SUFFOLK, Va. — Anthony J. Russo, a researcher who helped leak the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers to the media and prompted wider public questioning of the war, has died, police said.
Russo, 71, died Wednesday, police said without making the cause of death public.
The case that became known as the Pentagon Papers began when Daniel Ellsberg, a top military analyst disillusioned with American policy, decided to release a top-secret, 47-volume Defense Department study of the U.S. role in Indochina over three decades. Russo helped him reproduce and distribute copies of the study.
The government initially tried to stop newspaper publication of the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg and Russo were subsequently charged with espionage, theft and conspiracy. But in 1973, a federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that the government was guilty of misconduct, including a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s Beverly Hills psychiatrist.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
