From Tight Sweaters to the Pentagon Papers

Sally Binford, dear friend to Daniel Ellsberg, tells the story of the times they lived

Daniel Ellsberg’s passing this week has reminded me of one of his dearest friends and collaborators in the Pentagon Papers exposé, Sally Binford. I thought you might like to hear about the times Binford and Ellsberg came of age, through Sally’s eyes.

Sally (R) her 60s on the left, with Sarah and Frances at the gay cabaret, © Honey Lee Cottrell — Sally Binford, graduate student, on the right.

When she died in 1994, I thought I knew the entire story of Sally’s life. She was one of the gate-crashing feminist sexual liberationists of her generation, a great storyteller, a scholar who changed the way we look at the world.

But sometimes you never really get to know anyone... until they're gone. They tell their story to someone else, and you learn something altogether new.

When Sally was 50, she decided to "live life to the fullest" and then arranged to "check out," at age 70, regardless of her health. That was 1994.

That decision, to plan her own death, was my first experience with someone choos…