American Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 released confidential documents about the planning of the Vietnam War, the “Pentagon Papers”, died on Friday at the age of 92, according to AFP.

A whistleblower who helped change American public opinion on the Vietnam conflict “died of pancreatic cancer he was diagnosed with on February 17. He was not suffering and was surrounded by his loving family,” his wife and children announced in a press release.

Daniel Ellsberg, whose story inspired a 2003 American TV movie and a 2017 Steven Spielberg feature film, announced in March that he had terminal cancer and only “three to six months” to live.

“Hot chocolate, croissants, cookies, poppy seed bagels and smoked salmon brought him extra pleasure in his final months,” his family said. He also took the opportunity to re-watch his favorite movies, including watching his favorite Butch Cassidy and the Kid several times.

Former State Department and Pentagon-linked Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg became famous in the early 1970s after releasing 7,000 classified documents, the Pentagon Papers, which showed that several US governments had lied to the public about World War II. ethnic

These documents showed that, contrary to the claims of several American officials, the war in Vietnam could not be won by the United States, and that Washington had nevertheless played the military escalation card.

These revelations helped change American opinion about this conflict, which was a real trauma for both countries: 58,000 American soldiers were killed and an estimated 3.8 million civilians and military on the Vietnamese side.

In 1969, increasingly alarmed by the situation in Vietnam, where he visited the scene of the conflict, Ellsberg prepared a 7,000-page report. While working at the Rand Corporation, he photocopied the report page by page with the help of several friends.

The story that led to the exposure of lies in the New York Times and then the Washington Post is told in Steven Spielberg’s film The Pentagon Papers (The Post, according to its original title in the United States), starring Meryl Streep and the Academy Award nominee 2018 by Tom Hanks.

Another American TV movie, The Pentagon Papers, follows Ellsberg, played by actor James Spader, from the Rand Corporation before his failed trial for alleged espionage.

Agence France-Presse (AFP), like all representatives of organizations or countries that Russia considers “unfriendly”, was not accredited to the forum.