A tireless campaigner against nuclear weapons, Ellsberg was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer earlier this year
Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who exposed Washington’s years-long campaign to conceal the true scale of the Vietnam War, has died. Ellsberg died after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer, but he continued his anti-war activism into his final days.
Ellsberg died Friday at his home in Kensington, California, according to a statement from the family. Ellsberg died peacefully surrounded by his family, his son Robert said.
Back in March, Ellsberg announced he had been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and had only three to six months to live.Ellsberg refused chemotherapy and warned in his final statement to the media and his supporters “The current risk of a nuclear war over Ukraine is like nothing the world has ever seen before.”
Ellsberg condemns U.S. and Russia for maintaining “first time using” nuclear doctrine, and the plans and exercises that both sides call nuclear war “Immoral and crazy.”
“Dan Ellsberg is a true American hero,” Journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted, pointing out that he “Knowingly risking jail time to show his countrymen that the U.S. government lied about the Vietnam War.” Former CIA agent and fellow whistleblower John Kiriakou described Ellsberg as “A giant of modern American history, transparency, truth, and human rights,” Add to “We need more Americans like him.”
Before he became an antinuclear activist, Ellsberg was a military analyst for the RAND Corporation and a staunch cold warrior. In 1969, while participating in a government-ordered study on the eve of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg copied thousands of classified documents detailing how the United States deepened its commitment to the conflict long before it publicly entered the war in 1964. intervention.
The papers, published in part by The New York Times, also show how multiple U.S. governments lied to the American public about losses in Vietnam while expanding the scope of the war without public discussion.
Ellsberg was indicted by the Nixon administration on espionage charges, but the charges against him were dropped after a mistrial in 1972. Resigned in the same year.
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“When I spoke to Dan a month ago — and he was well aware of how much grit was left in his glass — he assessed that the risk of a nuclear exchange fire would be more than 10%,” NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted. “He had hoped to spend his last days reducing it, for all he would leave behind. Heroes to the end.”
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