#4 Daniel Ellsberg, are whistleblowers traitors or heroes?
After having studied at Harvard and Cambridge, and serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, Daniel Ellsberg started to work for the Pentagon in the mid-1960s. During the Vietnam War he worked as a military analyst for an American policy think tank. His job was to provide research and data to the United States Armed Forces. He discovered that government officials systematically lied to the public about the country’s involvement in Vietnam. After failed attempts to persuade war opponents in the Senate to release the information - compiled in a report called the Pentagon Papers - he leaked it to The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1971. So today we’re talking about whistleblowers, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Especially now with the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, it’s a conversation we need to have.