Daniel Ellsberg | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Ellsberg in 1972 | |
| Born | (1931-04-07)April 7, 1931 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | June 16, 2023(2023-06-16) (aged 92) Kensington, California, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Employer | RAND Corporation |
| Known for | |
| Spouses | |
| Children | |
| Military career | |
| Branch | United States Marine Corps |
| Service years | 1954–1957 |
| Rank | First lieutenant |
| Unit | 2nd Marine Division |
| Website | ellsberg |
Daniel Ellsberg (April 7, 1931 – June 16, 2023) was an American political activist, economist, andUnited States military analyst. While employed by theRAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released thePentagon Papers, a top-secretPentagon study ofU.S. government decision-making in relation to theVietnam War, toThe New York Times,The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
In January 1973, Ellsberg was charged under theEspionage Act of 1917 along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, carrying a maximum sentence of 115 years. Because of governmental misconduct and illegal evidence-gathering (committed by the same people who were later involved in theWatergate scandal), and his defense byLeonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professorCharles Nesson, JudgeWilliam Matthew Byrne Jr. dismissed all charges against Ellsberg in May 1973.
Ellsberg was awarded theRight Livelihood Award in 2006. He was also known for having formulated an important example indecision theory, theEllsberg paradox; for his extensive studies onnuclear weapons andnuclear policy; and for voicing support forWikiLeaks,Chelsea Manning, andEdward Snowden. Ellsberg was awarded the 2018Olof Palme Prize for his "profound humanism and exceptional moral courage".[1] He was a founding member ofVeteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Ellsberg died of cancer in 2023.
Ellsberg was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 7, 1931, the son of Harry and Adele (Charsky) Ellsberg. His parents wereAshkenazi Jews who had converted toChristian Science, and he was raised as a Christian Scientist. In 2008, Ellsberg told a journalist that his parents considered the family Jewish, "but not in religion."[2]
Ellsberg grew up in Detroit and attended theCranbrook School in nearbyBloomfield Hills. His mother wanted him to be aconcert pianist, but he stopped playing in July 1948, two years after both his mother and sister were killed when his father fell asleep at the wheel and crashed the family car into a bridgeabutment.[3]
Ellsberg enteredHarvard College on a scholarship, graduatingsumma cum laude with anA.B. in economics in 1952. He studied atKing's College, Cambridge, for a year through funding from theWoodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, initially for a diploma in economics and then changed his credits toward a PhD in the subject, before returning to Harvard.[4] In 1954, he enlisted in theUnited States Marine Corps and earned a commission.[5] He served as a platoon leader and company commander in the2nd Marine Division, and was discharged in 1957 as afirst lieutenant.[5] Ellsberg returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow in theSociety of Fellows for two years.[5]
Ellsberg began working as a strategic analyst at theRAND Corporation for the summer of 1958 and then permanently in 1959.[6] He concentrated onnuclear strategy, working with leading strategists such asHerman Kahn and challenging the existing plans of theUnited States National Security Council andStrategic Air Command.[7]
Ellsberg completed a PhD in economics from Harvard in 1962.[5] His dissertation ondecision theory was based on a set of thought experiments that showed that decisions under conditions ofuncertainty orambiguity generally may not be consistent with well-defined subjective probabilities. Now known as theEllsberg paradox,[8] it formed the basis of a large literature that has developed since the 1980s, including approaches such asChoquet expected utility andinfo-gap decision theory.[9]
Ellsberg worked inthe Pentagon from August 1964[10] underSecretary of DefenseRobert McNamara as special assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security AffairsJohn McNaughton. He then went toSouth Vietnam for two years, working for retired GeneralEdward Lansdale as a member of theState Department.[11]
On his return from South Vietnam, Ellsberg resumed working at RAND. In 1967, he contributed with 33 other analysts to a top-secret 47-volume study ofclassified documents on the conduct of the Vietnam War, commissioned by Defense Secretary McNamara and supervised byLeslie H. Gelb andMorton Halperin.[12][13][14] These 7,000 pages of documents, completed in late 1968 and presented to McNamara andClark Clifford early in the following year, later became known collectively as the "Pentagon Papers".[15][14][13]
By 1969, Ellsberg began attendinganti-war events while still remaining in his position at RAND. In April 1968, Ellsberg attended aPrinceton University conference on "Revolution in a Changing World", where he metGandhian peace activistJanaki Natarajan Tschannerl from India, who had a profound influence on him, andEqbal Ahmed, a Pakistani fellow at the Adlai Stevenson Institute later to be indicted with Rev.Philip Berrigan for anti-war activism. Ellsberg particularly recalled Tschannerl saying "In my world, there are no enemies", and that "she gave me a vision, as a Gandhian, of a different way of living and resistance, of exercising power nonviolently."[16]
Ellsberg experienced anepiphany attending aWar Resisters International conference atHaverford College in August 1969, listening to a talk given byRandy Kehler, adraft resister, who said he was "very excited" that he would soon be able to join his friends in prison.[17]
Decades later, Ellsberg described his reaction to hearing Kehler speak:
And he said this very calmly. I hadn't known that he was about to be sentenced for draft resistance. It hit me as a total surprise and shock, because I heard his words in the midst of actually feeling proud of my country listening to him. And then I heard he was going to prison. It wasn't what he said exactly that changed my worldview. It was the example he was setting with his life. How his words in general showed that he was a stellar American, and that he was going to jail as a very deliberate choice – because he thought it was the right thing to do. There was no question in my mind that my government was involved in an unjust war that was going to continue and get larger. Thousands of young men were dying each year. I left the auditorium and found a deserted men's room. I sat on the floor and cried for over an hour, just sobbing. The only time in my life I've reacted to something like that.[18]
Reflecting on Kehler's decision, Ellsberg added:
Randy Kehler never thought his going to prison would end the war. If I hadn't met Randy Kehler it wouldn't have occurred to me to copy [the Pentagon Papers]. His actions spoke to me as no mere words would have done. He put the right question in my mind at the right time.[19]
After leaving RAND, Ellsberg was employed as a senior research associate at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies from 1970 to 1972.[20][21]
In a 2002 memoir, Ellsberg wrote about the Vietnam War, stating that:[22]
It was no more a "civil war" after 1955 or 1960 than it had been during the U.S.–supported French attempt at colonial reconquest. A war in which one side wasentirely equipped and paid by a foreign power – which dictated the nature of the local regime in its own interest – was not a civil war. To say that we had "interfered" in what is "really a civil war," as most American academic writers and even liberal critics of the war do to this day, simply screened a more painful reality and was as much a myth as the earlier official one of "aggression from the North." In terms of theUN Charter and of our own avowed ideals, it was a war of foreign aggression, American aggression.
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In late 1969, with the assistance of his former RAND Corporation colleagueAnthony Russo, Ellsberg secretly made several sets of photocopies of the classified documents to which he had access; these later became known as thePentagon Papers. They revealed that, early on, the government had knowledge that the war as then resourced could most likely not be won. Further, as an editor ofThe New York Times wrote much later, these documents "demonstrated, among other things, that theJohnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also toCongress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance".[23]
Shortly after Ellsberg copied the documents, he resolved to meet some of the people who had influenced both his change of heart on the war and his decision to act. One of them was Randy Kehler. Another was the poetGary Snyder, whom he had met in Kyoto in 1960, and with whom he had argued about U.S. foreign policy; Ellsberg was finally prepared to concede that Snyder had been right, about both the situation and the need for action against it.[24]
Throughout 1970, Ellsberg covertly attempted to persuade a few sympatheticU.S. Senators – among themJ. William Fulbright, chair of theSenate Foreign Relations Committee, andGeorge McGovern, a leading opponent of the war – to release the papers on the Senate floor, because a Senator could not be prosecuted for anything he said on the record before the Senate.[25]
Ellsberg allowed some copies of the documents to circulate privately, including among scholars at theInstitute for Policy Studies (IPS),Marcus Raskin andRalph Stavins.[26][27] Ellsberg also shared the documents withThe New York Times correspondent and former Vietnam-era acquaintanceNeil Sheehan, who wrote a story based on what he had received both directly from Ellsberg and from contacts at IPS.[28][27][29] While Ellsberg had asked him to only take notes of the documents in his apartment, Sheehan defied Ellsberg's wishes on March 2,[27][30] by frantically copying them in various Boston-area shops while Ellsberg was vacationing in the West Indies. Sheehan then flew the copies to his home in Washington and then New York.[29][31]
On Sunday, June 13, 1971,The New York Times published the first of nine excerpts from, and commentaries on, the 7,000-page collection. For 15 days,The New York Times was prevented from publishing its articles by court order requested by theNixon administration. Meanwhile, while eluding anFBI manhunt for thirteen days, Ellsberg gave the documents toBen Bagdikian, then-national editor ofThe Washington Post and former RAND Corporation colleague, in a Boston-area motel.[32][27] On June 30, theU.S. Supreme Court allowed the resumption of publication byThe New York Times (New York Times Co. v. United States). Two days before the Supreme Court's decision, Ellsberg publicly admitted his role in releasing the Pentagon Papers to the press, and surrendered to federal authorities at the U.S. Attorney's office in Boston.[27]
On June 29, 1971, U.S. SenatorMike Gravel of Alaska entered 4,100 pages of the Papers into the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds – pages which he had received from Ellsberg via Ben Bagdikian on June 26.[33][27]
The release of these papers was politically embarrassing not only to those involved in theKennedy andJohnson administrations, but also to the incumbent Nixon administration. Nixon'sOval Office tape from June 14, 1971, showsH. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon:[34]
Rumsfeld was making this point this morning... To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing.... You can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong.
John Mitchell, Nixon'sAttorney General, almost immediately issued a telegram toThe New York Times ordering that it halt publication.The New York Times refused, and the government brought suit against it.
AlthoughThe New York Times eventually won the case before theSupreme Court, prior to that, anappellate court ordered that theNew York Times temporarily halt further publication. This was the first time the federal government was able to restrain the publication of a major newspaper since the presidency ofAbraham Lincoln during theU.S. Civil War. Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to seventeen other newspapers in rapid succession.[36] The right of the press to publish the papers was upheld inNew York Times Co. v. United States. The Supreme Court ruling has been called one of the "modern pillars" ofFirst Amendment rights with respect to freedom of the press.[37]
In response to the leaks, Nixon White House staffers began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally.[38] AidesEgil Krogh andDavid Young, under the supervision ofJohn Ehrlichman, created the "White House Plumbers", which later led to the Watergate burglaries.Richard Holbrooke, a friend of Ellsberg, came to see him as "one of those accidental characters of history who show the pattern of a whole era" and thought that he was the "triggering mechanism for events which would link Vietnam andWatergate in one continuous 1961-to-1975 story."[39]
In August 1971, Krogh and Young met withG. Gordon Liddy andE. Howard Hunt in a basement office in theOld Executive Office Building. Hunt and Liddy recommended a "covert operation" to get a "mother lode" of information about Ellsberg's mental state to discredit him. Krogh and Young sent a memo to Ehrlichman seeking his approval for a "covert operation [to] be undertaken to examine all of the medical files still held by Ellsberg's psychiatrist", Lewis Fielding. Ehrlichman approved under the condition that it be "done under your assurance that it is not traceable."[40]
On September 3, 1971, the burglary of Fielding's office – titled "Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1" in Ehrlichman's notes – was carried out byWhite House Plumbers Hunt, Liddy,Eugenio Martínez, Felipe de Diego, andBernard Barker (the latter three were, or had been, recruited CIA agents).[41] The Plumbers found Ellsberg's file, but it apparently did not contain the potentially embarrassing information they sought, as they left it discarded on the floor of Fielding's office.[42] Hunt and Liddy subsequently planned to break into Fielding's home, but Ehrlichman did not approve the second burglary. The break-in was not known to Ellsberg or to the public until it came to light during Ellsberg's and Russo's trial in April 1973.[43]
On June 28, 1971, two days before a Supreme Court ruling saying that a federal judge had ruled incorrectly about the right ofThe New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers,[12] Ellsberg publicly surrendered to theUnited States Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts inBoston. In admitting to giving the documents to the press, Ellsberg said:
I felt that as anAmerican citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.[12]
He and Russo faced charges under theEspionage Act of 1917 and other charges including theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years for Ellsberg and 35 years for Russo. Their trial commenced in Los Angeles on January 3, 1973, presided over by U.S. District JudgeWilliam Matthew Byrne Jr. Ellsberg tried to claim that the documents were "illegally" classified to keep them not from an enemy, but from the American public. However, that argument was ruled "irrelevant", and Ellsberg was silenced before he could begin. In a 2014 interview, Ellsberg stated that his "lawyer, exasperated, said he 'had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell the jury why he did what he did.' The judge responded: 'Well, you're hearing one now'. And so it has been with every subsequent whistleblower under indictment".[44]
In spite of being effectively denied a defense, Ellsberg began to see events turn in his favor when the break-in of Fielding's office was revealed to Judge Byrne in a memo on April 26; Byrne ordered that it be shared with the defense.[45][46]
On May 9, further evidence of illegalwiretapping against Ellsberg was revealed in court. TheFBI had recorded numerous conversations betweenMorton Halperin and Ellsberg without acourt order, and furthermore the prosecution had failed to share this evidence with the defense.[47] During the trial, Byrne also revealed that he personally met twice with John Ehrlichman, who offered him directorship of the FBI. Byrne said he refused to consider the offer while the Ellsberg case was pending, though he was criticized for even agreeing to meet with Ehrlichman during the case.[46]Because of the gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering, and the defense byLeonard Boudin andHarvard Law School professorCharles Nesson, Judge Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo on May 11, 1973, after the government claimed it had lost records of wiretapping against Ellsberg. Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."[46]
As a result of the revelations involving the Watergate scandal,John Ehrlichman,H. R. Haldeman,Richard Kleindienst, andJohn Dean were forced out of office on April 30, and all were later convicted of crimes related toWatergate.Egil Krogh later pleaded guilty to conspiracy, andWhite House counselCharles Colson pleaded no contest for obstruction of justice in the burglary.[48]
It was also revealed in 1973, during Ellsberg's trial, that the telephone calls ofMorton Halperin, a member of theU.S. National Security Council staff suspected of leaking information about the secret U.S. bombing ofCambodia toThe New York Times, were being recorded by the FBI at the request ofHenry Kissinger toJ. Edgar Hoover.[49]
Halperin and his family sued several federal officials, claiming the wiretap violated theirFourth Amendment rights and Title III of theOmnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. The court agreed that Richard Nixon, John Mitchell, and H. R. Haldeman had violated the Halperins' Fourth Amendment rights and awarded them $1 in nominal damages.[50]
Ellsberg later claimed that after his trial ended, Watergate prosecutorWilliam H. Merrill informed him of an aborted plot by Liddy and the "Plumbers" to have 12Cuban Americans who had previously worked for theCIA "totally incapacitate" Ellsberg when he appeared at a public rally. It is unclear whether they were meant to assassinate Ellsberg or merely to hospitalize him.[51][52] In his autobiography, Liddy describes an "Ellsberg neutralization proposal" originating from Howard Hunt, which involved drugging Ellsberg withLSD, by dissolving it in his soup, at a fund-raising dinner in Washington to "have Ellsberg incoherent by the time he was to speak" and thus "make him appear a near burnt-out drug case" and "discredit him". The plot involved waiters from theMiami Cuban community. According to Liddy, when the plan was finally approved, "there was no longer enough lead time to get the Cuban waiters up from their Miami hotels and into place in the Washington Hotel where the dinner was to take place" and the plan was "put into abeyance pending another opportunity."[53]
Ellsberg's first published book wasPapers on the War (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1972). The book included a revised version of Ellsberg's earlier award-winning "The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate Machine", originally published inPublic Policy, and ends with "The Responsibility of Officials in a Criminal War".[54][55]
After the Vietnam War, Ellsberg continued his political activism, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events. Reflecting on his time in government, Ellsberg said the following, based on his extensive access to classified material:[56]
The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can't handle the thought that the President lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn't stay in the government at that level, or you're made aware of it, a week. ... The fact is Presidents rarely say the whole truth – essentially, never say the whole truth – of what they expect and what they're doing and what they believe and why they're doing it and rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters.
On May 22, 2021, during theBiden administration,The New York Times reported Ellsberg had released classified documents revealing the Pentagon in 1958 drew up plans to launch a nuclear attack on China amid tensions over theTaiwan Strait. According to the documents, US military leaders supported a first-use nuclear strike even though they believed China's ally, the Soviet Union, would retaliate and millions of people would perish. Ellsberg toldThe New York Times he copied the classified documents about theTaiwan Strait crisis fifty years earlier when he copied the Pentagon Papers, but chose not to release the documents then. Instead, Ellsberg released the documents in the spring of 2021 because he said he was concerned about mounting tensions between the U.S. and China over the fate ofTaiwan. He assumed the Pentagon was involved again in contingency planning for a nuclear strike on China should a military conflict with conventional weapons fail to deliver a decisive victory. "I do not believe the participants were more stupid or thoughtless than those in between or in the current cabinet", said Ellsberg, who urged President Biden, Congress and the public to take notice.[57]
In releasing the classified documents, Ellsberg offered himself as a defendant in a test case challenging the U.S. Justice Department's use of theEspionage Act of 1917 to punish whistleblowers. Ellsberg noted the Act applies to everyone, not just spies, and prohibits a defendant from explaining the reasons for revealing classified information in the public interest.[57]
In an interview withDemocracy Now on May 18, 2018, Ellsberg was critical of U.S. intervention overseas especially in the Middle East, stating, "I think, in Iraq, America has never faced up to the number of people who have died because ofour invasion, our aggression against Iraq, and Afghanistan over the last 30 years, since we first inspired aCIA-sponsoredjihad against the Soviets there, and led to theinvasion by the Soviets. What we've done to the Middle East has been hell."[58]
During the runup to the2003 invasion of Iraq he warned of a possible "Tonkin Gulf scenario" that could be used to justify going to war, and called on government "insiders" to go public with information to counter theBush administration'spro-war propaganda campaign, praisingScott Ritter for his efforts in that regard.[59][60] He later supported the whistleblowing efforts of BritishGCHQ translatorKatharine Gun and called on others to leak any papers that reveal government deception about the invasion.[61] Ellsberg also testified at the 2004conscientious objector hearing ofCamilo Mejia atFort Sill, Oklahoma.[61]
Ellsberg was arrested, in November 2005, for violating a county ordinance for trespassing while protesting againstGeorge W. Bush's conduct of theIraq War.[62]
Ellsberg criticized the arrest ofWikiLeaks founderJulian Assange, who had exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq.[63]
In September 2006, Ellsberg wrote inHarper's Magazine that he hoped someone would leak information about a potential U.S. invasion of Iran before the invasion happened, to stop the war.[64]
In a speech on March 30, 2008, in San Francisco'sUnitarian Universalist church, Ellsberg observed thatHouse SpeakerNancy Pelosi does not have the authority to declareimpeachment "off the table", as she had done with respect to George W. Bush. The oath of office taken by members of congress requires them to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". He also pointed out that underArticle VI of theU.S. Constitution, treaties, including theUnited Nations Charter and international labor rights accords that the United States has signed, become the supreme law of the land that neither the states, the president, nor the congress have the power to break. For example, if the Congress votes to authorize an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, that authorization would not make the attack legal. A president citing the authorization as just cause could be prosecuted in theInternational Criminal Court forwar crimes.[65][self-published source?]
In April 2022, Ellsberg said that Russian PresidentVladimir Putin "is a bad guy, very clearly. His aggression is murderous and as illegitimate as theSoviet invasion of Afghanistan. Or theUS invasion of Afghanistan orIraq. OrHitler'sinvasion of Poland." He compared Putin'snuclear threats toRichard Nixon's self-proclaimed "madman strategy". He expressed concern that global cooperation among major powers onclimate change andnuclear arms reduction would be impossible.[66]
In April 2022, during theRussian invasion of Ukraine, Ellsberg appeared onAl Jazeera'sUpfront and stated that majorarms manufacturers, such asBoeing,Lockheed Martin orGeneral Electric, wereprofiting from the war in Ukraine and from theSaudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen, saying that "A failing war is just as profitable as a winning one," "It's the old Latin slogan,Cui Bono, who benefits?", "We're not after all a European nation and we have no particular role in theEuropean Union. But inNATO – that's as theMafia saysCosa Nostra, our thing – we control NATO pretty much and NATO gives us an excuse and a reason to sell enormous amounts of arms to now to the formerlyWarsaw Pact nations," and, "Russia is an indispensable enemy." He said both the United States and Russia have theirmilitary-industrial complexes.[67][68]
In June 2022, he said that "The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made the world far more dangerous, not only in the short run, but in ways that may be irreversible. It is a tragic and criminal attack. We are seeing humanity at its almost worst, but not quite the worst – so far, since 1945 we haven't seennuclear war."[69]
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Ellsberg said that in regard to former FBI translator turned whistleblowerSibel Edmonds, what she has is "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers".[70] He also participated in theNational Security Whistleblowers Coalition founded by Edmonds,[71] and in 2008, he condemned many U.S. media outlets for purportedly ignoring articles about Edmonds's allegations regardingnuclear proliferation published inThe Sunday Times.[72]
On December 9, 2010, Ellsberg appeared onThe Colbert Report where he commented that the existence ofWikiLeaks helps to build a better government.[73]
On March 21, 2011, Ellsberg, along with 35 other demonstrators, was arrested during a demonstration outside theMarine Corps Base Quantico, in protest ofChelsea Manning's current detention atMarine Corps Brig, Quantico.[74]
On June 10, 2013, Ellsberg published an editorial inThe Guardian newspaper praising the actions of formerBooz Allen workerEdward Snowden in revealing top-secret surveillance programs of theNSA. Ellsberg believed that the United States had fallen into an "abyss" of total tyranny, but said that because of Snowden's revelations, "I see the unexpected possibility of a way up and out of the abyss."[75]
In June 2013, Ellsberg and numerous celebrities appeared in a video showing support for Chelsea Manning.[76][77]
In June 2010, Ellsberg was interviewed regarding the parallels between his actions in releasing thePentagon Papers and those of Manning, who was arrested by the U.S. military in Iraq after allegedly providing toWikiLeaks a classified video showingU.S. military helicopter gunships strafing and killing Iraqis alleged to be civilians. Ellsberg said that he fears for Manning and for Julian Assange, as he feared for himself after the initial publication of thePentagon Papers. WikiLeaks initially said it had not received the cables, but did plan to post the video of anattack that killed 86 to 145 Afghan civilians in the village of Garani. Ellsberg expressed hope that either Assange or President Obama would post the video, and expressed his strong support for Assange and Manning, whom he called "two new heroes of mine".[78][79]
Democracy Now! devoted a substantial portion of its July 4, 2013, program to "How the Pentagon Papers Came to be Published By the Beacon Press Told by Daniel Ellsberg & Others." Ellsberg said there are hundreds of public officials right now who know that the public is being lied to about Iran. If they follow orders, they may become complicit in starting an unnecessary war. If they are faithful to their oath to protect theConstitution of the United States, they could prevent that war. Exposing official lies could however carry a heavy personal cost as they could be imprisoned for unlawful disclosure of classified information.[80]
In 2012, Ellsberg co-founded theFreedom of the Press Foundation.[81][82] In September 2015, Ellsberg and 27 members of theVeteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity steering group wrote a letter to the president challenging a recently published book that claimed to rebut the report of theUnited States Senate Intelligence Committee on theCentral Intelligence Agency's use of torture.[83][self-published source]
In 2020, Ellsberg testified in defense of Assange during Assange's extradition hearings.[84] Ellsberg spoke out vociferously against the threats to press freedom from such whistleblower prosecution.[85][86]
In a December 2022 interview withBBC News, Ellsberg said that he was given all of the Manning information before it came out in the press by Assange.[87]
On November 16, 2011, Ellsberg camped on theUC BerkeleySproul Plaza as part of an effort to support theOccupy Cal movement.[88]
In December 2017, Ellsberg publishedThe Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. He said that his primary job from 1958 until releasing thePentagon Papers in 1971 was as anuclear war planner for United States presidentsEisenhower,Kennedy,Johnson, andNixon. He concluded that United States nuclear war policy was completely crazy and he could no longer live with himself without doing what he could to expose it, even if it meant he would spend the rest of his life in prison. However, he also felt that as long as the U.S. was still involved in the Vietnam War, the United States electorate would not likely listen to a discussion of nuclear war policy. He therefore copied two sets of documents, planning to release first thePentagon Papers and later documentation of nuclear war plans. However, the nuclear planning materials were hidden in alandfill and then lost because of thetropical storm Doria.[89][90]
His overriding concerns were as follows:
As an example of the third concern, Ellsberg discussed an interview he had in 1958 with a major, who commanded a squadron of 12F-100 fighter-bombers atKunsan Air Base, South Korea. His aircraft were equipped withMark 28thermonuclear weapons with a yield of 1.1megatons each, roughly half the explosive power of all the bombs dropped by the U.S. inWorld War II both in Europe and the Pacific. The major said his official orders were to wait for orders from his superiors inOsan Air Base, South Korea, or in Japan before ordering his F-100s into the air. However, the major also said that standard military doctrine required him to protect his forces. That meant that if he had reason to believe that a war had already begun when his communications with Osan and Japan were broken, he was required to launch his dozen F-100s with their thermonuclear weapons. They never practiced that launch, because the risk of an accident was too great. Ellsberg then asked what might happen if he gave such launch orders and the sixth plane succumbed to a thermonuclear accident on the runway. After some thought, the major agreed that the five planes already in the air would likely conclude that a nuclear war had begun, and they would likely deliver theirwarheads to their preassigned targets.[92]
According to Ellsberg the "nuclear football" carried by an aide near the U.S. president at all times is primarily a piece ofpolitical theater, a hoax, to keep the public ignorant of the real problems of nuclear command and control.[93]
In Russia, this included a semi-automatic "Dead Hand" system, whereby a nuclear explosion in Moscow, whether accidental or by a foreign state or terrorists, would induce low-level officers to launchICBMs toward targets in the U.S., presumed to be the origin of such attacks. The first ICBMs launched in this way "would beep a Go signal to any ICBM sites they passed over", which would launch those other ICBMs without further human intervention.[94]
Ellsberg wrote in his 1981 essayCall to Mutiny that, "every president from Truman to Reagan, with the possible exception of Ford, has felt compelled to consider or direct serious preparations for possible imminent U.S. initiation of tactical or strategic nuclear warfare".[95] Some of these threats were implicit; many were explicit. Many governmental officials and authors claimed that those threats made major contributions to achieving important policy objectives. Ellsberg's examples are summarized in the following table:[96]
| President | Target | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| Truman (1945–1953) |  Soviet Union | Berlin Blockade (June 24, 1948 – May 12, 1949).[97] |
 China | Chinese intervention in the Korean War (October 1950). | |
| Eisenhower (1953–1961) | China | Korean War,[98] and Taiwan Strait crises of1954–55 and1958.[99] |
 Vietnamese communists | U.S. offers nuclear support to the French atDien Bien Phu (1954).[100] | |
| Soviet Union | 1956Suez Crisis and the1958–59 Berlin crisis.[101] | |
 Iraq | To deter an invasion ofKuwait during the1958 Lebanon crisis.[102] | |
| Kennedy (1961–1963) | Soviet Union | Berlin Crisis of 1961[103] and 1962Cuban Missile Crisis.[104] |
| Johnson (1963–1969) |  North Vietnam | Battle of Khe Sanh, Vietnam, 1968.[105] |
| Nixon (1969–1974) | Soviet Union | To deter an attack on Chinese nuclear capability, 1969–70, or a Soviet response to possible Chinese intervention against India in theIndo-Pakistan War of 1971, or an intervention in the1973 Arab-Israeli War.[101] |
| North Vietnam | Secret threats of massive escalation of theVietnam War, including possible use of nuclear weapons, 1969–1972.[106] | |
 India | Indo-Pakistan War of 1971[101] | |
| Ford (1974–1977) |  North Korea | Korean axe murder incident, in which two US army officers were killed while trying to trim a tree blocking open observation of theDemilitarized Zone. Two days later, the tree was cut to a stump 6 meters tall in a massive show of force that included aB-52 nuclear-capable bomber flying straight towardPyongyang escorted by high performance fighter aircraft, while a US aircraft carrier task force moved into station just offshore. Ellsberg noted that it might be more accurate to classify this incidentnot as "nuclear threat" but a "show of force".[107] |
| Carter (1977–1981) | Soviet Union | TheCarter Doctrine on the Middle East to deter the Soviets, already inAfghanistan, from moving next door into Iran to try to control thePersian Gulf, through which the majority of the world's oil flowed at that time.[108] |
| Reagan (1981–1989) | ||
| G. H. W. Bush (1989–1993) |  Iraq | Operation Desert Storm.[109] |
| Clinton (1993–2001) | North Korea | Secret threats in 1995 on its nuclear reactor program.[110] |
 Libya | Public warning of a nuclear option against Libya's underground chemical weapons facility in 1996.[111] | |
| G. W. Bush (2001–2009) and all presidents and leading candidates since |  Iran | Threats of a nuclear attack against Iran's nuclear program.[112] |
Ellsberg was married twice. His first marriage was in 1952 to Carol Cummings, a graduate ofRadcliffe (nowHarvard College) whose father was a Marine Corps brigadier general. It lasted 13 years before ending in divorce (at her request, as he stated in his memoirSecrets). They have two children,Robert Ellsberg andMary Ellsberg. In 1970, he married Patricia Marx, daughter of toy makerLouis Marx. They lived for some time afterward inMill Valley, California.[113] They have a son,Michael Ellsberg, who is an author and journalist.[114][115]
In February 2023, Ellsberg was diagnosed withpancreatic cancer and given three to six months to live; he publicly disclosed his diagnosis the following month.[116][117] Ellsberg died at his home inKensington, California, on June 16, 2023, at the age of 92.[118]
Ellsberg was the recipient of the inauguralRon Ridenhour Courage Prize, a prize established in 2004 byThe Nation Institute and theFertel Foundation.[119] In 1978, he accepted theGandhi Peace Award fromPromoting Enduring Peace. On September 28, 2006, he was awarded theRight Livelihood Award for "putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example".[120] He received the Dresden Peace Prize in 2016.[121] He received the 2018Olof Palme Prize and the 2022Sam Adams Award.[1][122]
Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress
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