Dissent Is Patriotic: Daniel Ellsberg’s Legacy Demands Action

Image by Valeriia Miller.

Two years ago this week, Daniel Ellsberg died at the age of 92. In the popular imagination, his legacy is often reduced to a singular act of conscience and courage: the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers, a classified government study that exposed the systematic deceit and misconduct of successive U.S. administrations in prosecuting the war in Vietnam.

Ellsberg had spent over a decade inside the national security apparatus, directly contributing to the planning and execution of that war.