Why Daniel Ellsberg May Still Be the 'Most Dangerous Man in America'

In June 1971, when the Nixon White House discovered its colleague Daniel Ellsberg had leaked 7,000 pages of top-secret documents on the history of the Vietnam War to the New York Times, Henry Kissinger 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 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 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 will open in New York followed by theatrical openings around the country over the next few months. Co-director Rick Goldsmith and I have been producing this film for over four years. (Watch the trailer at the bottom of this article.)

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, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, which was published 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 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).