Daniel Ellsberg was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1931. Mr. Ellsberg endured unexpected tragedy and unfortunate circumstance when his mother was killed in a motor vehicle crash. At an early age, he was classically trained as a piano player, but decided not to pursue the interest further due to his mother’s unexpected and untimely death. Mr. Ellsberg went on to pursue his educational pursuits at Harvard University where he immediately thrived. He received his B.A. degree in Economics from Harvard, and later attended for a year at local colleges such as King’s College. He also attended Cambridge University, on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Between 1954 and 1957, Ellsberg spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander. In 1959, Mr. Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation where he performed his duties of specializing in problems pertaining to the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making.
He was also a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In 1965, he performed his strategic expertise in the Defense Department where he worked specifically at the U.S. Embassy. It was not until Mr. Ellsberg made his return at the RAND cooperation where his life would become the subject of national headlines.
On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam. The years studied from 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. While working his position at the RAND Corporation, Mr. Ellsberg would attend anti- war protest rallies protesting the issues of the Vietnam War. It was during a specific anti-war protest gathering where he met fellow