Daniel Ellsberg was born in Chicago on April 7th, 1931, and died in Kensington, CA, on June 16, 2023. After graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a B.A. summa cum laude in Economics, he studied for a year on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge University. From 1954 to 1957, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander.
From 1957-59 Ellsberg was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. In 1962 he earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard with his thesis, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision. His research leading up to this dissertation—in particular his work on what has become known as the “Ellsberg Paradox,” first published in an article entitled “Risk, Ambiguity and the Savage Axioms”—is widely considered a landmark in decision theory and behavioral economics.
In 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and a consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. In 1961 he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war. He was a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Ellsberg joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification in the field.
On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, scholar, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S. interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing. He was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award in Stockholm, Sweden “…for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example.”
Ellsberg authored four books: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (2017); Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002); Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001); and Papers on the War (1971). He was a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; a Distinguished Researcher at UMass Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library; and a Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Daniel Ellsberg died on June 16, 2023, at his home in Kensington, CA, of pancreatic cancer. The family’s letter announcing his death is here. And here are obituaries and tributes. Daniel is survived by his wife Patricia Ellsberg; his son Robert Ellsberg, publisher and editor-in-chief of Orbis Books; his daughter Mary Ellsberg, Founding Director of the Global Women’s Institute at George Washington University; and his son Michael Ellsberg, an author, who edits and maintains this site.
Daniel is also survived by 5 grandchildren: Nicholas Ellsberg, Catherine Ellsberg, and Lukey Ellsberg (from Robert), and Julio Martinez Ellsberg and Ana Martinez (from Mary); and one great-granddaughter, Eileen, from Nicholas and Sophie Ellsberg.
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Bio: Short Form
Extended Biography
Curriculum Vitae 1958-1970 (pre-Pentagon Papers)
Watch Daniel Ellsberg’s Right Livelihood Award Acceptance Speech here.