Daniel Ellsberg

Topics:

The Urgent Need for Whistleblowing: A Call for Moral Courage
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Afghanistan and Vietnam: Timely Parallels, Hidden Lessons

Travels from: San Francisco, CA

Daniel Ellsberg is perhaps the most famous whistleblower in American history. In 1971, Ellsberg, a top U.S. military analyst with the RAND Corporation and former Marine and Pentagon official, leaked a 7,000-page classified history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The top-secret study became known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg faced 12 felony counts, for a possible sentence of 115 years in prison. But his truth-telling provoked criminal actions to silence him by the White House, which led to the dismissal of his charges and contributed to the downfall of the Nixon administration, and the ending of the Vietnam War.

His story of moral courage is chronicled in the new Oscar-nominated documentary "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers."

According to Ellsberg, "Randy Kehler showed me that I could do something that I had never thought of — and that was risk my clearance, risk my career, risk my new relationship and go to prison for the rest of my life — very heavy costs — with the possibility of informing the public in a way that would save hundreds of thousands of lives.

My story actually shows that actions by an individual, telling the truth at great cost or risk, can make the difference."

Ellsberg is the author of three books: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002), Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001), and Papers on the War (1971). In December 2006 he was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize," in Stockholm, Sweden.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S. interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing. He is a Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

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