IDG News Service — Daniel Ellsberg, the man responsible for outing the now famous Pentagon Papers in 1971, and a group of ex-intelligence officers have thrown their weight behind WikiLeaks and its founder, saying the current attempt to label WikiLeaks' leaks as trivial compared to the Pentagon Papers is wrong.

The Pentagon Papers include 7,000 pages of documents collected by the U.S. military about decision making during the Vietnam war that showed U.S. leaders believed early on that the war could not be won and would lead to many more casualties than ever stated publicly.

In a statement, Ellsberg and associates said comparisons saying the Pentagon Papers were good while WikiLeaks' material is bad is, "just a cover for people who don't want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."