![]() The Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of the two publications, concluding that the government had not made the case for censorship, and full publication of the Pentagon Papers resumed.Įllsberg admitted to being the whistleblower and faced 115 years in prison after being charged as a spy under the Espionage Act. ![]() Ellsberg then leaked the document to The Washington Post, which was also sued by the government. In an unprecedented move, the Nixon administration barred the Times from continuing to publish pages of the report after the first few stories. Kennedy had approved the overthrowing of Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem – whom he and other administrations had previously supported – in 1963, according to The New York Times. Johnson as early as 1967 that American escalation would not win the war and, by some accounts, advocating for withdrawal.Īmong other revelations, the report showed that President John F. While officials spoke optimistically about the war to the public and continued to send troops to Vietnam, they privately knew that the US was losing, with then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara advising President Lyndon B. The documents revealed damning information against the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He first approached several US senators in hopes that they could enter the papers into public record, but when that wasn’t successful, he leaked all 7,000 pages to The New York Times, which published them in 1971. As part of his work with RAND, Ellsberg had access to classified documents that demonstrated how the US government had systemically lied to the public about the war, and Ellsberg felt compelled to reveal the information. In the late 1960s, Ellsberg was working as a defense analyst for the RAND Corporation when he became disillusioned with US involvement in Vietnam. “He will be dearly missed by all of us.”ĭaniel Ellsberg and Patricia Marx, his wife, center, at the Watergate hearings in Washington in 1973. “Daniel was a seeker of truth and a patriotic truth-teller, an antiwar activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, a dear friend to many, and an inspiration to countless more,” his family said. He died on Friday at his home in Kensington, California, according to his family.Ĭonsidered “the patron saint of whistleblowers” for revealing to The New York Times in 1971 that the US knew the Vietnam war was “unwinnable,” Ellsberg spent his life focused on peace and transparency, later co-founding the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Ellsberg announced his diagnosis in March, saying at the time that doctors had given him three to six months to live and that he had decided not to undergo chemotherapy. ![]() The cause was pancreatic cancer, his family said. Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst and anti-war activist whose disclosure of the so-called Pentagon Papers revealed systemic US government deception about the Vietnam War, has died, his family announced in a statement.
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