Leaking of classified documents in the United States has been a constant in several governments.

The first occurred in the 1970s in connection with the United States’ war in Vietnam. The protagonist died on Friday, it is the American Daniel Ellsberg, who died at the age of 92, his family announced in a press release.

1971, Ellsberg leaked confidential documents about the planning of the Vietnam War in a case known as the “Pentagon Papers.”

“He died of pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed on February 17. He was in no pain and was surrounded by his loving family,” said his wife and children.

Ellsberg had already announced in March that he was suffering from incurable cancer and had indicated that he had only “three to six months to live”.

The former military analyst rose to fame in the early 1970s after leaking 7,000 classified documents proving that several U.S. governments had lied to the public about the Vietnam War (1955-1975).

In particular, these documents showed that, contrary to the claims of several senior US officials, the US could not win the Vietnam War and that Washington had nevertheless played the card of military escalation. Those revelations helped shift American public opinion on the issue.

Other leaks

In later years, other revelations, such as the Watergate scandal and the WikiLeaks revelations, have also shocked US governments at various stages.

He watergate scandal it represents one of the greatest political controversies of the 20th century, exposing a succession of corruption and cover-ups that led to President Richard Nixon and led to his resignation in 1974.

In the WikiLeaks case the journalist Julian Assange published cables and hundreds of thousands of US State Department documents leaked past Bradley (Chelsea) Manning Former Army intelligence analyst.

The most recent involved jack texeirasuspected of being behind the leak of US government secrets, which released intelligence documents about Ukraine.