‘America’s Most Dangerous Man’: Death of Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg died of pancreatic cancer in California at the age of 92. Henry Kissinger called the whistleblower “the most dangerous man in America.”

Daniel Ellsberg hails from Great Depression Chicago. When he was five, his father, a construction engineer, moved to Detroit with the family — including his younger sister Gloria — to build factory halls for Ford. His mother puts the boy to the piano for hours every day, wanting to mold him into a concert artist. Daniel appears curious and curious, and somewhat private. There are no brief flirtations in bowling, shooting and football.

Crying for an hour

Polibus receives a scholarship to a leading private school. When he was fourteen, his father fell asleep in the car during a family trip. The mother and daughter did not survive the accident. Despite his father’s opposition – until his wife Christian Science Converted Jews – Daniel is hospitalized in a coma. He escapes with a broken leg.

No more piano, but the boy gets a scholarship to Harvard to study economics. He starts there with a literary magazine, but suddenly enlists in the navy. A lieutenant retires after three years. Ellsberg works as an analyst at Rand Corporation, a think tank and extension of the defense industry. At the same time, he is pursuing his PhD at Harvard. There he brings Ellsberg paradox, People always prefer a solution with obvious risks to outcomes with unpredictable threats, even if it turns out for the better.

Security snatches Ellsberg from Rand and puts him in Saigon for two years. His statements led to the bombing of North Vietnam. But his statements about the hopelessness of the war fell flat in Washington. Three years later he returned with Rand. Many illusions are poor, but one realization is rich: lies and fantasy determine the policy of war, not facts.

He divorces the general’s daughter, with whom he has two children, and remarries the daughter of a wealthy businessman, journalist and Buddhist. A conscientious objector’s speech knocks the hawk off his horse. ‘An hour later I was sitting on the floor of a toilet and crying.’ He now systematically copies classified documents, including a 47-volume Pentagon study on Vietnam. Rand kicks him out as he dove outside.

After failed attempts, the whistleblower spills his secrets The New York Times. The newspaper means The Pentagon Papers Releases, all hell breaks loose. Three successive presidents blatantly lied about almost everything about Vietnam: the rationale for US involvement, losses, war crimes and opportunities, costs. In the melee, Ellsberg went into hiding and later turned himself in, facing 115 years in prison for espionage and treason.

But the judge soon stops the trial. Because the evidence against Ellsberg was shockingly illegally obtained, the Nixon administration dared to offer him – the judge – the job of FBI director. Inspector may dispose. The whole affair leads to the rapid withdrawal from Vietnam and its glorious end Tricky Dick Nixon. Because his plumbers broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in search of embarrassing material, but also at the Democrats’ headquarters – the infamous Watergate affair.

Now world famous Whistleblower Making a living on the lecture circuit as a renowned author and spearhead of the peace movement. In 2018 he received the Olof Palme Prize for his ‘extraordinary moral courage’. Two years ago, he revealed that the Pentagon was considering a nuclear attack on China in 1958, amid a geopolitical tussle over Taiwan. He always said of the reason for his revelation: ‘No one could have known that children should be annually slaughtered in a senseless war.’