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.