The saga of Daniel Ells berg and the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers are established history now, and the many years that have passed have perhaps dimmed our memory of those extraordinary events. Of course, there's a famous saying about those who ignore history - concerning repetition and doom.
Opening this weekend for a special engagement at the Carolina Theater, "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" is a fascinating documentary that digs deep into this amazing chapter of American history. As a story of official government deceit and an unjust war, it may bring to mind contemporary parallels. But the film doesn't do so overtly. It doesn't really have to.
A quick primer: Daniel Ellsberg was a U.S. military analyst who, in 1971, smuggled out and released to the media top-secret government documents concerning the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers, as they would come to be known, revealed that - among other things - four presidential administrations essentially misled the American public about the conflicts in Indochina.
It gets a lot more complicated than that, of course, and "Dangerous" is an utterly professional piece of filmmaking that does what good historical documentaries do: It communicates an enormous amount of information with clarity.
Ellsberg himself narrates most of the film, in voiceover and dozens of extended on-camera interviews. The film clearly regards Ellsberg as an American hero of the highest order. Those with alternative views of Ellsberg's actions - he was brought to trial on espionage charges, after all - will find little traction here.
The film tracks Ellsberg's conversion from establishment war hawk to anti-war activist, as the discoveries he makes inside the Defense Department challenge his beliefs and convictions. Some of the passages are quite moving in terms of pure human drama, as Ellsberg realizes what he must risk to follow his conscience.
The risks were many
One effective sequence of re-creations shows him secretly photocopying the Pentagon Papers in 1969. Working literally through the night and sneaking them past the guards, Ellsberg reflects that each page in his briefcase represents a federal crime, years in prison, maybe never seeing his children again.
Ellsberg is now 79, and his recollection of events has clearly been colored by the passage of time. Whereas historical footage during and after his trial depicts a man fairly bursting with outrage, Ellsberg speaks here in soft, measured, yet utterly frank tones.
"It was an American war from the start," he says of Vietnam. "Kennedy lied to the public and to Congress to escalate the war. Each president wanted to avoid the stigma of losing Indochina to the Communists on his watch."
Ellsberg does not mince words: "What we were doing," he says, "with the ground war and especially the bombing was nothing short of illegal homicide. It was murder."
The filmmakers also interview dozens of others with a stake in the proceedings, including historian Howard Zinn and Pete McCloskey, the anti-war Republican presidential candidate in 1972.
Despite the inherent drama of the story, "Dangerous" can get dry and occasionally distracted. The filmmakers use a variety of visual strategies to vary the texture. Interstitial passages employ animation and highly stylized re-creations, which are not always successful. Particularly ill-advised are the clips from chintzy old war movies and TV shows.
But all in all, the film is entirely engaging and particularly fascinating for history buffs and hard-core foreign policy wonks. There is a lot of detail here to chew on, and Ellsberg, as always, is not afraid to disclose specifics and name names.
