Pentagon Papers activist Daniel Ellsberg to speak

By Franklin Crawford

Daniel Ellsberg, the Cold War hardliner turned anti-war activist who leaked the scandalizing Pentagon Papers to the national press, will deliver a free public talk titled "Abu Ghraib, Vietnam and Empire" Wednesday, Oct. 6, at 7:30 p.m. in Barnes Hall on the campus. Ellsberg also will take part in a Cornell Peace Studies Program seminar on Thursday, Oct. 7, at 12:15 p.m. in G08 Uris Hall. The seminar is free and open to the public, as well.

Ellsberg was born in Detroit in 1931. A Harvard University-educated ex-Marine commander, he became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corp. (1959) and consultant to the Department of Defense and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans and crisis decision-making.

In 1964, he joined the Defense Department as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. On return to the RAND Corp. in 1967, he worked on the Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later became known as the "Pentagon Papers." In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to The New York Times, Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on 12 felony counts, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era and unlawful interventions. His recent book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, won the 2003 American Book Award.

For more information about Ellsberg's talk, contact Anke Wessels, director of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy, at 255-5027 or akw7@cornell.edu.