The Most Dangerous
Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg
Director:
Rick Goldsmith, Judith Ehrlich
Year: 2009
Rating: 7.5
The film The Post once again brought the Pentagon
Papers into the American consciousness. I never did get around to seeing
that film but will one of these days. From the impression I have gotten it
is about the hard decisions that the paper had to make in publishing Top
Secret information about the Vietnam War. But as this documentary makes clear
it was really Daniel Ellsberg who took a chance of going to jail for decades
for stealing this information and passing it on to the press. In fact, he
gave it to the New York Times first and they published it first before the
government stopped them with an injunction and then the Washington Post took
the baton and published more. And once they were also stopped other newspapers
stepped in to publish more of the papers. It was a watershed moment in the
courage of the free press and a decision by the Supreme Court upheld their
actions.
I had forgotten pretty much everything I knew about Ellsberg. He had been
a marine in the 1950's after which he got a job for Rand Corp which worked
for the Pentagon. He was part of the planning division of the Vietnam War.
When the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred that was the pretext for greatly expanding
the war, he was there and knew within days that it was fake. But said nothing.
He was a defender of the war. Until he went to the frontlines even going
out on patrols and realized that it was an unwinnable war. Over the next
few years his doubts about the war grew to such a degree that he felt he
needed to do something.
A few years earlier McNamara had requested that the Pentagon put together
a study of how we got into the war and how it expanded. It ran to over 7,000
pages and I would guess just sat in cabinets. It was an indictment of the
war and the many lies that kept it going from Presidents on down. Over a
period of months Ellsberg, now at the Rand Headquarters in California, smuggled
out parts of it every day, Xeroxed them at night and returned them the next
day. He initially went to anti-war members of Congress to give them copies
but they did nothing with them - until Senator Gravel read the document in
his single person sub-committee into the public record. But by that time
the newspapers were also releasing the information.
Nixon went nuts and had Ellsberg tried but at the same time he put together
this little group of men - called The Plumbers - to break into Ellsberg's
psychiatrist's office to steal whatever he had on Ellsberg. And from this
Watergate begins. The case against Ellsberg was thrown out because it was
tainted by the govt. An amazing story and Ellsberg who is still alive at
86 narrates much of the film. One small note - the film plays some of the
Nixon tapes about Vietnam and Ellsberg - in one Nixon says to Kissinger -
can't we drop an atomic bomb on them - Kissinger replies that would be a
bad idea - Nixon says - but we can blow up the dams right? How many people
would that kill? 20,000 replies Kissinger. Ok do it. But not sure if this
was ever followed through on. Incredible.
