In October 1969, nearly 14 years into the Vietnam War and only months before the first civilian draft lottery, Daniel Ellsberg decided that Americans deserved to know the truth. The military analyst photocopied thousands of pages of classified documents and, after U.S. senators refused to release them, leaked them to the public in 1971—demonstrating that the U.S. government had known early on that the war was a lost cause.

While most Americans are familiar with the story of the Pentagon Papers, far less is known about the man who risked everything to leak them. Released posthumously in 2026, Truth And Consequence: Reflections on Catastrophe, Civil Resistance, and Hope is a stunning collection of Ellsberg’s previously unpublished writings*,* exploring the inner world of America’s most famous whistleblower: from his continuous anti-war activism and advocacy against nuclear weapons, to his personal struggles surrounding the death of his mother and sister as a teenager.

Compiled from decades of handwritten notebooks and journal entries, the book offers an intimate portrait of Ellsberg’s moral and intellectual life, revealing the convictions that shaped his extraordinary career. Current Affairs sat down with Ellsberg’s sons, Robert and Michael, and his longtime assistant Jan Thomas—the latter two of whom co-edited the volume—to discuss Ellsberg’s legacy and what readers can still learn from his example.

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