Berkley Center

Daniel Ellsberg is an author, lecturer, and whistleblower best known for the leak of what became known as the Pentagon Papers in 1969. Additionally, he serves as a senior fellow of the Nuclear Peace Foundation. Previously, Ellsberg served for three years in the U.S. Marine Corps before becoming a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and a U.S. Defense Department and White House consultant on nuclear issues in 1959. He joined the Defense Department in 1964 as special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense before returning to the RAND Corporation in 1967, where he worked on the McNamara study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam—what would come to be known as the Pentagon Papers. Since then, Ellsberg has written three books, including Papers and the War (1971) and Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002). Ellsberg obtained a B.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.