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We were saddened to hear of the death of whistleblower and peace campaigner Daniel Ellsberg, who died last Friday, aged 92. Daniel was a staunch anti-nuclear campaigner as well as a powerful voice for peace over many decades.
An expert in nuclear weapons planning, Ellsberg was perhaps most famous for his role in leaking 7,000 pages of classified military files in 1971, while working as an analyst for the Rand Corporation. The Pentagon Papers revealed for the first time the history of the US involvement in Vietnam, and how President Lyndon B Johnson’s administration had systematically lied both to the US public and to Congress about its conduct of the war.
In the decades that followed, Ellsberg went on to become a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons. He campaigned against many aspects of nuclear proliferation including against MX missiles, the deployment of new US nuclear weapons to Europe, and the neutron bomb.
Speaking in a March 2023 interview with the New York Times, Ellsberg said:
“I think about nuclear war not because I find it fascinating but because I want to prevent it, to make it unthinkable, because I care about the world that it would destroy.”
CND is proud to pay tribute to Daniel Ellsberg. He was a courageous campaigner for peace whose bravery exposed the true extent of US government lies about the reality of the Vietnam War. And when it came to nuclear weapons he spoke from a position of expertise on why they are a catastrophe waiting to happen. He will be much missed.
Photo credit: Christopher Michel / Flickr
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