Biography
Daniel Ellsberg was a former RAND Corporation military analyst and State Department official who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers — a top-secret 7,000-page Department of Defense study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968 — to the New York Times and 16 other newspapers. The leak revealed that successive administrations had systematically deceived Congress and the public about the war. Indicted on June 28, 1971 under the Espionage Act and related statutes; Ellsberg faced 115 years in prison. His May 1973 trial ended in a mistrial after the court learned of Nixon-administration misconduct (the "Plumbers" had burglarized his psychiatrist's office, illegally wiretapped him, and offered the trial judge the FBI directorship). Ellsberg spent the rest of his life as a leading anti-nuclear, antiwar, and whistleblower advocate, defending Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange. Died June 16, 2023.
The October 1978 Poetry Project newsletter reports that Ellsberg had been arrested three times while supporting the Rocky Flats Truth Force occupation. It describes his August 9 Nagasaki Day press conference and a die-in followed by approximately seventy-seven arrests. His planned November trial remained prospective; the article supplies no complete individual custody interval. Source: https://www.poetryproject.org/file-library/58-newsletter.pdf#page=3
Contemporary anti-nuclear custody report
The Livermore first-person jail account individually names Dan Ellsberg among the February 1, 1982 arrestees taken through the holding cage to Santa Rita, and describes him participating in the following day’s jail-solidarity discussion. He declined citing out after discussion. The account does not identify him among the unnamed 29 who spent five additional days, so no such duration or release date is assigned. This is a separate actual jail episode, not the 1971 Pentagon Papers case.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 11, April 15, 1982, original pages 2.
On November 13, 1972, the Supreme Court denied review in Russo et al. v. Byrne, No. 72-307, arising from the Pentagon Papers prosecution. Justice Brennan would have granted review. In dissent, Justice William O. Douglas argued for an adversarial hearing on electronic surveillance involving a defense lawyer and for protection of lawyer-client confidences under the Sixth Amendment. Douglas questioned the government's foreign-surveillance justification after examining the intercepted conversation. These were the dissent's criticisms, not a majority ruling that resolved the surveillance issue.
A March 2003 report described Ellsberg being released from Washington jail to attend an antiwar teach-in. His stated intention to return does not establish further custody.
