Daniel Ellsberg, whose 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers exposed the futile nature of the Vietnam War, died at his California home at the age of 92, the Washington Post reports.  A Rand Corporation analyst who had worked with the Departments of State and Defense, Ellsberg and an associate photographed documents in 1969 that showed the Johnson and Nixon Administration knew the Vietnam war was a lost cause, but still kept pumping money into the defense industry and continued sacrificing the lives of young Americans.  The New York Times published the papers in 1971, leading to renewed energy in the anti-war movement.

Ellsberg recently reemerged into the public eye thanks to the HBO series “White House Plumbers” because the first operation undertaken by the bumbling secret team of G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, before the Watergate break-in, was to copy Ellsberg’s medical record from his psychiatrist after breaking in to the doctor’s office.  This was known as “Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1” in Nixon aide John Ehrlichman notes, and it was reportedly unsuccessful:  the burglars ransacked the office, leaving evidence of a break-in for police but did not find Ellsburg’s file.  Ellsberg later told reporters he himself found the file in a pile of papers the burglars had thrown around the office; it appeared someone read through it, but did not understand what they were reading.

Ellsberg was indicted on stealing and retaining classified documents, but the judge overseeing the case ultimately declared a mistrail after evidence was presented that the Nixon administration had illegally tapped Ellsberg’s phone; had tried to steal his medical records; had tried to bribe the judge in the case with a promise of becoming FBI director; and finally had claimed it lost all the records pertaining to its illegal acts.