Remembering Daniel Ellsberg

Legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has died at the age of 92.

Daniel Ellsberg had a brilliant career in the US law enforcement agencies in the 1960s.

He received three degrees from Harvard, served in the Marine Corps, and worked for the Pentagon and its affiliated RAND Corporation. At the time, he was a dedicated Cold Warrior and a hawk in Vietnam.

While working in Vietnam for the American War, he understood the monstrous nature of the lying machine associated with it and gradually revised his views.

Elsberg managed to copy 7,000 pages of Pentagon reports on the preparations, progress, and casualties of the war. An ordered array called “The Pentagon Papers”, he secretly handed over for publication in the media.

“The Pentagon Papers” began to be published in 1971 in the New York Times and literally blew up American society.

From the publications, in particular, it followed that President John F. Kennedy approved plans for a coup d’état to overthrow the South Vietnamese leader. It also stated that Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, planned to expand the war to include the bombing of North Vietnam, despite his stating during the 1964 campaign that he would not do so. Newspapers also reported on US covert bombing raids in Cambodia and Laos and that casualty figures were higher than previously reported.

The Nixon administration blocked the publication, but the US Supreme Court upheld its legitimacy, taking into account the “public interest”.

Publication continued in the Washington Post. The campaign was then picked up by a dozen more newspapers.

Henry Kissinger, who at the time was the president’s national security adviser, called Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America who must be stopped at all costs.”

A smear campaign was launched against Ellsberg, and there were repeated attempts to send him to jail. All this is behind us now.

Although the Pentagon Papers did not cover Nixon’s activities in Vietnam, the White House “Plumbers” unit that later carried out the Watergate hack that brought Nixon down was ordered to stop further leaks and discredit Ellsberg.

Ellsberg and his RAND colleague were eventually charged with espionage, theft and conspiracy. But at their trial in 1973, the case was dismissed on the basis of evidence of government misconduct.

In the last years of his life, Ellsberg became a writer and lecturer as part of a campaign for government transparency and against nuclear proliferation.

He published several books highly valued by specialists.

Currently, the Ellsberg tradition is continued by Julian Assange and Seymour Hersh.

Rest in peace Daniel Ellsberg.