Nevertheless he found it advisable to go into hiding very shortly after handing over the files known as the Pentagon Papers, where he stayed until about the same day that the Federal court case started against the NY TImes for printing excerpts of his leaks. He surrendered to authorities.
And the ONLY reason that you know Ellsberg as a public speaker on the subject of whistleblowing is because the Nixon White House used its national security apparatus to try to dig up psychological profile information on Ellsberg -to smear him as unstable or otherwise unbelievable. Nixon's Plumbers burgled the files of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Smearing a whistleblower - what assholes, right? The prosecution dropped its case against Daniel Ellsberg because of the bad PR, not because any evidence on Ellsberg was actually tainted by the illegal search. Had the government not been embarassed by its "data collections" activities, Daniel Ellsberg would no doubt still be rotting in prison today. To embarrass a government, the government and the people of the time must still have a sense of shame about untrammeled use of police and surveillance powers. Fortunately for Ellsberg, we still did back then.
And I have no doubt also that some people around here would be defending the government's data collection against Ellsberg, and calling for him to be Bradley Manning's cellmate for life, if everything about his case were not 40 years in the past but happening right now.
Ellsberg himself has nothing but praise for Snowden. Personally I don't give a shit about Snowden.
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