Daniel Ellsberg

Defense Department analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers — a 7,000-page classified study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam — to The New York Times and Washington Post in June 1971. The Nixon administration sought prior restraint to block publication; the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) that the First Amendment prohibited the prior restraint. Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act but charges were dismissed in 1973 after government misconduct was revealed.