"It's hard to say that our foreign policy is in any way democratic."
Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst whose release of the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971 blew the whistle on American decision-making during the Vietnam War, has died aged 92.
Ellsberg was employed as an analyst at the RAND Corporation when he made the decision to leak over 7,000 documents covering US policy in Vietnam to papers including The New York Times and The Washington Post. The revelations contained within what became known as the Pentagon Papers showed how successive inhabitants of the Oval Office had deceived the public on the war's progress and the prospects of American victory. The government of President Richard M Nixon charged Ellsberg with federal crimes including theft, conspiracy, and espionage on the basis that his leaking of information compromised national security. The case was, however, thrown out after significant interference by the Nixon administration. As well as attempting to bribe the presiding judge with the post of Director of the FBI, the Nixon administration tapped Ellsberg's phone and even broke into the office of his psychiatrist in the hope of finding material that could be used to discredit him. While the outcome of the federal case against Ellsberg and the New York Times set an important legal precedent in favour of freedom of the press, the criminal tactics used against Ellsberg were the tip of the iceberg of corrupt practices that would eventually bring the Nixon government down.
This report by ITN's Michael Brunson is from nearly a year and a half after Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers. Recorded on 6 December 1972, it features a powerful interview with Ellsberg, who was in Los Angeles to attend the ongoing federal trial.
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