Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who exposed years of US top-secret government deceit in the Vietnam War when he leaked the "Pentagon Papers," died on Friday.
He had been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer in February. The Washington Post reported that Ellsberg wrote an email saying he had refused chemotherapy.
His family said he died at home in Kensington, California. "He was not in pain, and was surrounded by loving family," they said in a statement.
The revelations that Ellsberg made would eventually lead to the Watergate scandal that saw the resignation of former US President Richard Nixon.
Ellsberg angered the Nixon White House in 1971 when he handed over documents from a top-secret report about US involvement in Vietnam, from 1945 to 1967, to the press.
He had worked on the report after being sent to Saigon for the State Department. His Harvard education as well as serving in the Marine Corps and working at the Pentagon made him a top candidate for the job.
But he had also become disillusioned by the war and realized that the US could not win.
He began copying pages from the 7,000-page report and eventually leaked it to The New York Times, which published a first installment in 1971. This unleashed the fury of the Nixon administration which tried to block further publication.
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