Follow us on social

2004-11-01t120000z_1200890610_rp5driekcqaa_rtrmadp_3_britain-whistleblower

My reflections on Dan Ellsberg, a man who helped end a tragic war

Our most prominent whistleblower was content knowing he did all he could to bring truth about US foreign policy to the American people.

Analysis | Washington Politics

To my sons and my grandchildren, Dan Ellsberg was funny, inquiring, an excellent magician — not a whistleblower. He was always eager to show off his newest trick and learn about the latest technology.

Dan was constantly and deeply engaged in the issues of the day. But he also remained curious about the relation between his release of the Pentagon Papers, as the history of American engagement in Vietnam came to be called years after I directed its production from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the end of the war in Vietnam. We discussed this regularly, including in our last conversation just weeks ago.

Dan had no illusions that the accepted story was correct.

He gave the papers to the press, the press published them, citizens read them and took action to end the war. None of this was accurate. As his deservedly prominent obituaries make clear, the story of how the papers got from Dan to the New York Times was complicated. The Times never published the full text which was his original demand. Few people read the full stories, and fewer still had their minds changed. The war went on for many more years and the attacks on North Vietnam escalated.

Dan recognized all of this. He claimed credit deservedly for doing what he could to end the war, including risking a long jail sentence for the crime that Donald Trump is now charged with. He did think his release of the papers played an important role in finally bringing the war to an end but in a much more convoluted way.

It was a surprise to Dan that Nixon was so rattled by the publication of a history which ended a full year before he came into office and which showed Democratic presidents from Truman to Johnson lying to the American people about the nature of the conflict and the prospects for the United States winning the war.

Nixon claimed to have a new plan, and the public tended to believe him. Why then were Kissinger and Nixon concerned? The answer, Dan believed, and I agree, was that they feared that Dan had documents from the Nixon administration and would make those public. Dan in fact had such papers, having worked as a consultant to Kissinger and me on the NSC staff in the early days of the administration. Nixon created the plumbers to stop him, and the plumbers led to Watergate. And the war finally ended when Congress, emboldened by the scandal, cut off the funding for the war. This was the actual way that Dan believed he helped bring about an end to the Vietnam War. He was proud of his role and endlessly curious about the details.

Dan was, no doubt, America’s most prominent whistleblower. He worked tirelessly to encourage others to speak out when the government was keeping the truth from the American people, particularly on matters of war and peace, and to support those who did. He never wavered from his belief that we were entitled to the full truth and that whistleblowers should be honored and certainly not prosecuted.

He had intended to follow up on the release of the Pentagon Papers by publishing a stack of documents on American nuclear policy which was his primary professional interest for many years. He had asked his brother to store the documents and, through a bizarre set of accidents, they disappeared. Dan deeply regretted that he was not able to make public documents which demonstrated how reckless American nuclear policy is and how close we have come on several occasions to nuclear war.

Perhaps his last act of personal whistleblowing was to make public a still Top Secret study of the 1958 Taiwan Straits crisis which I had written for RAND in the early 1960s. The study showed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were pressing for almost immediate use of nuclear weapons if ordered to defend the tiny island of Quemoy close to the Chinese mainland and that President Eisenhower seemed ready to authorize using nuclear weapons to attack China. It was one of the few nuclear documents he had, and he decided to put it out while he still could. To Dan’s regret the release did not stimulate a debate on nuclear policy. To his relief, he was not indicted. Still, it was the right thing to do.

He was at peace at the end knowing he had done what he could and taken significant personal risks to do what he thought was right.


Former Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg poses for photographs in central London, November 1, 2004. Ellsberg, who risked career suicide and a century in prison to blow the whistle on U.S. President Nixon's Vietnam war plans, is visiting Britain to encourage keepers of British government secrets to join his Truth-Telling Project. REUTERS/Stephen Hird SH/ASA/DL
Analysis | Washington Politics
Trump Vance Rubio
Top image credit: President Donald Trump meets with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance before a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Monday, August 18, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

The roots of Trump's wars on terror trace back to 9/11

Global Crises

The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”

This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an "invasion" at the border.

keep readingShow less
US Navy Arctic
Top photo credit: Cmdr. Raymond Miller, commanding officer of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), looks out from the bridge wing as the ship operates with Royal Norwegian replenishment oiler HNoMS Maud (A-530) off the northern coast of Norway in the Norwegian Sea above the Arctic Circle, Aug. 27, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Cesar Licona)

The rising US-NATO-Russia security dilemma in the Arctic

North America

An ongoing Great Power tit-for-tat in which U.S./NATO and Russian warships and planes approach each other’s territories in the Arctic, suggests a sense of growing instability in the region.

This uptick in military activities risks the development of a security dilemma: one state or group of states increasing their security presence or capabilities creates insecurity in other states, prompting them to respond similarly.

keep readingShow less
President Trump with reporters
Top photo credit: President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Sunday, September 7, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

Is Israel forcing Trump to be the capitulator in chief?

Middle East

President Donald Trump told reporters outside a Washington restaurant Tuesday evening that he is deeply displeased with Israel’s bombardment of Qatar, a close U.S. partner in the Persian Gulf that, at Washington’s request, has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012.

“I am not thrilled about it. I am not thrilled about the whole situation,” Trump said, denying that Israel had given him advance notice. “I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect of it,” he continued. “We’ve got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy with the way that went down.”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.