Ajit Karn
New York: Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who leaked the “Pentagon Papers” about the Vietnam War, has stated that he has been assigned approximately six months to survive after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
The publication of thousands of documents to US media in 1971 by a former military analyst revealed that successive US administrations had deceived to the public about the war.
The breach altered public perceptions of the conflict, as depicted in the 2017 Hollywood drama “The Post,” which detailed the suspenseful story behind the Washington Post’s publication of the documents.
“On February 17, without much forewarning, I was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer,” tweeted Daniel Ellsberg, 91, on Thursday.
He added, “I regret to inform you that my physicians have given me three to six months to live.”
Daniel Ellsberg wrote that he decided against undergoing chemotherapy because it offers no hope.
“I am assured of receiving excellent hospice care when necessary,” he added.
Daniel Ellsberg was a government consultant when he released 7,000 classified pages concluding that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, contrary to the public assertions of US government officials.
The New York Times published excerpts until the Richard Nixon administration obtained a court injunction prohibiting the publication from doing so on national security grounds. The Washington Post then assumed leadership.
Daniel Ellsberg was charged with espionage in 1973, but the case concluded in a mistrial because the government had illegally collected evidence.
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“In 1969, when I copied the Pentagon Papers, I had every reason to believe I would spend the remainder of my life in prison. It was a fate I would have willingly accepted if it would have hastened the Vietnam War’s conclusion, however improbable that seemed (and was) “Daniel Ellsberg wrote Thursday’s statement.
“Yet, ultimately, that action — in ways I could not have predicted due to Nixon’s unlawful responses — did have an effect on shortening the conflict,” he continued.
In 2017, Daniel Ellsberg, a staunch anti-nuclear weapons activist, published “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” an enormous book about the nuclear threat from the inside.
