Interview: Daniel Ellsberg
http://blog.beliefnet.com/moviemom/2010/02/interview-daniel-ellsberg.html
Monday February 8, 2010
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg, a documentary
just nominated for an Oscar, is the story of the man who gave secret
government documents about the Vietnam war to newspapers for
publication in 1971. The impact of his leak was seismic. And it
continues to reverberate today as many of the same issues of military
strategy and government accountability are debated by another generation.
Dr. Ellsberg, a one-time hawk on the war who had served as a Marine
and worked in the Department of Defense, wrote his own book about his
experiences and his views, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the
Pentagon Papers. His dissertation, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision, is
still considered a major contribution. I spoke to Dr. Ellsberg about
the past, the present, war, peace, and the movie.
Are you the most dangerous man in America?
Not at the moment. Fom the point of view of the Obama administration
it would be whoever leaked the secret cables of Ambassador [Karl]
Eikenberry, [US ambassador to Afghanistan] to the Times. I had not
seen facsimile copies like that since the Pentagon papers. I am sure
there is a tremendous search to find out who was responsible. It's
quite contrary to what Eikenberry testified to in Congress about
being fully in accord to McChrystal's recommendations for sending
more troupes. The cables gave the lie to that, a warning against any
such involvement.
Why were you considered so dangerous?
It wasn't what has already been leaked that was the problem, it was
their worry about what might be next. Kissinger feared I would put
out material on Nixon, and that brought him down. It was that fear
that led Nixon to get personally involved in illegal activity to try
to stop me. And that led to his resignation and that led to the end of the war.
The movie doesn't make really clear why I was regarded as the most
dangerous man. [Egil "Bud"] Krogh referred to the fact that they
thought I had documents on Nixon. That was why they went into my
doctor's office. That was the part that involved the president
himself, in the case of the actions against me they had a number of
witnesses that he ordered that himself. If it weren't for that, he
would not have had to cover up because the trail didn't lead to him.
The important thing was not to find out what I had as much as to keep
me from putting it out.
They knew I had some material directly from Nixon's office, because I
had given it to Senator Matthias who wanted to be a Republican white
knight. They had to worry about it without knowing exactly what it
was, they had to take extreme measures including sending people to
beat me up or possibly kill me.
The movie portrays you as a hero to many people. Who are your heroes?
Howard Zinn, one of the greatest human beings on earth. Noam Chomsky.
People who have openly refused to go to war. Rosa Parks and Martin
Luther King. I met met Rosa Parks on the way to my arraignment. I
took a toothbrush and went off to a football field where they were
meeting in New Orleans. If it weren't for Rosa Parks and Martin
Luther King I wouldn't be where I am today. I was talking to her and
said "You're my hero," and she said, "You're my hero." You can
imagine what that meant to me.
Why this time? What made the difference? She said, "I had given up my
seat to a white woman a number of times but had never been asked to
give it up to a white man. I asked myself what I would do? I didn't
know what I would do." When the moment came, she knew, and she said
no. It is the way things happen.
You don't know what you are doing or how you will respond until you
get into it, but it helps to think about it beforehand. The situation
has arisen before and people think about it and then they are cocked
like a pistol and ready to do it. Now is the time.
You were a team player and then decided to play for a bigger team.
That's well put! A much bigger team in numbers. The key thing there
was meeting people who were on the larger team like Bob Eaton. We
stood in a vigil line for him, he was going to prison for draft
resistance. Stepping into that vigil line, standing in front of the
post office on a hot day, when I had been writing something for
Nixon, I could not do both. It was like the first date with Patricia,
marching around the White House and worrying that a picture of me
might appear in the Post.
I didn't have a good excuse for getting out of going to the protest.
I thought of saying I was sick that day but I was shamed into
standing in that line. Once you're in the line it was like stepping
over the line at a recruiting station. I had stepped over a line and
was recruited into the anti-war movement. Passing out leaflets
instead of writing memos for the President, in my mind I had shifted
sides from being an insider to being a citizen. Days later I had the
experience of seeing Randy Keeler, but I don't know if it would have
had the same effect except for having been at that vigil.
Pastor Martin Niemoller was testifying while I was at the vigil, and
he had a big influence on me. I was at the same war resister's
conference. I am still not a total pacifist. He had been a U-Boat
commander in WWI. He was imprisoned in 38 or 39 and spent the war in
Dachau. The famous quote always puzzled me.
In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak
up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I
wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there
was nobody left to speak up.
He did speak out, so what is he talking about? He is describing the
attitude of the average German. He told me that he had not been a
pacifist in the second World War. He thought Hitler should have been
opposed. He didn't become a pacifist until 1950 when Heisenberg
informed him about the coming H-Bomb. And that made him a nuclear
pacifist. I was having lunch with a couple of pacifists and arguing
with them as I had often done, a strong argument against total
pacifism is the Brits who fired at the bombers over London.
Why do you oppose our military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The last thing that you do is the thing that Al-Qaeda wants to you to
do. Osama bin Laden wanted us to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, which
was his enemy anyway. Even better would be to attack Iran, his enemy,
to get the Muslim world against us. We fell right into Obama's trap,
born and bred in the brier patch; he wanted that oil. I have no doubt
that he prefers us to be fighting in Afghanistan forever. I would
have cooperated with the rest of the world including people we do not
like, make it easy for them to cooperate with us and share their
information about those who want to attack us. There are ways to
respond without generating recruits for the terrorists. Getting the
oil was more important than Al-Qaeda, so that is where Bush went.
But you said you are not a complete pacifist. So how do you decide
when force is necessary?
I was giving Niemoller my example of the Brits, etc. You could not
stop Hitler's blitzkriegs with non-violence. Non-violence would not
have saved the Jews. As in the old cartoons a light bulb appeared
over my head -- violence didn't save the Jews, nothing saved the
Jews. They all died. Here was the cruncher, the ace up the sleeve,
partly because we didn't use our violence to save the Jews. It made
me remember something by Raoul Wallenberg. The Holocaust could not
have been carried out except in wartime conditions. You need the
secrecy. I went to Neimoller and said is it possible that the
resistance that people put up to Hitler was at the expense of the
Jews? I thought he would take time but he said right away, "It cost
the Jews their lives." I have always realized that. It doesn't mean
that people weren't justified in resisting but far from saving them,
it doomed the Jews.
I asked what else am I wrong about?
What do you want from the movie?
If more people see the movie we will have more leakers like the
Eickenberry cables and that will be for the good.
--------
It's no secret, Ellsberg was 'Most Dangerous Man in America'
By Brett Michel
Friday, February 12, 2010
"Daniel Ellsberg, whatever his intentions, gave aid and comfort to
the enemy. He is putting himself above the president of the United
States, above Congress, above our whole system of government when he
says, in effect, that he will determine what should be made public."
These public comments, glimpsed in Judith Ehrlich and Rick
Goldsmith's earnest Oscar-nominated documentary, "The Most Dangerous
Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," were made
by none other than Richard Milhous Nixon himself during a television
interview, shortly before he was forced to resign his office.
Privately, Nixon referred to the ex-Marine and high-ranking policy
analyst as a "son-of-a-b----ing thief," which is also preserved in
the film in audio form, courtesy of the White House tapes.
In truth, as the film lays out in history-lesson fashion, layered
with spare talking-head interviews and simple re-enactments, the
former Cold Warrior turned antiwar pacifist is a patriot.
Now 78, Ellsberg narrates the film, which is derived from his 2002
book "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." The
papers in question - 7,000 pages of top-secret documents that he
photocopied and fed to The New York Times [NYT] in March 1971 out of
a moral sense of duty that Tricky Dick would label treason, - led
directly to Watergate, Nixon's resignation and the end of the Vietnam
War nine months later.
How did this man - part of a system in which he says "secrets can be
held by men in the government whose careers have been spent learning
how to keep their mouths shut" - find the conviction to put himself
in the position of potentially being sentenced to 115 years in prison?
In August 1969, Ellsberg read the earliest parts of former Secretary
of Defense Robert S. McNamara's study on Vietnam, which affected him
"more than I thought possible," he remembers. "It changed my whole
sense of the legitimacy of the war." What he learned is that "it was
an American war from the start . . . the hundreds of thousands that
we were killing was unjustified homicide."
"Murder," he concludes, "had to be stopped."
--------
Jewish or not, Daniel Ellsberg provides grist for a film
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/41320/jewish-or-not-daniel-ellsberg-provides-grist-for-a-film/
by michael fox, correspondent
February 11, 2010
When upper-echelon military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked thousands
of pages of classified Pentagon documents about the Vietnam War to
the New York Times and other newspapers in 1971, he was embraced as a
man of conscience by many Jews and attacked as a Jewish traitor by
President Richard Nixon.
"I think everyone assumed he was Jewish, and Nixon certainly did,"
said Oscar-nominated documentary maker Rick Goldsmith, who listened
to countless hours of Nixon tapes as part of his research for "The
Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers."
In fact, Ellsberg was raised Christian Scientist. Not that that would
have mattered to the paranoid Nixon, whose ranting, blanket
denouncements of Jews always allowed for one exception: Henry Kissinger.
Goldsmith and fellow Berkeley filmmaker Judith Ehrlich's fascinating,
taut and timely film garnered an Academy Award nomination for best
documentary last week. The film opens Feb. 19 in Berkeley and San
Francisco, and March 5 in San Rafael.
Goldsmith was raised in what he describes as a Kennedy-Stevenson
Reform Jewish liberal household on Long Island. He was imbued with a
sense of civic obligation that he gleaned from the culture as much as
from his parents.
"I grew up with that consciousness of the '60s there was kind of a
Zionist aura to everything," Goldsmith recalled. "On some level you
got involved with social issues. That was the heart of my Jewish
upbringing. It was never presented by my parents as 'You have a
responsibility,' but it was just around."
Goldsmith studied architecture before moving to the Bay Area after
college and gravitating toward nonfiction filmmaking. His first
full-length work, "Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the
American Press", a portrait of the fearless independent journalist
who died in 1995, earned an Academy Award nomination in 1997.
Ellsberg, who was born in Chicago in 1931 to Jewish parents with a
passion for Christian Science, shifted from avowed hawk to antiwar
activist in part due to the influence of his girlfriend (and later,
wife) Patricia, the daughter of Jewish toy magnate Louis Marx.
He arrived at his gutsy decision to inform the public of the secret
history of Vietnam after what Goldsmith characterized as the
quintessentially Jewish process of examining everything from every
angle, from the point of view of Pentagon officials to Thoreau's
imperative for civil disobedience.
It's a process that Goldsmith knows a thing or two about.
"One of the things about documentary filmmaking, as in journalism, as
in writing in general, you're looking at your subjects and your
subject matter from many points of view," he explained. "I think
that's a Jewish thing and goes back to the Talmud."
Filmmakers also must show their work to the world, and take
responsibility for it. And that's exactly what Ellsberg consciously
took on in 1971, and has been taking on ever since with a range of
issues and causes.
"Step 2 is going out on the world stage," Goldsmith asserted, "and
that's what Jews do. They're outspoken. They don't care about fitting
in, that you're going to be a nonconformist, that someone's going to
think you're an idiot, a traitor, a jerk, that you're off base in
some way. That's why so many Jews are so active around the issue of
civil liberties."
--
"The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon
Papers" opens Feb. 19 the Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley and the
Embarcadero Cinemas in San Francisco. Appearances Feb. 19-21 at both
theaters by filmmakers Rick Goldsmith and Judith Ehrlich. Details:
http://www.landmarktheatres.com.
--------
'Pentagon Papers' film stirs historical pot
By Linda Deutsch
February 14, 2010
LOS ANGELES Four decades after he stunned the nation by leaking the
top-secret Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg
walks the halls of the past in his dreams.
In his sleep, he imagines that he still works as a researcher at the
Rand Corp., advising Pentagon officials on policy, handling
classified documents, studying the science of war.
Over the decades, Ellsberg, 78, hasn't been welcome at Rand. He
committed the most startling breach of security in the company's
history, walking out on Oct. 1, 1969, with the first briefcase full
of classified documents destined for public release.
That bold move and the actions that followed to get them published
is the subject of a documentary, "The Most Dangerous Man in
America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," which opened Friday.
Ellsberg had read the 7,000-page study of the Vietnam War known as
The Pentagon Papers and became convinced that the history of U.S.
involvement dating to 1945 was a study in lies. He wanted to end the
war and although to this day he does not take credit for that, he
says his actions and those of other anti-war activists helped shorten
the conflict.
The film by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith suggests his actions
triggered the Watergate scandal and drove President Richard Nixon from office.
The release of the classified study in The New York Times and in
other newspapers triggered one of the most important First Amendment
legal battles the country has ever seen and led to a powerful U.S.
Supreme Court ruling for freedom of the press.
Nixon launched an offensive that included a break-in at Ellsberg's
psychiatrist's office and culminated in his espionage trial in Los Angeles.
The charges were dismissed and a mistrial declared because of
"outrageous governmental misconduct," including disclosures that the
judge had met with Nixon during the trial and was offered the job of
FBI director.
Ellsberg travels the country speaking, protesting and urging others
to do what he did leak important information that reveals
governmental untruths. He talks about U.S. involvement in Iraq and
Afghanistan, saying the latter has the potential to become
"Vietnam-istan" if the United States increases troops there.
Ellsberg remains a study in contradictions: He is a former hawk who
risked everything for peace; a Marine battalion commander who turned
against the war; a man capable of waxing nostalgic about his days at
Rand but also giving notice that he plans to release more classified
documents about the nuclear threat.
The complexity of the man intrigued Ehrlich and Goldsmith, the
documentary filmmakers who decided to resurrect Ellsberg's story for
a new generation.
"This was a subject close to both of our hearts," Ehrlich said. "We
focus on people driven by conscience to act at great personal risk.
What could have more resonance than the story of Dan Ellsberg?"
Ehrlich's films include "Those Who Refused to Fight It," about World
War II's conscientious objectors; Goldsmith's "Everyday Heroes" was
about the domestic Peace Corps.
They began their quest to make the Ellsberg movie four years ago,
raising money from a long list of contributors credited at the end of
the film. Their interviews with key figures in Ellsberg's story
includes a rare appearance by his co-defendant in the espionage case,
Anthony Russo, who died shortly after telling his story on camera.
The film is dedicated to him.
Its future distribution plans are uncertain, and fund-raising
continues. At a party after the Los Angeles premiere, one donor
announced she would give $50,000 to keep the momentum going.
"To young people, it's a fresh story," Goldsmith said. "I would like
them to see that it's possible to dissent and not be a traitor."
As for Ellsberg, who spent months copying the top-secret study on a
Xerox machine, he now has a Web site (www.ellsberg.net) and is
posting his opinions across the Internet in various forums. He notes
that it took The New York Times three months to review the Pentagon
Papers study and decide to publish it.
"If that had happened today," he said, "I would have posted it
directly on the Internet."
--
Linda Deutsch covered the Pentagon Papers trial for The Associated Press.
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