WASHINGTON – The man who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers that exposed decades of US political and military involvement in Vietnam died Friday at the age of 92, according to his family.

Daniel Ellsberg had worked on the Pentagon Papers – formally called the “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force” – before passing the documents to The New York Times in 1971.

The former Defense Department official and Rand Corp. military analyst was a former Marine who went to Saigon in 1965 as a consultant for the State Department to assess counterinsurgency efforts.

The Pentagon Papers played a critical role in accelerating the end of the Vietnam War, exposing the overconfidence by senior American officials about the prospects of victory and revealing that the US played a key role in the 1963 South Vietnamese coup that led to the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem.

The papers’ release enraged the Nixon administration, spurring the White House to direct a series of burglaries that eventually led to the Watergate scandal.

Ellsberg’s disclosure and the papers’ publication were the catalyst behind a landmark Supreme Court ruling that found Nixon’s attempt at prior restraint violated the First Amendment

Ellsberg was also charged with theft, conspiracy and violations of the Espionage Act in connection with the leak — but the case was thrown out in 1973 after revelations emerged that Ellsberg’s conversations had been wiretapped and his psychiatrist’s office had been burglarized by members of Nixon’s notorious “Plumbers” unit.

He went on to dedicate his later years advocating for First Amendment issues, imploring reporters as recently as last month to “skeptically investigate the secrecy system.“

Ellsberg had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and declined chemotherapy treatment this spring, he told his friends in a March 1 email, which was posted to Twitter.

“On February 17, without much warning, I was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer on the basis of a CT scan and MRI,” Ellsberg said in the letter. “I’m sorry to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six months to live.”

In his final months, the Harvard-educated Ellsberg, who held a PhD in economics, gave interviews about the Ukraine War, nuclear weapons and the importance of the First Amendment.

“As I just told my son Robert: he’s long known (as my editor) that I work better under a deadline. It turns out that I live better under a deadline!” he joked.

In Ellsberg’s final message, he pledged to “enjoy life” with his wife and family, and “continue to pursue the urgent goal of working with others to avert nuclear war.”