Did Daniel Ellsberg bring down Nixon?

[PornoDoggy]

The release of the Pentagon Papers really didn't have much of an impact on the opinions of people toward the Vietnam War one way or another.

By the time the "Papers" were released, support for the war was continuing a decline that had started several years earlier. Opponents of the war pointed to them as evidence the whole thing was flawed from its beginning; proponents of the war ignored what was in them and pointed to the release of this "classified" information (almost all of which was available to the public anyway) as evidence that opponents of the war were traitors.

Nixon was Nixon long before he became aware of the name "Ellsberg." He'd already conducted illegal wiretaps against Kissinger's staff and others by the time the "Papers" were in the hands of the NY Times and Washington Post. His political operatives were conducting a vendetta against their enemies in a way unparalled in the nasty history of American politics, and were growing frustrated with the lack of cooperation on the part of some agencies within the government.

I think it's wrong to assume that the information contained in the Pentagon Papers had that much public impact on support (or lack of it) for the War. Nixon and The Plumbers would have found themselves eventually. Ellsberg was just one fish in a whole school.