Daniel Ellsberg was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he 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, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study, they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that Lyndon B. Johnson's administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress."
Cornelius Mahoney Sheehan was an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series of articles revealed a secret United States Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and led to a U.S. Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), which invalidated the United States government's use of a restraining order to halt publication.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public land-grant research university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system, and was founded in 1863 as the Massachusetts Agricultural College. It is also a member of the Five College Consortium, along with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley.
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is an American progressive think tank, formed in 1963 and based in Washington, D.C. It was directed by John Cavanagh from 1998 to 2021. In 2021, Tope Folarin assumed the position of executive director. IPS focuses on US foreign policy, domestic policy, human rights, international economics, and national security.
Jay Anthony Lukas was an American journalist and author, best known for his 1985 book Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. Common Ground is a study of race relations, class conflict, and school busing in Boston, Massachusetts, as seen through the eyes of three families: one upper-middle-class white, one working-class white, and one working-class African-American. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes.
Ben-hur Haig Bagdikian was an American journalist, news media critic and commentator, and university professor. An Armenian genocide survivor, he moved to the United States as an infant and began a journalism career after serving in World War II. He worked as a local reporter, investigative journalist and foreign correspondent for The Providence Journal. During his time there, Bagdikian won a Peabody Award and a Pulitzer Prize. In 1971, he received parts of the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg and successfully persuaded The Washington Post to publish them despite objections and threats from the Richard Nixon administration. He later taught at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and served as its dean from 1985 to 1988.
John W. Dower is an American author and historian. His 1999 book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction, the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the Bancroft Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association.
Leslie Howard "Les" Gelb was an American academic, correspondent and columnist for The New York Times who served as a senior Defense and State Department official and later the President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Barbara Hall Partee is a Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass). She is known as a pioneer in the field of formal semantics.
Madeleine Blais is an American journalist, author and professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst's journalism department. As a reporter for the Miami Herald, Blais earned the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1980 for "Zepp's Last Stand", a story about a self-declared pacifist and subsequently dishonorably discharged World War I veteran. Blais has worked at The Boston Globe (1971–1972), The Trenton Times (1974–1976) and the Miami Herald (1979–1987). She has also published articles in The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Northeast Magazine in the Hartford Courant, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, Nieman Reports, the Detroit Free Press and the San Jose Mercury News. She is from Amherst, Massachusetts.
Anthony J. Russo Jr. was an American researcher who assisted Daniel Ellsberg, his friend and former colleague at the RAND Corporation, in copying the Pentagon Papers. Russo was also the first person to document the systematic torture of Vietcong prisoners in Vietnam.
Kevin Boyle is an American author and the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University. His 2004 book, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, won the National Book Award.
Marcus Goodman Raskin was an American progressive social critic, political activist, author, and philosopher. He was the co-founder, with Richard Barnet, of the progressive think tank the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He was also a professor of public policy at The George Washington University’s School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
Gordon Randall Kehler was an American pacifist, tax resister, and social justice advocate. Kehler objected to America's involvement in the Vietnam War and refused to cooperate with the draft. He, along with his wife Betsy Corner, stopped paying federal income taxes in protest of war and military spending, a decision that led to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seizing their house in 1989.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. The film follows Daniel Ellsberg and explores the events leading up to the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the top-secret military history of the United States' involvement in Vietnam.
Randolph Wilson ("Bill") Bromery was an American educator and geologist, and a former Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1971–79). While Chancellor, Bromery established the W.E.B. Du Bois Archives at the University of Massachusetts, and was one of the initiators of the Five College Consortium. He was also President of the Geological Society of America, and has made numerous contributions as a geologist and academic. During World War II, he was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, flying missions in Italy.
Stephen R. Platt is an American historian and writer. He is currently a professor of Chinese history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War is a 2015 non-fiction book, aimed for young adolescent readers, written by Steve Sheinkin and published through Roaring Brook Press. The multi-award-winning book tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg's role in the Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers.
Sara Dubow is an American professor of history at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Her research and teaching have focused on the ways in which gender, law, and politics shaped American history during the twentieth century.
