Communist
30th January 2010, 04:53
====================================
Why Daniel Ellsberg May Still Be the 'Most Dangerous
Man in America' (http://www.alternet.org/story/145475/)
By Judith Ehrlich (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1155102/), AlterNet (http://www.alternet.org/)
January 29, 2010
In June 1971, when the Nixon White House discovered its
colleague Daniel Ellsberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg) had leaked 7,000 pages of
top-secret documents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers) on the history of the Vietnam War
to the New York Times, Henry Kissinger (http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:BNpPEyDffc8J:www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp%3Fentity%3Ddaniel_ellsberg+Daniel+Ellsb erg+henry+kissinger&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a) called Ellsberg
"the most dangerous man in America." Ellsberg's
dramatic transformation from war planner to war
resister made him extremely dangerous to the powers
that be.
Four decades later, his continued insistence on
pointing out the problems with a permanent state of war
make him a problem to those same powerful interests. In
this historical moment Daniel Ellsberg (http://www.ellsberg.net/) is uniquely
qualified to draw provocative parallels between the
Vietnam War and the Afghanistan occupation.
In 1965, Ellsberg, a top Pentagon military analyst,
wrote the speech in which President Lyndon Johnson
announced he would send 40,000 troops to Vietnam and
make real our nascent war. This act definitively
catapulted us into a hopeless conflict that would last
another 10 years. For Ellsberg, Obama's recent call-up
of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan was painfully
reminiscent.
But was it done for the same reason, to avoid being the
president who lost a war? That was the motivation of
five earlier presidents that the Pentagon Papers (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent1.html)
revealed to the American people. That top-secret
history of war-making in Vietnam made it clear that
presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and
Nixon all lied to the American people about our
prospects for success in Southeast Asia. Each knew it
was hopeless and yet stayed, escalating our involvement
to avoid being the president left standing at the end
of the game of musical chairs. That "game" was to kill
millions in Southeast Asia before our eventual defeat.
And now in 2010, the former military strategist tells
us it's an encore performance. Not as humid, more sand,
but pretty much the same quagmire.
This week the documentary, "The Most Dangerous Man in
America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" (http://www.mostdangerousman.org/)will
open in New York followed by theatrical openings around
the country over the next few months. Co-director Rick
Goldsmith (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0326124/) and I have been producing this film for over
four years. (Watch the trailer at the bottom of this
article by clicking the picture.)
When asked why we made this film we often answer, "Are
you asking, why tell this true story of risk, intrigue,
government misconduct, murder, cover-up, love and
spiritual awakening and an unparalleled act of
conscience that helped to stop a war and bring down an
imperial presidency?" A better question might be, "How
come no one beat us to it and how did we get so lucky?"
A partial answer to that query begins with Daniel
Ellsberg's long overdue autobiography (http://www.epluribusmedia.org/archives/reviews/2006/20060930_secrets.html), Secrets: A
Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (http://main.nc.us/books/books.cgi?secrets-amemoirofvietnamandthepentagonpapers), which was
published (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0670030309/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used) in 2002. Prior to that he didn't want a film
to scoop his version of the story. When we came along
there were three other filmmakers in line. It took six
months to convince Dan and his wife, Patricia, that we
were the right team. Our previous films about risk-
takers motivated by conscience finally convinced them.
But we wanted this film to break new ground
stylistically; to be both a political thriller with the
feel of a feature film and a sound piece of historical
filmmaking that would be the definitive telling of
these compelling events.
There was a made-for-TV movie ("The Pentagon Papers" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330760/))
produced shortly before Secrets was released, starring
James Spader as Ellsberg. The movie wasn't all bad, but
not a word was spoken to the Ellsbergs about the production.
Patricia Ellsberg said that while the movie got all the facts
wrong, it captured the spirit and "we liked it because
we looked so good." We wanted to make a film that got
the facts straight and still looked good (which was
remarkably easy because the Ellsbergs really do look
good in hours of archival footage as well as the
present-day).
In 1971 Dan Ellsberg was one of the best and brightest,
a Harvard PhD, Pentagon insider and Paul Newman
lookalike with a gorgeous and brilliant wife (http://www.sf360.org/images/264t.jpg) who was
heir to the fortune of the world's largest toymaker.
Dan had attended a top prep school and went on to
graduate from Harvard with honors and then command a
platoon of Marines. They had lived a charmed life.
Then Dan read the secret Pentagon report and realized
that the presidents he had worked for and believed in
deeply habitually lied to the people of the United
States about why they went to war and whether or not
they could win. He decided he was willing to risk life
in prison to tell the truth. Patricia joined her new
husband and they went underground to make more copies,
hiding out from the largest FBI manhunt since the
Lindbergh kidnapping. After Dan poked his fingers in
Nixon's eyes and made sure enough newspapers had the
documents to prove his case, he revealed his identity
to hundreds of reporters and took full responsibility
for exposing the truth of the unjust war in Vietnam.
This film begs the question: Where are the Daniel
Ellsbergs of today? There have been a few government
whistle-blowers. Last fall former Marine Corps captain
Matthew Hoh (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114287485), a State Department employee stationed in
Zabul Province, a Taliban hotbed, became the first U.S.
official to resign in protest over the Afghan war,
which he had come to believe was fueling the
insurgency. But he didn't walk out with documents. Dan
still rushed to meet him and support his courageous
act. On tour with the film Dan ends most Q&As by asking
the audience if anyone has secret documents they can
leak and help to end the senseless wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. "Don't do what I did; don't wait till the
bombs drop," he says.
But the questions raised by this film go deeper than
war and peace, although they look at the variables of
those two poles in depth. The film plumbs the question
of conscience and action in the world, the possibility
of civil courage, which is much rarer than the courage
of a warrior in battle. Civil courage is having the
courage to look foolish, to make the difficult choice
to give up privilege, to do the right thing and disobey
one's boss.
It turns out that the story of one man's courageous act
in 1971 resonates across age, race and gender borders,
and across time. It is the story of an act of
conscience that actually made a difference, shortening
a war and helping to force a dangerous president out of
the White House. It transmi (http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:UhGx7EV2180J:www.furious.com/perfect/bloodrock.html+bloodrock+thank+you+daniel+ellsberg +lyrics&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)ts a message sorely lacking
in the soundbite world of compromise that passes for
political and public action today.
Earlier this month I showed The Most Dangerous Man in
America at the Palm Springs Film Festiva (http://www.psfilmfest.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=21278&FID=40)l to a diverse
audience of 1,000 high school students from the region.
The atmosphere bristled with energy. As the lights came
on 100 hands shot into the air, followed by a barrage
of questions asking how they could be better citizens,
make a difference, do the right thing. The students
didn't need to have prior knowledge of these historic
events to get the underlying message.
For four years, I have shared the evolving production
process of this film with my classes in documentary
film history at Berkeley Community College. Last week,
the first night of the new semester, I screened the
finished film for a classroom bursting at the seams
(symptomatic of an educational system suffering
terrible cuts). One student raised his hand during the
discussion that followed. "Wow," he said, his eyes a
bit glazed. "That was amazing. I didn't know any of
that. I feel like I haven't been told the real story
about anything. What else don't I know?"
Another student said, "Did you actually meet Howard
Zinn making this film?" The renowned truth-teller
Howard Zinn passed away Wednesday (http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/a-memory-of-howard-zinn#more-307). He played a big part
in these events, in Ellsberg's life and in our film. He
would have been with us at our screening in Los Angeles
in February. Come see the film, and savor your screen
time with these two dangerous accomplices in the fine
art of truth-telling.
See the First Run Features web site (http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/) for playdates and
details about the film (http://firstrunfeatures.com/mostdangerousman.html).
Judith Ehrlich is co-producer and co-director with Rick
Goldsmith of the new documentary, "The Most Dangerous
Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon
Papers" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1319726/). She is currently making a film for PBS about
the internment and relocation of Italian Americans
during WWII.
© 2010 Independent Media Institute (http://www.independentmedia.org/). All rights
reserved.
----------------------
------------------
------------
[To view the trailer for "The Most Dangerous Man in
America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers", click on pic below.]
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jvugNnBkwBw/SyCEYi5SzWI/AAAAAAAALUg/_dPn9lKyCSk/s320/leadership.jpg (http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/794.html)
____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Why Daniel Ellsberg May Still Be the 'Most Dangerous
Man in America' (http://www.alternet.org/story/145475/)
By Judith Ehrlich (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1155102/), AlterNet (http://www.alternet.org/)
January 29, 2010
In June 1971, when the Nixon White House discovered its
colleague Daniel Ellsberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg) had leaked 7,000 pages of
top-secret documents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers) on the history of the Vietnam War
to the New York Times, Henry Kissinger (http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:BNpPEyDffc8J:www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp%3Fentity%3Ddaniel_ellsberg+Daniel+Ellsb erg+henry+kissinger&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a) called Ellsberg
"the most dangerous man in America." Ellsberg's
dramatic transformation from war planner to war
resister made him extremely dangerous to the powers
that be.
Four decades later, his continued insistence on
pointing out the problems with a permanent state of war
make him a problem to those same powerful interests. In
this historical moment Daniel Ellsberg (http://www.ellsberg.net/) is uniquely
qualified to draw provocative parallels between the
Vietnam War and the Afghanistan occupation.
In 1965, Ellsberg, a top Pentagon military analyst,
wrote the speech in which President Lyndon Johnson
announced he would send 40,000 troops to Vietnam and
make real our nascent war. This act definitively
catapulted us into a hopeless conflict that would last
another 10 years. For Ellsberg, Obama's recent call-up
of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan was painfully
reminiscent.
But was it done for the same reason, to avoid being the
president who lost a war? That was the motivation of
five earlier presidents that the Pentagon Papers (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent1.html)
revealed to the American people. That top-secret
history of war-making in Vietnam made it clear that
presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and
Nixon all lied to the American people about our
prospects for success in Southeast Asia. Each knew it
was hopeless and yet stayed, escalating our involvement
to avoid being the president left standing at the end
of the game of musical chairs. That "game" was to kill
millions in Southeast Asia before our eventual defeat.
And now in 2010, the former military strategist tells
us it's an encore performance. Not as humid, more sand,
but pretty much the same quagmire.
This week the documentary, "The Most Dangerous Man in
America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" (http://www.mostdangerousman.org/)will
open in New York followed by theatrical openings around
the country over the next few months. Co-director Rick
Goldsmith (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0326124/) and I have been producing this film for over
four years. (Watch the trailer at the bottom of this
article by clicking the picture.)
When asked why we made this film we often answer, "Are
you asking, why tell this true story of risk, intrigue,
government misconduct, murder, cover-up, love and
spiritual awakening and an unparalleled act of
conscience that helped to stop a war and bring down an
imperial presidency?" A better question might be, "How
come no one beat us to it and how did we get so lucky?"
A partial answer to that query begins with Daniel
Ellsberg's long overdue autobiography (http://www.epluribusmedia.org/archives/reviews/2006/20060930_secrets.html), Secrets: A
Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (http://main.nc.us/books/books.cgi?secrets-amemoirofvietnamandthepentagonpapers), which was
published (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0670030309/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used) in 2002. Prior to that he didn't want a film
to scoop his version of the story. When we came along
there were three other filmmakers in line. It took six
months to convince Dan and his wife, Patricia, that we
were the right team. Our previous films about risk-
takers motivated by conscience finally convinced them.
But we wanted this film to break new ground
stylistically; to be both a political thriller with the
feel of a feature film and a sound piece of historical
filmmaking that would be the definitive telling of
these compelling events.
There was a made-for-TV movie ("The Pentagon Papers" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330760/))
produced shortly before Secrets was released, starring
James Spader as Ellsberg. The movie wasn't all bad, but
not a word was spoken to the Ellsbergs about the production.
Patricia Ellsberg said that while the movie got all the facts
wrong, it captured the spirit and "we liked it because
we looked so good." We wanted to make a film that got
the facts straight and still looked good (which was
remarkably easy because the Ellsbergs really do look
good in hours of archival footage as well as the
present-day).
In 1971 Dan Ellsberg was one of the best and brightest,
a Harvard PhD, Pentagon insider and Paul Newman
lookalike with a gorgeous and brilliant wife (http://www.sf360.org/images/264t.jpg) who was
heir to the fortune of the world's largest toymaker.
Dan had attended a top prep school and went on to
graduate from Harvard with honors and then command a
platoon of Marines. They had lived a charmed life.
Then Dan read the secret Pentagon report and realized
that the presidents he had worked for and believed in
deeply habitually lied to the people of the United
States about why they went to war and whether or not
they could win. He decided he was willing to risk life
in prison to tell the truth. Patricia joined her new
husband and they went underground to make more copies,
hiding out from the largest FBI manhunt since the
Lindbergh kidnapping. After Dan poked his fingers in
Nixon's eyes and made sure enough newspapers had the
documents to prove his case, he revealed his identity
to hundreds of reporters and took full responsibility
for exposing the truth of the unjust war in Vietnam.
This film begs the question: Where are the Daniel
Ellsbergs of today? There have been a few government
whistle-blowers. Last fall former Marine Corps captain
Matthew Hoh (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114287485), a State Department employee stationed in
Zabul Province, a Taliban hotbed, became the first U.S.
official to resign in protest over the Afghan war,
which he had come to believe was fueling the
insurgency. But he didn't walk out with documents. Dan
still rushed to meet him and support his courageous
act. On tour with the film Dan ends most Q&As by asking
the audience if anyone has secret documents they can
leak and help to end the senseless wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. "Don't do what I did; don't wait till the
bombs drop," he says.
But the questions raised by this film go deeper than
war and peace, although they look at the variables of
those two poles in depth. The film plumbs the question
of conscience and action in the world, the possibility
of civil courage, which is much rarer than the courage
of a warrior in battle. Civil courage is having the
courage to look foolish, to make the difficult choice
to give up privilege, to do the right thing and disobey
one's boss.
It turns out that the story of one man's courageous act
in 1971 resonates across age, race and gender borders,
and across time. It is the story of an act of
conscience that actually made a difference, shortening
a war and helping to force a dangerous president out of
the White House. It transmi (http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:UhGx7EV2180J:www.furious.com/perfect/bloodrock.html+bloodrock+thank+you+daniel+ellsberg +lyrics&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)ts a message sorely lacking
in the soundbite world of compromise that passes for
political and public action today.
Earlier this month I showed The Most Dangerous Man in
America at the Palm Springs Film Festiva (http://www.psfilmfest.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=21278&FID=40)l to a diverse
audience of 1,000 high school students from the region.
The atmosphere bristled with energy. As the lights came
on 100 hands shot into the air, followed by a barrage
of questions asking how they could be better citizens,
make a difference, do the right thing. The students
didn't need to have prior knowledge of these historic
events to get the underlying message.
For four years, I have shared the evolving production
process of this film with my classes in documentary
film history at Berkeley Community College. Last week,
the first night of the new semester, I screened the
finished film for a classroom bursting at the seams
(symptomatic of an educational system suffering
terrible cuts). One student raised his hand during the
discussion that followed. "Wow," he said, his eyes a
bit glazed. "That was amazing. I didn't know any of
that. I feel like I haven't been told the real story
about anything. What else don't I know?"
Another student said, "Did you actually meet Howard
Zinn making this film?" The renowned truth-teller
Howard Zinn passed away Wednesday (http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/a-memory-of-howard-zinn#more-307). He played a big part
in these events, in Ellsberg's life and in our film. He
would have been with us at our screening in Los Angeles
in February. Come see the film, and savor your screen
time with these two dangerous accomplices in the fine
art of truth-telling.
See the First Run Features web site (http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/) for playdates and
details about the film (http://firstrunfeatures.com/mostdangerousman.html).
Judith Ehrlich is co-producer and co-director with Rick
Goldsmith of the new documentary, "The Most Dangerous
Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon
Papers" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1319726/). She is currently making a film for PBS about
the internment and relocation of Italian Americans
during WWII.
© 2010 Independent Media Institute (http://www.independentmedia.org/). All rights
reserved.
----------------------
------------------
------------
[To view the trailer for "The Most Dangerous Man in
America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers", click on pic below.]
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jvugNnBkwBw/SyCEYi5SzWI/AAAAAAAALUg/_dPn9lKyCSk/s320/leadership.jpg (http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/794.html)
____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.