Press advocate Russo dead at age 71

SUFFOLK, Va., Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Anthony J. Russo, who aided Daniel Ellsberg in the release of the Pentagon Papers, has died in Suffolk, Va., at the age of 71, police say.

A Suffolk Police Department spokesman said Russo, who faced prosecution alongside Ellsberg, a fellow RAND researcher, in the 1970s, died of natural causes. He had been in failing health since a heart attack three years ago, the Los Angeles Times said Friday.

Russo has been credited with urging Ellsberg to supply members of the media with the Pentagon Papers, a classified government report which showed the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson falsified the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident to support increased involvement in Vietnam.

Russo, who died Wednesday, had been an outspoken supporter of U.S. opposition during the war thanks to his time with the RAND corporation's Viet Cong Morale and Motivation Project.

"I explained how the so-called enemy, the Viet Cong, and the North Vietnamese, were actually the legitimate parties and how the U.S. presence was illegal, immoral and unwise," Russo once wrote about a discussion with Ellsberg.

The Times said Russo, who had no children and was divorced, eventually had the charges against him dismissed and later worked for the Los Angeles County Probation Department.