This May 18, 1973, file photo shows Daniel Ellsberg, the former government consultant who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers that exposed the deceit of American policymakers during the Vietnam War.
AP Photo
Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who exposed the U.S. government’s lies about the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers to some of the nation’s top newspapers, has died, his family said in a statement on Friday.
He was 92.
Ellsberg’s demise came about four months after he announced on Twitter that he had been diagnosed with “inoperable pancreatic cancer.”
“I’m sorry to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six months to live,” he wrote on March 2.
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Ellsberg was working as an analyst for the RAND Corporation in 1969 when he and a colleague named Anthony Russo secretly photocopied a 7,000-page study privately commissioned by the Defense Department which revealed the U.S. government knew early on the Vietnam War could not be won.
Initially, Ellsberg and Russo offered the study to several members of Congress and government officials before deciding to leak it to the newspapers.
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