Daniel Ellsberg

Former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg died at the age of 92 on June 16. Ellsberg was an analyst for the Secretary of Defense Robert Namara’s report on the Vietnam War, which later became known as the Pentagon Papers. Because he thought the war was immoral and unwinnable, Ellsberg, along with Anthony Russo, copied all 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers and leaked it to the New York Times. But after publishing a first part of its series, President Richard Nixon took executive action to prevent it, and the courts granted an injunction against the Times, though ultimately the Supreme Court took the paper’s side in a 6-3 decision largely considered a major First Amendment victory for journalists. The Times published the papers—which described how the scope of the Vietnam War had secretly broadened and had become far more deadly under President Lyndon Johnson—sending the country into a frenzy, helping further erode the public’s support for the war. Ellsberg finally surrendered to authorities on June 28, 1971, to which the Nixon administration brought criminal charges of espionage, conspiracy and other crimes against him and Russo. But the trial judge threw Ellsberg’s case out, considering it a mistrial for wiretapping implications. Ellsberg spent much of the rest of his life as prominent anti-war activist. He died in his home in California due to pancreatic cancer, after being diagnosed earlier this year, according to The Washington Post.