A Life of Hope, Well Lived
We mourn the loss of Daniel Ellsberg, singularly principled truth-teller, activist and "patriarch of whistleblowing" who exposed the murderous lies of the Vietnam War - with, it turns out, the help of his 13-year-old son - and spent the next 50-plus years bearing righteous witness to "the human consequences (of) what we're doing" - our wars, ravages of the planet, dalliance with nuclear mayhem. A fierce ally of "those who care about the others," he grew weary but never hopeless, insisting, "One candle lights another."
"My dear father, Daniel Ellsberg, died this morning June 16 at 1:24 a.m., four months after his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer," wrote his son Robert. "His family surrounded him as he took his last breath. He had no pain and died peacefully at home." His father's time since his diagnosis was largely happy: "Just as he had always written better under a deadline, it turned out he was able to 'live better under a deadline' – with joy, gratitude, purpose (and) perhaps a feeling of relief that the fate of the world no longer depended on his efforts." He "didn’t feel there was any tragedy attached to dying at the age of 92," and remained true to his vision till the end. In May, he spoke with his usual eloquence and acuity to Politico about the deadly impact of America's ceaseless imperialist adventures, duplicitous arrogance and warmongering in the specious name of democracy - the same issues that stirred him to oppose those in seemingly unassailable power more than five decades before.
Ellsberg was a military analyst with a Harvard doctorate, a resume from the right-wing RAND Corporation and high-level security clearance when in 1964 he became an advisor to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who years after forging "McNamara's War" decried his own actions as "terribly wrong” - a mea culpa many dismissed. "His regret cannot be huge enough to balance the books for our dead soldiers," said one critic who somehow elided the brutal reality of a war that also cost billions of dollars and millions of lives other than 60,000 American ones. “The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. McNamara.” Meanwhile, from his first day at the Pentagon - the day of the Tonkin Gulf encounter used as a pretext for Congressional approval of the war - through two years spent on the ground in Vietnam, including with Marine patrols, to working on the damning report now known as the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg came to consistently view Vietnam as an immoral and unwinnable war almost wholly built on lies.
That report, says Robert, convinced him the war was "not just a problem or a mistake, (but) a crime that must be resisted." He didn't release the Pentagon Papers because "he was offended merely by its chronicle of lies...He was offended by the crimes those lies were protecting - they were lies about murder." As a child, Robert said his father "tended to talk to me about 'grown-up' things": the Vietnam War, the perils of nuclear war, history, empire, non-violence, "the human capacities for evil and for changing the world." (He was also "wildly funny," had memorized many favorite poems, loved magic, music, movies and nature, especially the ocean.) One day in 1969, Daniel took him out to lunch and told him about his plan to copy secret documents in hopes of helping end an untenable war. "He'd been sharing with me books and writings by Gandhi, Thoreau, Martin Luther King, so I understood what he was talking about," he said. "He asked if I would help him. So that afternoon I spent the day at a Xerox machine copying documents. I was thirteen."
At the time, Robert "didn’t fully comprehend the implications. It was something my father asked me to do, and I admired him so much, I would have done anything he asked." Later in life, Daniel explained himself: "Feeling he would soon go to prison, possibly for the rest of his life, he wanted to leave me with the example there could come a time when one might be compelled to make a sacrifice (for) the sake of a greater good. My father did not teach me to ride a bike or catch a baseball. But he wanted to pass along that lesson." Working with anti-war activist Anthony Russo, Ellsberg went underground to distribute documents to the media, and on June 12, 1971, the New York Times published the first in a series of history-making, Pulitzer-winning Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg surrendered to arrest June 28; at 15, Robert was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury; Ellsberg was ultimately indicted under the Espionage Act and faced up to 115 years in prison. But two years later, the charges were dismissed when toadies for Nixon, livid at "the son-of-a-bitching thief," were found to have burglarized Ellsberg's psychiatrist’s office as part of a "neutralization" scheme.
For the next half-century, an indefatigable Ellsberg wrote, lobbied, protested, got arrested almost 100 times, and spoke up against climate change, nuclear proliferation, the erosion of civil rights for black, poor, queer, other marginalized people, and the hidden, dirty truths of an imperialist country "addicted to waging aggressive war" too often made invisible. Speaking with The Intercept after the Iraq War began, Ellsberg referenced heartfelt 9/11 coverage by newspapers that ran headshots and anecdotes about the victims - what made them human, what people remembered of them. "Imagine if the Times were to run a page or two of photographs of the people who burned on the night of 'shock and awe,' to say, 'Look, each one had friends, parents, children, each made their mark in some little way in the world, and these were the people we killed.' Of course it’s never happened - nothing like it," he said. “I am in favor, unreservedly, of making people aware what the human consequences are of what we’re doing - where we are killing people, what the real interests appear to be, who is benefiting."
That kind of transparency "is not impossible," he felt, given a social media where "people can be their own investigative journalists." But he was dismayed to realize that, while such action may help, "It’s very far from being a guarantee anything will change." Conceding Americans being lied to by government and complicit media are "surely less responsible (than) the ones doing the lying," he lamented "a first approximation that the public doesn’t show any effective concern for the number of people we kill in these wars." Vitally, concealed from them "is that they are citizens of an empire that (claims) the right to determine who governs other countries" - and if we don’t approve of them, to remove them. "Virtually every president tells us we are a very peace-loving people (for whom) war is not our normal state," but "that of course does go against the fact that we’ve been at war almost continuously." He returned, again, to lies, notably those that encourage Americans to support war "convinced we’re better than other people." "As a former insider, one becomes aware it’s not difficult to deceive people," he said. "You’re often telling them what they would like to believe."
Over time, he could grow disheartened that, "While admiration for brave whistleblowers might be widespread, actual emulation is scarce." But news of his illness, now death, sparked a grateful outpouring for "a hero of truth," "a great man" whose "courage is imperishable." On his father's 80th birthday, Robert wrote of his legacy, “In the chronicle of conscientious actions, one candle lights another." Thus has he followed in his upright footsteps: An activist, editor, theologian, he's written books about saints, prophets and "witnesses for our time," arguing, "Courage, holiness, goodness are contagious." In a piece for Father's Day written before Daniel's death, he recalls several productive, Trump-era years helping him edit The Doomsday Machine, a 2nd volume of memoirs Daniel had long struggled to finish, because, "Now is not the time to give up." Nor was it ever. His father never "retired" from his belief in peace and protecting the world's creatures, or from his self-declared mission to stand with "those who care about the others - (they) are my tribe." "He was not what you would call a 'person of faith,'" says Robert of his father. "He was happy to think of himself as a person of hope...It was a form of action, a way of life." May his memory be for a blessing.
Robert and Daniel Ellsberg in April on "the last trip to the beach," which Daniel loved. Photo courtesy of Robert Ellsberg