- By Jude Sheerin and Brandon Drenon
- BBC News, Washington DC
June 16, 2023
Updated 1 hour ago
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Interview 2022: Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says he was a secret supporter of Wikileaks
Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who exposed the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam War, has died at the age of 92.
He died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Kensington, California, his family said.
The exposure of the former US military analyst’s 1971 Pentagon Papers led to him being dubbed “America’s Most Dangerous Man.”
This led to a Supreme Court case as the Nixon administration attempted to block publication in The New York Times.
But the allegations of espionage against Ellsberg were ultimately dismissed. “Daniel was a truth seeker and patriotic truth teller, an anti-war activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, a dear friend to many, and an inspiration to countless others. He will be dear to our hearts.” “We all missed it,” Ellsberg’s family said in a statement obtained by NPR.
For decades, Ellsberg was a relentless critic of government encroachment and military intervention.
His opposition crystallized in the 1960s, when he advised the White House on nuclear strategy and assessed the Vietnam War for the Department of Defense.
Image source: Getty Images
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Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to expose US actions in the Vietnam War
What Ellsberg learned during this time weighed heavily on his conscience. If the public only knew, he thought, the political pressure to end the war might prove irresistible.
The publication of the Pentagon Papers – 7,000 government pages exposing the deceptions of several US Presidents – was a product of this rationale.
The papers contradicted the government’s public declarations of war, and the damning revelations they contained helped end the conflict and ultimately laid the groundwork for the fall of President Richard M. Nixon.
Ellsberg is “the grandfather of all whistleblowers,” former The Guardian newspaper editor Alan Rusbridger told the BBC.
His intervention “radically changed public opinion on the Vietnam War,” Rusbridger said on Radio 4’s World Tonight program ban security,” he said.
The Pentagon Papers led to a conflict between the Nixon administration and The New York Times, which was the first to publish stories based on the papers that government officials saw as an act of espionage that endangered national security. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of freedom of the press.
Ellsberg was arraigned in federal court in Los Angeles in 1971 on larceny, espionage, conspiracy and other charges.
But before the jury could reach a verdict, the judge dismissed the case, citing serious government misconduct, including illegal wiretapping.
The judge said that mid-trial he was offered the position of FBI director by one of President Nixon’s top associates.
It also emerged that there had been a government-sanctioned break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatric practice.
Ellsberg was born on April 7, 1931 in Chicago and grew up in suburban Detroit, Michigan. Before reaching the Pentagon, he was a Marine Corps veteran with a Harvard doctorate and had worked for the Defense and State Departments.
According to Rusbridger, current whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have been “shaped” by Ellsberg.
He told the BBC the Pentagon Papers case got him thinking: “Who gets to define the national interest: is that the government of the day or people with a conscience like Daniel Ellsberg?”
Ellsberg continued his quest to hold the government accountable years after the Pentagon Papers were exposed.
During an interview in December 2022, he told BBC Hardtalk that he was the secret “backup” for the Wikileaks document leak.
In the Wikileaks case, in 2010, Julian Assange’s organization released more than 700,000 confidential documents, videos and diplomatic cables provided by a US Army intelligence analyst.
Ellsberg said he felt Mr Assange “can count on me to find a way to get it”. [the information] out of”.
After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February, when doctors told Ellsberg he had three to six months to live, he spent the last few months pondering the Pentagon Papers and spreading whistleblowing more broadly.
In a March 2023 email obtained by the Washington Post, Ellsberg wrote: “When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969, I had every reason to believe that I would spend the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would gladly have accepted if it would hasten the end of the Vietnam War, unlikely as that seemed.”
Politico published an interview with Ellsberg on June 4, in which the publication asked him if whistleblowing was worth the risk, although he believes it hasn’t made the government more honest.
“When we face a pretty ultimate catastrophe. When we are about to blow up the world over Crimea, Taiwan or Bakhmut,” he replied.
“From the point of view of a civilization and the survival of eight or nine billion people, when everything is at stake, can it be worth even a small chance of making a small impact?” he said. “The answer is: Of course… You could even say it’s mandatory.”