The drama of Ellsbergโs life, however unique his circumstances, isnโt alien or inaccessible, because it is also the drama of a political life as such: the steady, growing awareness of oneโs participation in a system that one understands to be intolerable, and the eventual action that breaks with it. On this path, he was helped along not just by the antiwar movement, but by a number of others who were somewhere along the same path, even if they didnโt end up where he did.