NY, Simon & Schuster, (1972). The uncorrected proof copy of Ellsberg's account of his release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 to the New York Times, an illegal act of civil disobedience for which he was charged with a number of felonies under the Espionage Act of 1917 and became a target of President Richard Nixon; Ellsberg was acquitted a year after this book came out because of government malfeasance in the case against him. These are historical papers, heavily colored by the author's personal experience as a participant in, and an observer and critic of, policy making regarding the U.S. role in Southeast Asia. Realizing, as a result of his work for the RAND Corporation, a policy "think tank," that the government had secretly engaged in an ongoing series of illegal and immoral acts in the conduct of the Vietnam war, Ellsberg first copied 7000 pages of documents and gave them to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When no action resulted from that, he gave the papers to the Times, precipitating a scandal and his own arrest. Such whistle blowers as Julian Assange of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who exposed the widespread secret data collection done by that agency, have followed in Ellsberg's footsteps. This copy is signed by the author on the front cover. Tall, fragile, padbound proofs; rear cover present but detached; front cover detaching; thus a good copy. [#028629] SOLD