The title of the Oscar-nominated documentary — “The Most Dangerous Man in America” — is meant ironically.
Daniel Ellsberg was “dangerous” only to those who put their government’s interests ahead of what’s best for their country and its citizens.
The film by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith shows us how a man who worked in the highest levels of the Pentagon — and who helped to get us deeper into the war in Vietnam — came to see the error of his ways in the late 1960s.
Ellsberg began to recognize the corruption in the government and the military and decided he had to make public a secret government document that laid out 
all of our policy makers’ deceptions (and failures) in Vietnam — a policy that lead to the deaths of more 50,000 Americans and countless thousands in Southeast Asia.
Although “The Pentagon Papers” dealt with Vietnam before Richard Nixon became president in 1969, Nixon and his henchmen knew that the material had devastating implications for their management of the same war, and they fought to suppress the material.
The documentary expands from Ellsberg’s story to study the news business in the early 1970s as the editors at The New York Times and other major papers wrestled with the decision to publish secret papers and the legal implications that decision might have on their organizations.
Ehrlich and Goldsmith take us back to the bad old days of the Nixon White House with horrifying tapes of the foul-mouthed president crying out for the destruction of Ellsberg and anyone who dared to disseminate the documents he snuck out of government offices.
The film wrestles with the nagging questions of loyalty, patriotism and legality raised by what Ellsberg did. Was his act traitorous or the ultimate example of patriotism? Is it “squealing” to work with people for years and then to blow the whistle on the whole crew?
“The Most Dangerous Man in America” shows how Ellsberg’s leaking of the papers ultimately resulted in Nixon being run out of office. The president’s men decided to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to find dirt on their enemy. The revelation of that act became one of many illegal acts that forced Nixon to resign in disgrace.
(First Run Features is releasing “The Most Dangerous Man in America” on DVD today.)
