Leslie H. Gelb, 82, a former American diplomat, journalist and commentator on worlds affairs, died August 31 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.

He was executive assistant to Senator Jacob K. Javits from 1966-1967; director of policy planning and arms control for international security affairs at the Defense Department from 1967-1969, where he won the Pentagon’s Distinguished Service Medal; and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution from 1969-1973. He worked as an editor, columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times. He was assistant secretary of state and director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs during the Carter administration from 1977-1979, and was president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the prestigious New York-based think tank from 1993-2003.

Mr. Gelb was 30 years old when in 1967 he took day-to-day charge of the team that compiled the secret Pentagon Papers, commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and published by The New York Times in 1971, revealing a damning evolution of Washington’s intervention in Vietnam.

He taught and lectured at various colleges, wrote several books, and received an Emmy Award in 1984 as a producer of the ABC documentary “The Crisis Game.”

In addition to his awards and prizes, in 1993, he was named American Father of the Year.