Der gefährlichste Mann in Amerika - Daniel Ellsberg und die Pentagon-Papiere

Documentaries can often be boring if the subject does not relate to our own experiences, but as this one did to mine and still does thus it was a success to me even though it had its faults, not in what it did but what it did not do. New and old footage was interlaced throughout and did a great job of telling the entire sick story up until President(I am a damn good crook)Nixon resigned, but it missed being a complete story in having no follow up about Ellberg's life afterward other than what he now looks like in interviews for this film.......how is he now publicly perceived?... how did he make a living after?... did he ever get his life back to "normal"?... and, most importantly, what does he think of his actions now and would he do it all over again after what money/reputation/street cred it cost him, or made him? These answers needed to be told and would have made it a full and complete story.

We sure needed someone like Ellsberg to expose Bush's Folly in Iraq. The very same lying caused the Iraq war........faked news stated by the President. Maybe that causes all wars? Why don't we learn better from these failures and not repeat them only one or two generations later? I think it is mostly because the people in power later are no longer the same people as earlier, and America is not a country that cares about or learns well/anything from its elder's experiences like some great, long-term societies of the past that were successful over thousands of years as a direct result of elder wisdom.

The documentary is about a man with a conscience and a love for his country. He experiences an epiphany and realizes the government(s) of his country have been lying to its people for years, specifically about the Vietnam war, and decides to take steps to end the war and bring to light the artifice behind the government's public facade.

He sees the costs incurred, in terms of dollars and lives spent, he experiences the hawkish behaviour driving the war in Southeast Asia and in the end puts his career and life on the line to see the truth brought to life.

Terrific movie, the qualities embodied by Ellsberg should be encouraged in anyone seeking public office. Those who call him a traitor perhaps should not be so quick to judge this man. Would anyone be happy to see a son come home in a flag draped box because a lying politician sent him to war? Ellsberg thought not, and became an enormous figure in US history because he dared speak out.

The leaking of 'the Pentagon papers' about the Vietnam War in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, and their publication in the New York Times, was an epochal event in modern American history. At the time, Ellsberg was widely reviled as a traitor, and many still say that about him. This begs the question as to whether one can be a traitor for informing the public of one's own country about what their leaders are doing in their name and with their money. The story of the 'Pentagon Papers' is complicated by the revelations a year later, in 1972, by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, in his book THE SECRET TEAM. Prouty, who was an even more important whistleblower than Ellsberg, states unequivocally that the 'Pentagon Papers', were fabricated by the CIA as a means of shifting the blame for the unsuccessful Vietnam War onto the US military, whereas the Vietnam War was started by and entirely run by the CIA themselves, and all those generals like Maxwell Taylor who were involved were really CIA employees in uniform; as for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, they supplied men and machines when required, but it was the CIA who ran the whole show. Prouty is at pains to differentiate between the intelligence division of the CIA (of which he apparently approves), which merely collects information, and the special ops part of the CIA, which he claims went out of control in 1955 and became a state within a state which manipulated presidents, cabinet members, and members of Congress with skewed briefings and kept the truth under wraps by unjustifiable secrecy classifications, whose sole purpose was to conceal from Americans what their own secret service was doing and spending. Prouty states that Daniel Ellsberg was a CIA man, despite the many other posts he subsequently held. This is highly likely, because he probably could not have entered the Rand Corporation in 1958 or had so many 'higher than top secret' clearances subsequently if he had not been CIA. In this film, Ellsberg states that he had signed more than a dozen secrecy agreements. Since Ellsberg narrowly missed being jailed for 75 years on one charge, he has clearly never been in any position to state that he was a CIA man, because that would mean breaking a secrecy agreement, and would give his enemies the opportunity to take him back to court again on another charge. Prouty believed that Ellsberg was a knowing participant in a CIA disinformation campaign, and that his being a whistleblower was phoney. It is not really possible to believe that, however, after seeing this revealing documentary film. Yes, he was probably a CIA man, but no, he was probably not a conscious member of a disinformation conspiracy. In other words, he was probably manipulated. But in 'the Shadow World' everyone is manipulated, and even the manipulators themselves are being manipulated by their own insane delusions. That would explain why Ellsberg's phone calls were being monitored for two years before he leaked the documents, and yet the security people just sat back and waited for him to leak them rather than taking pre-emptive steps to stop him doing so. It was all too easy. It was all a setup. I wonder if even Ellsberg knows.

I did not know much about Daniel Ellsberg before watching this movie. I think Daniel Ellsberg is more remembered because of the fact that the plumbers broke into his psychiatrist's office. The story of the Pentagon Papers is also known, but not as much. As can be seen in the film, the release of them did not have the kind of large impact one would expect.

I never knew that Ellsberg had such a large influence of the implementation of the Vietnam War. I was always under the impression he had just been a pen pusher not making logistical decisions. I would have never guessed that he served in that country as a civilian.

We see some other interesting facts about Ellsberg. I never knew that he was participating in peace rallies with Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. I didn't know he had an emotional sea change in his life after he heard about individuals going to prison to protest the war. It is a very interesting story.

Besides that, the documentary is well put together. There aren't any interesting or outlandish cinematographic choices. The film is very basic in this respect. I think subject of the documentary carries more that the people involved in making it.

I am well aware of the facts as they happened. I have watched the movie based on this drama and "enjoyed" is not quite the word for it but felt sorry for the US population in general.

It is really unfortunate that there doe snot exist another Daniel Ellsberg from the regime of Bush Jr. It is about time the US government comes up with something like an Ombudsman - universally trusted would be the first requirement - who has unimpeded access to everything under the sky - within US, of course, to verify the truth as handed out by the people in power. They also need to take away the power of "presidential pardon" in the current form. It should be available only when a person is accused, tried and convicted.

Going off on a tangent I watched Avatar with great interest. Apart from the technology and special effects one message came through very clearly. What US wants they will get by hook or by crook. When any one else has what it wants simply make them your enemies and under the guise of preemptive action against terrorist attack destroy them and take over!