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THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS

By Judith EHRLICH, Rick GOLDSMITH

FILMS TRANSIT - as SALES All rights, World

Documentary - Completed 2009

- Year of production
- 2009
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 93 mn
- Director(s)
- Judith EHRLICH, Rick GOLDSMITH
- Writer(s)
- Judith EHRLICH, Rick GOLDSMITH
- ISAN
- 0000-0003-2B8D-0000-1-0000-0000-Y
- EIDR
- 10.5240/0933-9730-8493-A112-9799-X
- Producer(s)
- Judith EHRLICH, Rick GOLDSMITH
- Synopsis
- Today the name Daniel Ellsberg might draw a blank from younger people, but in the early seventies, he was all over the news for leaking the Pentagon Papers. This resulted in his being hunted by the FBI and dubbed “the most dangerous man in America.” President Nixon developed a personal obsession with the idea of destroying Ellsberg, which led to the recklessness of the Watergate scandal.
  No one could have predicted this outcome in the mid-sixties, when Ellsberg was considered a golden boy working inside the Pentagon. But after visiting the front lines in Vietnam, his outlook began to change. With high-level access to government documents, he read a top-secret study of the war. The seven-thousand-page report revealed that the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson had consistently deceived the American public about Vietnam. Ellsberg felt he would perpetuate the lies unless he did something drastic.