Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers leaker, dies at 92

Daniel Ellsberg, one of the most prominent whistleblowers in history, having leaked the Pentagon Papers revealing that the U.S. government was misleading the public about the status of the Vietnam War, died Friday at age 92. 

Ellsberg had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in February. 

His son, Robert, announced his father’s death on Twitter, saying that he died peacefully surrounded by family at home and had no pain. 

“At one point he said, if he were to have a gravestone, that he would say: ‘He became a part of the anti-Vietnam and anti-nuclear movement,’” Robert posted. 

Ellsberg worked for the Pentagon after earning a doctorate in economics from Harvard, then spent two years in South Vietnam with the State Department, and then joined the RAND Corporation as an analyst focused on nuclear and military strategy.

Ellsberg considered himself a “cold warrior” during this time and was trusted by members of Democratic and Republican administrations. But he became disillusioned with the war and U.S. claims that it could be won. He was also skeptical of one of the main justifications for the war; that North Vietnamese victory would risk the global spread of communism.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara commissioned the Pentagon Papers, as they came to be known, in 1967 to analyze U.S. decision-making during the war to provide lessons for future leaders about mistakes to avoid. 

The report covered more than 20 years of history of ongoing conflict in Vietnam. It included failed French colonization efforts in the 1940s and 1950s and the increasing U.S. involvement, from the administrations of Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson. 

The papers revealed that the U.S. violated a 1954 settlement that banned a foreign military presence in Vietnam, expanded the war into neighboring countries and planned to escalate the conflict despite officials saying they would not. It also raised questions about the viability of the South Vietnamese government.

Ellsberg was one of the workers at RAND who was involved in drafting the Pentagon Papers. After he became disenchanted with the war effort, he worked with a colleague to photocopy parts of the 47-volume, 7,000-page document. 

Ellsberg first contacted several senators about the papers but did not receive interest. He then provided the documents to The New York Times, which published a series of stories about the findings in 1971. 

Ellsberg turned himself in following the report’s release, becoming a hero to anti-war activists and a traitor to the war’s supporters. He faced a sentence of more than 100 years in prison in connection with charges of espionage and theft. 

But one case against him in Boston ended in a mistrial because government officials had wiretapped conversations between Ellsberg and his attorney. Another in Los Angeles was dismissed after the judge learned that political operatives of the Nixon administration, known as the White House “plumbers,” burglarized Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. 

The Nixon administration tried to prevent the Times and other outlets from further publishing records from the Pentagon Papers citing national security considerations, but the Supreme Court allowed the publication to go forward in a landmark 6-3 ruling against prior restraint. 

Ellsberg became a prominent activist in favor of free speech as he got older and also spoke out against the Iraq War, drawing a parallel to the war in Vietnam. 

“When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969, I had every reason to think I would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War, unlikely as that seemed (and was),” Ellsberg said in the post announcing his cancer diagnosis. 

“Yet in the end, that action—in ways I could not have foreseen, due to Nixon’s illegal responses—did have an impact on shortening the war. In addition, thanks to Nixon’s crimes, I was spared the imprisonment I expected, and I was able to spend the last fifty years with Patricia and my family, and with you, my friends.”

Ellsberg is survived by his second wife, journalist Patricia Marx, and three children, two from his first marriage. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.