Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who exposed the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam War, has died, aged 92.
Daniel Ellsberg died at his home in Kensington, California, of pancreatic cancer, his family said.
The former US military analyst’s 1971 Pentagon Papers leak led to him being dubbed “the most dangerous man in America”.
It led to a Supreme Court case as the Nixon administration tried to block publication in the New York Times.
But espionage charges against Ellsberg were ultimately dismissed. “Daniel was a seeker of truth and a patriotic truth-teller, an anti-war activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, a dear friend to many, and an inspiration to countless more.
He will be dearly missed by all of us,” Ellsberg’s family said in a statement obtained by NPR.
For decades, Daniel Ellsberg was a tireless critic of government overreach and military interventions.
His opposition crystallised during the 1960s when he advised the White House on nuclear strategy and assessed the Vietnam War for the Department of Defense.
What Daniel Ellsberg learned during that period weighed heavily on his conscience. If only the public knew, he thought, political pressure to end the war might prove irresistible.
The release of the Pentagon Papers – 7,000 government pages that exposed deceptions by multiple US presidents – was a product of that rationale.
The papers contradicted the government’s public statements on the war and the damning revelations they contained helped bring an end to the conflict and, ultimately, sowed the seeds of President Richard M Nixon’s downfall.
Ellsberg was “the grandfather of whistleblowers”, the former chief editor of The Guardian newspaper, Alan Rusbridger, told the BBC.
His intervention “radically changed the public opinion in the Vietnam War”, Rusbridger said on Radio 4’s World Tonight programme. The case against him set a precedent and “no US government has ever tried to injunct a paper on grounds of national security since”, he said.
The Pentagon Papers created a First Amendment clash between the Nixon administration and The New York Times, which first published stories based on the papers – cast by government officials as an act of espionage that compromised national security. The US Supreme Court ruled in favour of the freedom of the press.
Ellsberg was charged in federal court in Los Angeles in 1971 with theft, espionage, conspiracy and other counts.