The Most Dangerous Man in America

There have been lots of tributes to the late Pentagon Papers whistleblower and truth activist Daniel Ellsberg, as there should. Dan was a heroic and exemplary man. I had the opportunity to interview Dan and to hang out with him -- mostly through his close friendship with my own friend and wise man Peter Dale Scott. I found Dan open-hearted and easy to talk with -- but he was not warm and cuddly. He had a sharp intellect, and when I knew him, he aimed it at those in power, the (mostly) men he had worked with in the national security establishment.

Dan, who was a military adviser to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was bluntly honest about the treasonous passions in uniformed circles against President Kennedy after the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. When I interviewed him for my 2007 book Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, Ellsberg told me: "There was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles Not that I had the fear there was about to be a coup -- I just thought it was a mood of hatred and rage. The atmosphere was poisonous, poisonous."

Dan thought long and hard about signing his name to a powerful public letter that Adam Walinsky, a close aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and I wrote and unveiled in January 2019. The public statement declared that John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X -- the four leaders whose assassinations tragically changed the course of American history in the 1960s -- were victims of the national security state. The letter called on Congress to force the CIA and other security agencies to abide by the 1992 JFK Act and release all relevant documents and to open a new assassinations inquest by an independent commission modeled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation hearings.

The public letter was signed by an impressive list of prominent public figures, including family members and close advisors of the Kennedy brothers, King and Malcolm X ; Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the surgeons who worked on the mortally wounded President Kennedy at Parkland Hospital and saw with his own expert eyes that he had been shot from the front and back; and G. Robert Blakey, the former chief counsel for the 1970s House Select Committee on Assassinations, who for a long time had pinned the JFK assassination solely on organized crime. (Mob figures like Jack Ruby did play important support roles in the crime, under the direction of their CIA handlers.)

The public letter and its noteworthy signatories was a big news event. Only the Washington Post, among major news outlets, covered it.

Soon the letter disappeared into the dark void where all convulsive revelations about our violent country are buried.

You should read the public letter and all those who signed it. As David Crosby, one of the letter signers, told the audience at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival between songs, You should know the truth as American citizens.

As I said, Dan Ellsberg thought long and hard about signing his name to the letter about the violent deaths of the Kennedys, King and Malcolm X. He knew painfully well what those assassinations had done to the heart and soul of his country. But he also knew how important his name had become, and how it would add to the gravity of the topic, which the corporate media still hides from.

But Dan Ellsberg -- who for years had read and listened to esteemed Kennedy researchers like his friend Peter Dale Scott -- in the end told the truth. Dan told me that I could add his name to the letter.

To the end, Daniel Ellsberg stood for the truth, no matter what.

Daniel Ellsberg