Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,... to The New York Times and other newspapers. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006. He is also known for a fundamental contribution to decision theory, the Ellsberg paradox. Ellsberg was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1931, the son of Adele D. and Harry Ellsberg. His parents were Jewish and had converted to Christian Science, and he was raised in a Christian Science atmosphere. He grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Cranbrook Kingswood School. His mother had wanted her son to be a concert pianist but he stopped playing in July 1946 when she was killed in a car crash, together with his sister, after his father fell asleep at the wheel of the car in which the family was traveling and crashed into a culvert wall. Ellsberg attended Harvard University on a scholarship, graduating with A.B. in economics in 1952, summa cum laude.
more