Daniel Ellsberg Dies: Analyst Who Leaked The Pentagon Papers To New York Times & Washington Post Was 92

Daniel Ellsberg, a onetime advisor to Nixon Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and RAND Corp. analyst who leaked the 7,000-word secret history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post, has died. He was 92.

Ellsberg was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February, and died at his home in Kensington, Calif. “He was not in pain, and was surrounded by loving family,” his family said in a statement.

“In the months since his diagnosis, he continued to speak out urgently to the media about nuclear dangers, especially the danger of nuclear war posed by the Ukraine war and Taiwan,” his family said.

Ellsberg’s decision to provide top secret report, officially known as the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, and the newspapers’ decisions to publish it proved a turning point in the public’s attitude toward the war, President Richard Nixon and trust in the government.

It was also a landmark moment for a free press in America, as the resulting Supreme Court decision upheld the right of the Times and Post to publish the documents.

The events attending the leak, publication and court clash over the papers have been the subject of multiple film and TV projects, including Steven Spielberg’s 2017 film The Post in which Matthew Rhys played Ellsberg. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Ellberg attended the film’s premiere in Washington, D.C.

In an interview with Variety in 2018, Ellsberg said that when the New York Times started publishing the excerpts of the Pentagon Papers, and the Nixon administration sued, he worried that a copy that he had at his apartment would be seized.

“I was going to give it to Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska … for him to use in a filibuster against the draft,” Ellsberg said. “So I had already arranged that by the phone. Now when I heard there was a possible injunction …I had to call up my friend Howard Zinn — we were going to a movie that night, Butch Cassidy— I said, ‘I have something I need to get out of my house.’ And I transferred my documents to Howard that night before we saw the movie.” In their statement, Ellsberg’s family said that he watched Butch Cassidy, his all time favorite movie, several times in his final months.

In his 2018 interview, Ellsberg recalled how his children helped him copy the papers in an advertising office of a friend, and one evening the police even came in while his son was at the Xerox machine and “found this family industry going, and it was very harmless to them,” Ellsberg recalled. “It was in support of national security and not against it.” Apparently a security alarm had been triggered, but the cops left them alone.

Ellsberg surrendered to authorities, and faced charges under the Espionage Act of 1917. But when the case made it to trial in 1973, the charges were dismissed, in part because of governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering.

He said that the period was tough on his children. “It was a difficult time for my daughter, as it turned out, because she spent the next several years living with her mother, my former wife, and my former wife was very disapproving of what I had done, and in fact thought it was treason,” Ellsberg told Variety. He did explain to his son, Robert, then 13, what he was doing, and wanted to offer him a “chance to be part of it.”

Other films based on the Papers and their impact include the Oscar-nominated 2009 doc The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. Some of the same Los Angeles figures who helped raise money for Ellsberg’s legal defense in 1973, including Norman Lear, Barbra Streisand and Stanley Sheinbaum, returned years later to co-host a fundraiser for the documentary.

In 2003, FX produced The Pentagon Papers directed by Rod Holcomb and executive produced by Joshua D. Maurer. The film covers Ellsberg’s life, beginning with his work for RAND and ending with the day on which his espionage trial was declared a mistrial by a federal court judge. James Spader was cast as Ellsberg.

PBS aired The Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg and The Times in 2010. Produced by the Times and PBS’ POV series, the program included a panel discussion with Ellsberg and Times editors marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling.

Ellsberg is survived by his wife, Patricia, sons Robert and Michael and daughter Mary, as well as five grandchildren and one great grandchild.

The family said, “Daniel was a seeker of truth and a patriotic truth teller, an antiwar activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, a dear friend to many, and an inspiration to countless more.”

Ted Johnson contributed to this report.