Daniel Ellsberg’s 13-Year-Old Son Helped Photocopy The Pentagon Papers
Privacy Please: Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the infamous Pentagon Papers in the 1970s, speaks at a rally for accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning. Ellsberg has become an outspoken opponent of the government?s use of the Espionage Act to target those who reveal controversial programs. Image by getty images
By Josh Nathan-Kazis January 29, 2018
The son of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg recounted his memory of helping his father photocopy the famous documents when he was just 13 years old in an article published Monday in The New York Times.
Robert Ellsberg, now 62, told the Times that his father had asked him for help while they were out to lunch in 1969. “I don’t think he imagined there was much risk involved for me as a teenager,” Ellsberg told the Times.
Ellsberg said that they accidentally set of a burglar alarm at the advertising agency where they went to make the copies.
On another copying trip, this time with his younger sister along, their father asked her to cut the words “top secret” off of the top of one document.
Robert Ellsberg’s small role was excised from the recent film about the affair, “The Post.” Ellsberg, who converted to Catholicism after working with Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker newspaper, is now editor of Orbis Books.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Trump pulls nomination of Ed Martin, the DC prosecutor under fire for ties to Nazi sympathizer
-
Fast Forward Freed hostage Emily Damari to Pulitzer board: Mosab Abu Toha is ‘the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier’
-
Fast Forward Brad Lander woos Jewish voters in NYC mayoral race with Talmud and Hebrew
-
Fast Forward Trump administration condemns destructive pro-Palestinian protest at University of Washington
Most Popular
- 1
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 2
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 3
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 4
Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
In Case You Missed It
-
BINTEL BRIEF Can a man convert to Judaism without being circumcised?
-
Opinion NASA finally stopped honoring a Nazi scientist. Why did it take so long?
-
Yiddish ווידעאָ: הרבֿ חיים וואָלאָזשינער באַגריסט דעם משיחVIDEO: Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin greets the Messiah
הרבֿ דבֿ בר סאָלאָווייטשיק גיט איבער אַ מעשׂה וואָס דער גרינדער פֿון דער וואָלאָזשינער ישיבֿה האָט דערציילט וועגן זיך אַליין.
-
Culture On a clever new show, a female rabbi makes Judaism modern
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.