Author and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax Friday that the late leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, was "a hero" even though he committed a crime when he turned over the secret documents revealing the government's lies about the Vietnam War to The New York Times in the 1970s.
"[Ellsberg] was a criminal who did the right thing," Dershowitz, who was one of the lawyers on the landmark case, said during "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" Friday. "He engaged in an act of civil disobedience."
Ellsberg, 92, died Friday after disclosing in February that he had terminal pancreatic cancer.
"He was not in pain, and was surrounded by loving family," a letter from the family reading in part. "Thank you, everyone, for your outpouring of love, appreciation, and well-wishes to Dan in the previous months. It all warmed his heart at the end of his life."
Ellsberg became a whistleblower in the early 1970s when he gave the Times a 47-volume, 7,000-page Department of Defense study about the role of the U.S. in Indochina, including the ongoing military actions in Vietnam.
"An entire generation of Vietnam-era insiders had become just as disillusioned as I with a war they saw as hopeless and interminable," he wrote in his 2002 memoir, "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." "By 1968, if not earlier, they all wanted, as I did, to see us out of this war."
Then-President Richard Nixon tried to block the publication of the report in the media, but the newspapers' right to publish the material was upheld in a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 1973.
"He was more a hero, but did violate the law," Dershowitz said. "He was fortunate to have good lawyers because it was an open and shut case to prosecute him under the Espionage Act."
Ellsberg faced trials in Boston and Los Angeles on federal theft and espionage charges, but the Boston case ended with a mistrial, and the charges in Los Angeles were dropped when the judge in the case learned that Nixon operatives burglarized Ellsberg's psychiatrist's Beverly Hills, California, office.
Those same operatives were also involved in the break-in at the Democratic Party's national headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, eventually leading to Nixon's 1974 resignation.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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