Daniel Ellsberg, the informant who exposed the US role in the Vietnam War to the world, died of cancer at the age of 92 at his residence in Kensington, California, his relatives reported.
His leak of documents in 1971, known as the Pentagon Papers, made him known at the time as the “most dangerous man in America.”
The case ended up in the Supreme Court, after the administration of President Richard Nixon tried to prevent the newspaper from The New York Times Publish the content of the documents.
The charges against Ellsberg never prospered.
For decades, Ellsberg was a tireless critic of government excesses US and their military interventions.
In the 1960s, he was a White House adviser on nuclear strategy, and a Vietnam War adviser to the Department of Defense.
What Ellsberg discovered during that period caused him dismay. He thought that if the public found out what was happening, the political pressure to end the war might be irresistible.
The Pentagon Papers leak stemmed from that reasoning.
the filtration
In 1971, a man later found to be Ellsberg leaked to various newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Postthousands of pages of secret US government documents.
The documents became known as the Pentagon Papers, which were an analysis of US military and political involvement in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967, conducted by the US Department of Defense.
The more than 7,000 pages revealed that the government knew, from the beginning, that the vietnam war was unlikely to be won and that continuing it would only lead to more casualties.
They also pointed out that the previous administration of Lyndon Johnson had lied to Congress and the American people about the status of their country’s involvement in Vietnam.
When The New York Times published the first of its reports, the administration of then-President Richard Nixon sought an injunction to prevent further documents from being released and launched a manhunt for the person responsible for the leak.
But the US Supreme Court ruled that the release of the papers was justified and reporting resumed.
Two days before that ruling, the person responsible for the leak, Daniel Ellsberg, publicly acknowledged his role.
The accusation
Lor charged with theft, espionage, conspiracy and other charges in federal court Los Angeles in 1971.
But before the jury could reach a verdict, the judge dismissed the case citing government misconduct, including illegal wiretapping.
The judge said that one of Nixon’s top advisers had offered him the job of FBI director.
It was also reported that there had been an illegal break-in at the Ellsberg psychiatrist’s office.
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See original article on BBC