Kaari Pitkin , Stephanie Joyce and Isaac Jones , Sonia Herrero , Pat McCusker andDaniel Ellsberg fully expected to spend the rest of his life in prison after he leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1971.
The documents revealed decades of government lies and mistakes in about the war in Vietnam, and eventually, they helped end it.
The charges against Ellsberg were ultimately dismissed but, he had a secret: The Pentagon Papers were only supposed to be the beginning.
Alongside the documents about Vietnam, he’d copied thousands of pages of other documents about America’s nuclear war planning that he believed would shock the public conscience.
Now, after revealing a terminal cancer diagnosis in March, Ellsberg is reflecting on his life, the secrets he wasn’t able to reveal and threats to the world he’s leaving behind.