WHISTLE BLOWN ON ELLSBERG
Pentagon Papers exposer Daniel Ellsberg has died aged 92. Hired by RAND Corporation as a nuclear strategist, he was thrust into the LBJ orbit and was commissioned by Robert McNamara to collate a top-secret report on the Vietnam War. Ellsberg was shaken by the insider knowledge that the Kennedy and Johnson administrations lied to America about Vietnam, and that they hid the fact the war was likely unwinnable to maintain the façade of American exceptionalism. He initially kept quiet in his opposition to the war, aware of the real risk of prison time, but seeing draft dodgers go to prison spurred him to clear his conscience.
The Pentagon Papers were leaked in 1971, and the impact was colossal if not immediate. The stage was set for America’s withdrawal from Vietnam. Though the Papers highlighted Kennedy and Johnson moreso than Nixon, Tricky Dick was beset with paranoia and determined to take Ellsberg down. It worked about as well as Wile E. Coyote cartoon – Nixon formed the White House Plumbers specifically to discredit Ellsberg by breaking into his office in hopes of finding damning documents. Not only did his targeting of Ellsberg save Ellsberg (the illegal break-in was a key reason his espionage charges were dismissed), but Nixon doomed himself with his Ellsberg fixation as the Plumbers he created moved on to some place called Watergate.
Ellsberg remained an ardent antiwar voice, and supported modern whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. A pancreatic cancer diagnosis earlier this year, for which he shunned treatment, meant he was never going to seriously challenge the 2024 canon, and instead gains for a trio of theme teams pertaining to the Alternative Nobel Prize, 60s counterculture, and ‘Nam.
Daniel Ellsberg
7 April 1931 – 16 June 2023, aged 92
3 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀 5 POINTS)