| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg. By Tom Wells. (New York: Palgrave, 2001. xii, 692 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-312-17719-4.)

Once in a while an individual appears whose personality fits unsuspected possibilities in his times, to adopt Arthur Koestler's famous image, like a key in a lock. Such a person, Tom Wells reveals in this richly detailed, unsparingly critical biography, was Daniel Ellsberg. 1

Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 unleashed frantic efforts by the Nixon administration to prevent their publication. The vehemence of the administration's response seemed to prove Ellsberg right that the papers revealed a secret conspiracy to foist an unwinnable, criminal war on the American people. The Pentagon Papers failed to force an immediate end to the war, as Ellsberg had expected, but they did set in motion events that did, Ellsberg argues (and Wells agrees), hasten an end to the conflict. It was to plug the Ellsberg leaks that the Nixon administration organized the "plumbers," whose first victim was Ellsberg and whose aggregate criminality, when exposed during the Watergate break-in, Wells says, led to the collapse of "Nixon's authority in Congress and thus his ability to continue waging the war." This is an audacious argument, but after reading Wells's book many will find it persuasive. . . .

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