Lee Heidhues 6.17.2023
When I got the news that Daniel Ellsberg died yesterday I was saddened. He was a true hero. A man who stood by his convictions and was ready to pay the price.
My memory jumped back to May 1969. Two years before the Pentagon papers were published in June 1971. Setting off a Constitutional battle over press freedom and sending President Nixon down the road which led to his resignation three years later.
In 1969 this was all in the future. I was a journalism student at San Francisco State University on assignment for the campus newspaper, The Phoenix. I convinced my faculty advisor to let me attend The World Affairs Council meeting at Asilomar in Monterey, California. Over 700 people including journalists, politicians and leading lights of the day were in attendance.
On the second evening of the event I spent the evening with Daniel Ellsberg. My journal entry captured the moment.
I returned to San Francisco and wrote an article. Not mentioning Daniel Ellsberg.
Two years later Liz and I are living in Germany working at the Ramstein Air Base when the following appears at the Base newsstand.
Shortly thereafter all the World knew that Daniel Ellsberg, the articulate guy with whom I had spent an evening two years earlier had just upended the entire American government.
Top photo – Tony Russo, Daniel Ellsberg and Patricia Marx after all Espionage charges dismissed by Federal Judge William Matthew Byrne because of gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering – May 11, 1973
Lee's Perspective 