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

In the early 1970’s Daniel Ellsberg was living the American Dream: convertible sports car, beachfront property in Malibu, rock star-like chick magnetism, and a well-paying, well-respected position at the Rand corporation. Then with some guidance from his girlfriend and later wife, Dr. Ellsberg finds his “conscience,” and begins to exact the burden conscience bears. All-night Xerox sessions with the 7,000-page “Pentagon Papers,” a fugitive run from the FBI, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s label as “The Most Dangerous Man in America”—Ellsberg risks a lifetime in prison to tell the truth about the Vietnam War. A truth only he and a handful of others can divulge.

Officially titled United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, the Pentagon Papers told the unvarnished truth about the war. But that version differed substantially from the public version the government had sold for more than twenty years. Before the Internet with each subscriber having his fifteen seconds of fame, Americans were less cynical, more trusting. We believed in institutions, like government. Why would they lie to us? In fact, forthright though Ellsberg’s story is in itself, the Oscar-nominated documentary sizzles best when we hear the paranoia in President Nixon’s voice. Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father speaking through crackling White House tapes, President Nixon bristles at Ellsberg’s arrogance and vows revenge; that revenge, which ultimately results in the Watergate break-in and Nixon’s resignation, finds its source in hatred of Ellsberg.

After Ellsberg leaks sections of the papers to The New York Times and other papers, Nixon’s attorney general counters with a federal court injunction, forcing the times to cease publication. That case rises quickly to divided US Supreme Court (sound familiar?), which rules on the side of the newspapers. That case is still cited today in freedom of the press cases. This documentary deserves our careful attention, for Americans would be wise to remember its lessons and not fall prey to the excesses of a shadow government lying to promote its own ends in an unjust war.

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Steve Brock

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