‘I’ve never regretted doing it’: Daniel Ellsberg on 50 years since leaking the Pentagon Papers

The former strategic analyst says the culture of official secrecy is worse today but urges whistleblowers: Don't wait years till the bombs are falling and people have been dying'

When the police arrived, a 13-year-old boy was photocopying classified documents. His 10-year-old sister was cutting the words top secret" off each page. It seemed their dad, Daniel Ellsberg, had been caught red-handed.

But the officers were responding to a false alarm and did not check what Ellsberg and his young accomplices were up to. It was a very nice family scene," the 90-year-old recalls via Zoom from his home in Kensington, California. It didn't worry them."