




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. “The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. "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. 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.Įllsberg 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. 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. "His family surrounded him as he took his last breath. "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.
