How many American adults can correctly identify 'Daniel Ellsberg'?

[cemaphonic]

93. Yeah, I agree with your take

I'm 41, which means than people that were born when I became an adult are adults themselves, and the Pentagon Papers still happened before I was born. I know about the PP because I've always been interested in history (and thanks to boomers twin obsession with mass media and themselves, there's a lot available on the late 60s-early 70s), but I only recognize Ellsberg's name in connection to it, because he gets referenced frequently here.

Ellsberg and the PP are, like you say, a footnote to Vietnam. He would fit very well in a college level class about Vietnam-era American politics, or 1st amendment legal history. But he's not big enough to merit focus in a typical High School American History survey class, which is about as far as most people are interested in learning history.