2023-06-16 20:59:28
American Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 unveiled confidential Vietnam war planning documents – the “Pentagon Papers” – died Friday, June 16 at the age of 92, his family announced in a press release. “He died of pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed on February 17. He did not suffer and was surrounded by his beloved family.said his wife and children.
The whistleblower, whose story inspired an American television movie in 2003 and a feature film by Steven Spielberg in 2017, had himself announced in March that he had incurable cancer and that he only had “three to six months to live”.
“Hot chocolates, croissants, cakes, poppyseed and smoked salmon bagels gave him extra pleasure during his last months”his family said in the statement. “He also took the opportunity to see his favorite films again, in particular replaying his favorite film several times, Butch Cassidy and the Kid,” they added.
The inspiration for a TV movie and a feature film
A former analyst for the State Department and the Rand Corporation agency linked to the Pentagon, Daniel Ellsberg became famous in the early 1970s after leaking 7,000 classified documents, the “Pentagon Papers”, which revealed that several American governments had lied to the public about the Vietnam War. These documents revealed in particular that, contrary to the assertions of various American officials, the Vietnam war could not be won by the United States and that Washington had nevertheless played the card of military escalation.
Revelations which had made it possible to change the opinion of Americans on this conflict of decolonization and the Cold War, from 1955 to 1975, a real trauma for the two countries with 58,000 American soldiers killed and some 3.8 million civilian deaths and soldiers on the Vietnamese side. In 1969, increasingly revolted by the situation in Vietnam, where he had visited the scene of the conflict, Ellsberg had procured a 7,000-page report.
Tworking for the Rand Corporation, he had photocopied the report page by page with the help of a couple of friends. The story, which culminated in the revelation of the lies in the New York Times then the Washington Postis told in a film by Steven Spielberg, Pentagon Papers, with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, Oscar nominee in 2018. Another film for American television, The Pentagon Papersfollows the journey of Ellsberg, played by actor James Spader, from the Rand Corporation to his aborted trial for espionage.
The New York Times had begun publishing these documents, before the administration of Republican President Richard Nixon (1969-1974) obtained an injunction from a federal court to prevent them from doing so, on the grounds of national security. THE Washington Post had taken over, despite the risks of political, economic and legal reprisals. Daniel Ellsberg won the Olof-Palme Human Rights Prize in 2018.
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