The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Dir: Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
Rating: 3.5/5.0
First Run Features
94 Minutes
For some reason we seem stuck on the Vietnam War. Perhaps it is because the boomers run our media outlets but the specter of Vietnam, Nixon and the fall from the hippie dream of the ’60s is a subject torn apart, re-examined, romanticized, agonized over and re-played in documentaries such as The Weather Underground and feature films like Frost/Nixon.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is the latest documentary designed to expose another layer of that epoch of hypocrisy and it works in an insidious way that allows us to connect the dots to recent administrations without explicitly drawing definite parallels. Narrated by Ellsberg himself, The Most Dangerous Man in America traces the evolution of a staunch supporter of American Cold War politics to the man who, more or less, single-handedly exposed the hypocrisy inherent in American politics since the Truman presidency that helped sink Nixon’s reign.
Still sharp and lucid as he pushes into his late seventies, Ellsberg narrates his story that begins with the Harvard graduate working at the RAND Corporation, a California think tank, and working on ways to engage the United States in a conflict with the Communists in Vietnam. He goes from helping Robert McNamara scrounge up the evidence Lyndon Johnson wants to attack to traveling to Saigon as a diplomat for two tours of duty.
But as Ellsberg, a man who is privileged with beyond Top Secret clearance, sees the atrocity of American bombing firsthand, watches the war become un-winnable and hears the abject lies of McNamara and Johnson to the American public, he begins to question his own stance on this very real war created on imaginary circumstances. He decides to act and in 1971, he steals and leaks to the press volumes of secret Pentagon papers which lay out evidence that the United States intentionally expanded the war in Southeast Asia.
Directors Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith do a good job of keeping the pace moving without bogging down too much in the minutiae of politics and ramifications of the war. Nixon, through the use of his own recordings, is portrayed as a bloodthirsty, foul-mouthed tyrant who is ready to silence Ellsberg and professes his predilection for the use of a nuclear bomb in Vietnam to Henry Kissinger, claiming to not give a damn about civilian causalities.
However, Ellsberg and the directors maybe take a few liberties in simplifying motivations. Ellsberg’s father falls asleep at the wheel during the narrator’s childhood, causing an accident that kills his mother and sister. Both Ellsberg and the filmmakers tie this event to his desire to be a watchdog, a tenuous incentive for his future actions. Also, when Ellsberg’s psychological profile is stolen along with the Watergate documents, the filmmakers credit this event as Nixon’s decision to re-sign rather than include the numerous other extenuating circumstances surrounding his blighted term.
If anything, there is much to learn from The Most Dangerous Man in America that is still applicable today, or at least until our country ceases beginning conflicts on false pretense. Ellsberg’s courage is admirable and for a nation to pride itself on freedom, the repression of such information goes against our very basic principles.
by David Harris
