May 11, 1973
All charges were dismissed against Daniel Ellsberg who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, sparked a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers. Ellsberg, charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 of theft and conspiracy, faced a maximum sentence of 115 years.
