A 'Most Dangerous' history lesson from Daniel Ellsberg '
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-02-26-ellsberg26_ST_N.htm
2/26/10
By Maria Puente
If Daniel Ellsberg hadn't existed, Richard Nixon might not have been
forced to resign.
Watergate? It really was a third-rate burglary.
It was a different, earlier burglary the White House-directed
break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office that more directly led
to Nixon's downfall and his resignation in disgrace in 1974.
Or at least that's one of the conclusions of the Oscar-nominated
documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and
the Pentagon Papers.
Filmmakers Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith tell the story of how
Ellsberg, a Harvard-trained Cold Warrior who helped run the Vietnam
War as a strategist, went through a crisis of conscience that turned
him into a passionate anti-war crusader.
But all these years later, do Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers case
still matter? Maybe to Oscar: In 2004, the best-documentary award
went to another film about those bad old days, Errol Morris' The Fog
of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, in which
the former Defense secretary (and Ellsberg's boss) looked back with
regret at the folly of the Vietnam War.
Goldsmith argues that Ellsberg's story still resonates. "We are
embroiled in two wars and we're seeing troop buildups reminiscent of
Vietnam, based on false or blind optimism," he says. But in contrast
to Ellsberg's time, "people today have a feeling of powerlessness.
They say, what can I do? Why bother? This film can answer those questions."
After nearly four decades, Ellsberg, 78, who lives in Berkeley,
Calif., is still a crusader. He hopes this film will help inspire
similar whistle-blowers to help end the conflict in Afghanistan, or
as he calls it: "Vietnamistan."
"It is my highest hope that people in the White House and the
Pentagon will see it and that it would have some power to stop
Afghanistan," Ellsberg tells USA TODAY. "Even being nominated it will
be seen by a lot more people than otherwise."
The film shows how whistle-blowing is risky business. In 1971,
Ellsberg leaked 7,000 pages of secret Pentagon documents to The New
York Times, exposing decades of lies about the war (everything from
how we got into it to daily estimates of enemy dead) and setting off
a Supreme Court case about their publication that eventually
bolstered the First Amendment.
Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security chief, denounced Ellsberg
as "the most dangerous man in America who must be stopped at all
costs." Nixon and his underlings assembled the White House Plumbers
to discredit or blackmail Ellsberg by breaking into the Beverly Hills
office of his psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding, in September 1971 to
collect dirt on Ellsberg.
(Ehrlich and Goldsmith sought to interview Kissinger for the film,
but he declined.)
Charged under the Espionage Act, Ellsberg faced a long prison term.
But at the 1973 trial, after the break-in, illegal wiretapping and
other government misconduct were revealed, the charges were dismissed.
"I showed (the film) to one of my classes, and students said they
didn't know any of that," says Ehrlich, a veteran documentarian who
teaches documentary film at Berkeley City College. "One student
raised his hand and asked, 'What else don't I know?' "
Even the Watergate generation may not know some of the things
discussed in this film, such as the argument that Nixon and his men
could have gotten away with Watergate, but not Fielding. Ellsberg and
former White House counsel John Dean say there was more evidence of a
direct line from the Fielding break-in leading back to the White
House and the cover-up.
"A lot of people stuck their necks out (during that time), not just
Dan," Ehrlich says. "One of the messages of this film is that people
can change their mind, en masse. We can all rethink what we've been doing."
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'Most dangerous man' is living history
http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/movies/2010/02/21/12971446.html
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
February 25, 2010
During the odious Richard Nixon regime in the United States, think
tanker Daniel Ellsberg suddenly found himself branded a traitor and
"the most dangerous man in America." That is what happens when you
tell the truth in the face of a corrupt government.
Now, 40 years later, this labyrinthian story remains as fascinating
and as relevant as ever. And it is told with intelligence and
effectiveness in the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Most Dangerous
Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
The doc is living history. Ellsberg is still alive, still active as
an anti-war activist. He narrates this film in his own voice
(although some passages sound too scripted, a problem with using a
non-actor as narrator).
Formerly a hawk during his early run as a presidential advisor,
Ellsberg became enlightened and turned into a dove during the height
of the Vietnam War. He risked prison and leaked the Pentagon Papers,
a massive history of America's participation in the war dating back
to World War II and then the early post-war period when the French
faced a military debacle in Vietnam that the Americans would later repeat.
The Pentagon Papers, uncensored and prepared by the U.S. Defence
Department, contained a stinging ananysis and indictment of all the
presidents of every political stripe Roosevelt and Truman through
Johnson and Nixon because every one of them made monumental
military blunders for political reasons. And lied about it!
The beauty of the doc if there is beauty in such ugly reality that
cost countless innocent lives is that the film is a big-picture
historical document. It is too easy just to brand Lyndon Johnson a
vicious war-monger or Richard Nixon a corrupt madman prone to profane
outbursts. It is more difficult to see how the entire political
apparatus of America was hell-bent on wreaking destruction in
Indo-China even when senior people, all the way to the White House,
knew their strategies were hopeless, useless and guaranteed to shed
blood. Plus they all brazenly lied about it, not just Johnson or
Nixon but every president, sainted John. F. Kennedy included.
Given the time that has lapsed since Ellsberg's defiance and the
struggle that newspapers of the day had in printing the Pentagon
Papers, the filmmakers do get fancy with cinematic tricks. Perhaps
too much so. But they do create a sense of the thrill, suspense and
cloak-and-dagger nature of Ellsberg's actions.
Most importantly, this is not just a chapter in the pages of history.
It is critical to understanding what is happening now in geopolitics
and in the war on terrorism. No matter who runs the country, no
matter which war America lies about for political gain, the truth is
more important. No democracy can function on officially sanctioned
lies. This film eloquently makes the case.
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