Comment Daniel Ellsberg, an American former military analyst who became one of the most significant whistleblowers in US history, has made peace with death.

In a letter [PDF] released this month, Ellsberg informed friends and followers that he has inoperable pancreatic cancer and has been told by doctors that he has an estimated three to six months to live.

Ellsberg served in the US Marine Corps and in 1959, took a job at RAND Corporation as a strategic analyst and served as a consultant to the Defense Department and the White House on matters of nuclear war. He joined the Defense Department in 1964 and returned to RAND in 1967, where he began working on a secret study of US policy in Vietnam from 1945 through 1968 that had been commissioned by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

This was in the midst of the Vietnam War (1955-1975). And in 1969, Ellsberg, with the help of former RAND colleague Anthony Russo, began providing Senator William Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with material from the McNamara study in an effort to oppose the escalating conflict.

As Ellsberg tells it, "Despite the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, Senator Fulbright still held back from bringing out the documents in hearings, for fear of Executive reprisal."

So following the invasion of Laos in 1971, Ellsberg gave most of the study, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, to the New York Times. The Times began publishing excerpts of the material on June 13,...

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