This fall, POGO will co-present the Ridenhour Prizes, a celebration uplifting largely unsung heroes: whistleblowers.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the prizes. To commemorate it, this year’s gala will look back on the trailblazers who were awarded Ridenhour Prizes over the years. Given the theme, I thought it would be fitting to recount the story of the first-ever recipient of the Ridenhour Prizes’ Courage Prize: the late Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower known for leaking the infamous Pentagon Papers. In blowing the whistle, he exposed harrowing secrets about the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War that the government was trying desperately to hide from the American people.
Daniel’s actions changed the course of history, saving countless lives in the process. He passed away earlier this year, and his still-palpable impact on the world shows just how powerful the act of truth-telling can be.
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“Daniel, despite being a global celebrity, just shed that mantle completely. He had no ego,” POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian told me. “I can’t think of anyone else I’ve had the honor of getting to know through our work who was so kind, so warm, and so genuinely interested in how everyone was doing.”
In 1971, while working as a military analyst on a Pentagon project, Daniel leaked a mammoth,...
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