Great Conversations - Daniel Ellsberg and Larry Jacobs: American Democracy in Dissent

Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg is a former American military analyst who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study of the U.S. government's decision-making during the Vietnam War. The publication of this document set in motion a chain of historic events that ended both the Nixon presidency and the Vietnam War.

Ellsberg was a company commander in the Marine Corps, served in Vietnam for two years, and worked for the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Now a leading voice of moral conscience, he remains a committed anti-war activist and advocate for patriotic whistle-blowing.

He is the author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers(2002), which won numerous prizes including the American Book Award. In 2006, he was honored with the Right Livelihood Award, considered the "alternative Nobel Prize," "for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to a movement to free the world from the risk of nuclear war."

Ellsberg holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.