Randy Kehler, the antiwar activist whose speech inspired whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers, has died at the age of 80. Randy Kehler was a self-proclaimed “war tax resister” who refused to pay federal income taxes beginning with the Vietnam War, during which he was jailed for draft resistance for 22 months. He was also in jail for some three months in 1992 for refusing to pay some federal income tax. In 1989, the IRS seized the house he shared with his wife Betsy Corner. Speaking to Democracy Now! on Tax Day in 1998, Kehler said he and his family instead paid the money they withheld from income taxes to victims of U.S. wars abroad and also to groups serving hungry and unhoused people in their community in western Massachusetts.

Randy Kehler: “Where we’ve drawn that line is in paying for nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, weapons of genocide. And also we’ve drawn the line at the creation of a massive so-called conventional arsenal and its use in dominating and in invading and overpowering and destroying people and nations around the world that oppose U.S. policies.”

That was peace activist Randy Kehler, speaking to Democracy Now! in 1998. He’s died at the age of 80.