Daniel Ellsberg visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." This event took place on August 22, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.

Daniel Ellsberg is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.

Richard Nixon made attempts to prevent anymore extracts from the Pentagon Papers being published. The Supreme Court ruled against Nixon. Ellsberg's trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon.

Since the end of the Vietnam War he has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era and unlawful interventions. In 2002 he published Secrets.

Link to Ellsberg's official site: http://www.ellsberg.net

This event took place on August 22, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.