International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Born in 1931 in Chicago, Daniel Ellsberg was a whistleblower who, in 1968, disclosed the US government's misrepresentation of the causes and course of the Vietnam War through distributing to the press the Pentagon Papers, causing growing unpopularity of the American military expedition. Ellsberg attended Harvard University on a full academic scholarship and went on to Cambridge University under a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Upon graduation from Cambridge, Ellsberg volunteered for the US Marine Corps, where he served as a platoon leader and company commander. Deciding to return to academia, he returned to Harvard and eventually earned his PhD in economics. However, his degree was delayed for several years when he suspended his studies to work for the Rand Institute, a government contractor, to conduct a strategic analysis on nuclear strategy. In 1964, Ellsberg went to work as a civilian researcher in the Pentagon. Three years later, he returned to the Rand Institute. After Nixon's victory in the 1968 presidential election, Ellsberg became a consultant to Henry Kissinger, the National Security Assistant to the president-elect. At the Rand Institute, he was responsible for reading and analyzing a 7,000-page, 47-volume study known as “US Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1945–68.” Ellsberg realized that the massive document demonstrated the United States’ recognition that the Vietnam War was ... log in or subscribe to read full text