Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower, dies at 92

Defence analyst shared trove of top-secret documents on Vietnam, helping crystallise anti-war sentiment.

Daniel Ellsberg speaking to an unofficial House panel about the documents in 1971. Picture: AP/WSJ

Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers, has died. He was 92.

Ellsberg died Friday morning in his home in Kensington, Calif., according to a statement from his family. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February, the family said.

“Daniel was a seeker of truth and a patriotic truth-teller, an anti-war activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, ” his family’s statement said. “He will be dearly missed by all of us.” Born in Chicago in 1931, Ellsberg studied economics at Harvard and eventually landed at Rand Corp. in 1959 as a strategic analyst. He worked as a consultant with the White House and Defence Department.

Daniel Ellsberg and his wife Patricia Ellsberg at a press conference in 1971. Picture: AP/WSJ

After several years’ working for the government, he returned to Rand in 1967 and worked on a top-secret study of the Vietnam War. Two years later, Ellsberg photocopied the 7000-page study on US decision-making in Vietnam and gave it to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Two years later, he shared it with the New York Times, which published parts of it in June 1971. It would become a turning point in the war.

Ellsberg told The Wall Street Journal in 2010 he had studied every word of the Pentagon Papers and carefully weighed whether their release would harm anyone.

“I had read all of it and made a judgment of the 7000 papers and concluded they deserved to be out and would not harm any Americans,” he said.

Daniel and Patricia Ellsberg celebrate after the charges against him were dropped in 1973. Picture: AP/WSJ

He eventually leaked the Pentagon Papers to 19 newspapers, he wrote on his website.

“For all these papers to publish these ‘secrets’ successively – in the face of four federal injunctions and daily charges by the attorney-general and the president that they were endangering national security – amounted to a unique wave of civil disobedience by major American institutions,” he said.

While much of the information released was dated, the documents had an immediate effect, crystallising public doubts about the war.

Ellsberg was prosecuted for espionage, and faced up to 115 years in prison. The charges were dropped after the trial became caught up in the Watergate scandal.

Watergate, which culminated in the resignation of president Richard Nixon in 1974, reshaped American politics and media. The changes it forced to the country’s political landscape still resonate.

Daniel Ellsberg at a peace march in Washington, D.C., in 1986. Picture: AP/WSJ

Well after his most famous role, Ellsberg continued to work as a researcher and activist. He has written four books, the most recent in 2017, called The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Ellsberg is survived by his wife, Patricia Ellsberg; three children; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

His cancer diagnosis earlier this year brought an outpouring of support and well-wishes, his family said, prompting Ellsberg to joke, “If I had known dying would be like this, I would have done it sooner.”

The Wall Street Journal