was several million Vietnamese, Indochinese, and 58, Americans.
But Ellsberg did break the silence. Why was he, unlike them, willing to risk life imprisonment for a leak that he knew had only a small chance of ending the war?
He says he was inspired by meeting people who resisted being drafted into military service and, unlike conscientious objectors, did not take alternative service. They chose a course that put them in prison.
In Ellsberg was working as a Pentagon consultant at the Rand Corporation thinktank in Santa Monica, California, and still had access to the secret study of the war, which by this time had killed about 45, Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. He decided to take the plunge. Ellsberg had a friend whose girlfriend owned an advertising agency with a photocopier, or Xerox machine.
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