Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg (1931-) is an American strategic analyst, best known for leaking a number of volumes of the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of U.S. decisionmaking in Vietnam, which he participated in writing.

After college, Ellsberg served in the U.S. Marine Corps for three years, including duty as a rifle platoon leader. He then returned to Havard to earn Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard with the dissertation, "Risk, Ambiguity and Decision. He then went to the RAND Corporation in 1959, consulting to the U.S. government on command and control of nuclear weapons, as well as decisionmaking.

Entering government in 1964, he became Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. Next, he moved to the U.S. State Department 1965 and spent two years at the US Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification on the front lines. He worked under Edward Lansdale.

He returned to the Defense Department, to take part in writing a study, commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, to understand U.S. decisionmaking. The group produced a 47-volume report, which has never been released in full.

Ellsberg grew increasingly disenchanted with Johnson Administration policy in the Vietnam War, and leaked a copy to Senator William Fulbright, who took no action. He then gave a copy to the Washington Post, which chose not to publish. Next, he reached an agreement with the New York Times to start publishing excerpts. The U.S. government, learning of the planned publication, sought court action to restrain it; this quickly reached the Supreme Court of the United States in New York Times Co. v. United States.