{"id":2757,"date":"2006-05-11T14:46:32","date_gmt":"2006-05-11T21:46:32","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2006-05-11T14:46:32","modified_gmt":"2006-05-11T21:46:32","slug":"on-this-day-daniel-ellsbergs-charges-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/11\/on-this-day-daniel-ellsbergs-charges-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day: Daniel Ellsberg&#8217;s Charges Dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On May 11, 1973, charges against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ellsberg.net\/\">Daniel Ellsberg<\/a> for his role in the Pentagon Papers case <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/learning\/general\/onthisday\/big\/0511.html#article\">were dismissed by Judge William M. Byrne<\/a>, who cited government misconduct.  <\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;misconduct&#8221; was revealed by White House Counsel John Dean (under questioning in the Senate Watergate Hearings) that White House operatives had broken into Ellsberg&#8217;s psychiatrist&#8217;s office as part of a plan to blackmail Ellsberg.  Nixon Special Counsel Charles Colson went to prison for his involvement in the break-in.<\/p>\n<p>Ellsberg worked on the Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the <I>New York Times<\/I>, <I>Washington Post<\/I> and 17 other newspapers.  Before the dismissal, he faced twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years.  The events led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago, Pat Buchanan blamed (credited?) Ellsberg for America&#8217;s loss in Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p><I>Thanks to Jack Dean for pointing this out.<\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On May 11, 1973, charges against Daniel Ellsberg for his role in the Pentagon Papers case were dismissed by Judge William M. Byrne, who cited government misconduct. The &#8220;misconduct&#8221; was revealed by White House Counsel John Dean (under questioning in the Senate Watergate Hearings) that White House operatives had broken into Ellsberg&#8217;s psychiatrist&#8217;s office as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}