The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

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.

In the movie The Most Dangerous Man in America, we see what distinguishes very clearly a man like Daniel Ellsberg from a man like Richard Nixon. Ellsberg, when first presented with the position by the President, Lyndon Johnson, that America had to go into war in Vietnam (and a long-term one of course, despite what Johnson said to the media) he knew it was a lie but one he had to work in. He even got into the swing of things early on to give the first report of a heinous act done on an American soldier to McNamara, which was "just what he wanted to see". But it wasn't long after that, while still being a 'hawk' for the side of the Pentagon and the Rand corporation, that he gripped with what he knew from the start: what he was doing was wrong, and he was helping perpetuate a wrong going back to Truman through Nixon. There's a revelation that comes to Ellsberg, and it's there in the film as well - in order to do the right thing, sometimes, one may have to be prepared (and practically be happy) to go got prison for a just cause.

Nixon, of course, never felt this way about his ties to the Vietnam war, and if anything, as heard in those oh-so cheerful tapes recorded with him and Kissinger, he wanted to go all out and bomb the "SOB's" into oblivion, to "think big" as it were. He didn't have a conscience about it, plain and simple, and it's this that we see makes out the hero/villain in this story in the film. Ellsberg was a key whistleblower of the 20th century, this despite the media latching more onto the persona of Ellsberg as opposed to the full-blown-holy-s*** content of the Pentagon Papers themselves. Nixon saw Ellsberg as a key threat - not ironically perhaps the reason why his administration tumbled down, this almost in spite of his landslide victory in 1972. I had almost forgotten until the film reminded me of a startling fact: the Watergate break-in was not just for the purposes of helping to sway the election, but to find any dirt at all in Ellsberg's psychiatrist's folders. That's just... mean.

Then again, Nixon doesn't become the antagonist in the film until after the halfway point. For the filmmakers, their documentary is poised on Dr. Ellsberg, a very intelligent man who rose up the ranks to become a key player in the Rand Corporation (a place for "free thinkers" to come up with "big ideas" as a think tank), and then into the Pentagon. But we also see how his level of trust and intuition with authority came into large question in his youth, when his father, whom he always trusted as an authority, was behind the wheel in a horrible accident that killed his mother and sister. We don't see how this tragedy of losing those closest to him changed him, per-say (I wondered for a while after the movie ended why this was, until later), but it does serve to show how his bond with his father was broken, how that coupled with the atom bomb drops a year before this left him disillusioned.

And if anything is the focus of this movie, aside of course from its protagonist, its about the way in which a person, in a society such as America's in the late 60s and wasn't 100% corrupted, could make a difference when nudged just a little. What not only Ellsberg but the New York Times and the press did gives us lessons today: sometimes a person who knows right and wrong, and knows the consequences both professional and personal (we see the latter especially in Ellsberg's friendship with his boss, the President of Rand, and a colleague who refused to testify at a grand jury trial), has to stand up and do something to break the mold. It's a stirring documentary, informative and full of sobering moments, seeming longer (in a good way) than 90 minutes. The only downside being a few cheesy 're-enactment' flash-animated scenes of some of the nefarious acts being done like photocopying and meetings at night.

Daniel Ellsberg was an ex-marine and top policy wonk, who became convinced that the Vietnam War was wrong. He was also convinced that the government knew it was wrong, but continued to fight mainly to save face. Considering this a moral abhorrence, he leaked top secret papers to the press. They didn't betray really damaging information, but they were an embarrassment to the government who tried to prosecute Ellsberg. To discredit the leaker, President Nixon ordered his aides to burgle his psychiatrist, starting a chain of events that led to Watergate. Eventually, after Nixon had resigned, the war finally ended, although Ellsberg was disappointed that his publication of the truth has failed to turn public opinion decisively against it at an earlier time. It's a fascinating story, and this documentary re-lives it. Most compelling is the sense that Ellsberg gives of a man motivated by an extraordinarily strong inner moral compass; while the likes of Nixon would do anything to hold onto what they had, Ellsberg risked a life in prison in the hope of ending the war. Today, our politicians seem to some to be making the same mistakes their forebears did; we have also learned something of how they lie to us, but still have not stopped them. Ellsberg is still trying. He emerges from this film as a giant of a man.

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!

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.