Daniel Ellsberg, the U.S. military analyst-turned-whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers and helped reveal the political deceptions underpinning the brutal expansion of the Vietnam War, has died. He was 92.
As it happened, Ellsberg’s first day at DoD was Aug. 4, 1964, “the occasion of a supposed — actually, illusory — attack on U.S. destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf, and the beginning of our eight-year bombing campaign against Vietnam.”
During his decade in the heart of the war machine, Ellsberg’s views changed drastically. He was deeply influenced by the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, and Barbara Deming; the work of young anti-war activists like Bob Eaton and Randy Kehler; and also his wife, Patricia Marx Ellsberg, who had always opposed to the Vietnam War .
In Oct. 1969, Ellsberg started photocopying the Pentagon Papers. He smuggled pages out of his office over eight months, taking them to an advertising agency owned by a friend’s girlfriend, feeding the pages through a Xerox machine, and then bringing the originals back the next day. He was nearly caught twice when someone at the agency turned a key the wrong way, set off a burglar alarm, and roused the cops. Once, the police came in and found Ellsberg working alongside his two children.
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