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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Daniel Ellsberg: Wikileaks among the most important revelations of criminal state behaviour in US history
The Pentagon Papers whistleblower, now 89, sees parallels between his own case and that of Julian Assange. TIM DAWSON reports

ON May 3 1972, Daniel Ellsberg spoke at a peace rally in Washington DC. 

It was a year since he had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and the Washington Post revealed that successive presidents had lied about US involvement in Vietnam.

What Ellsberg didn’t know, as he stepped up to the microphone on the steps of the Capitol building, was the the crowd had been infiltrated by CIA “assets.” 

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