A one-time hawk whose 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers confirmed what many critics had been saying about the Vietnam War for years and inspired generations of whistleblowers and activists since then, Daniel Ellsberg has announced that he has pancreatic cancer and a short time to live. He has said he is not in physical pain and will not undergo chemotherapy, but he cautions that he’s not dead yet. "As I just told my son Robert: He's long known (as my editor) that I work better under a deadline. It turns out that Ilivebetter under a deadline." He is 91.
As a 1996 New York Times article on the 25th anniversary of the release of the Pentagon Papers noted, the Lyndon Johnson administrationhad "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress" about the war. After the Times in 1971 published the first excerpts from the papers in an article by reporter Neil Sheehan, the Nixon administration worked diligently to keep the Times and The Washington Post from publishing more of the documents, a fight that eventually wound up in the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 that prior restraint in the matter was out of bounds.
Ellsberg was brought up on charges and might have spent a lot longer in prison than he did for passing the documents along to media after failing in his attempts to interest Sens. William Fulbright and George McGovern in them. He was charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property. These charges were dropped after it was learned that...
Field Marshal Lord Bramall, one of Britain’s greatest soldiers, was known affectionately to his grandchildren as “Papa”. Alex Bramall, his grandson, a fashion photographer, was particularly close ...