The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg And The Pentagon Papers Airs On PBS

Henry Kissinger called Daniel Ellsberg “The most dangerous man in America,” when the Pentagon Papers were leaked. It may have been more accurate to have called him “The most dangerous man to Richard Nixon’s presidency.” While the Pentagon Papers themselves were a big story, the leaking of them led directly to the series of events that ultimately brought down Nixon’s presidency.

In June, 1971 The New York Times first published the official documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. When this occurred, Nixon was  absolutely furious. He vowed that nothing like that would ever happen again, and formed a special White House strike-team called the “Plumbers.”

Their job was to make all the leaks go away, by whatever means necessary. The first stop for them was the office of Mr. Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, to search for dirt to smear him with. They then moved on to a D.C. hotel called The Watergate. When the break-ins, and subsequent cover-ups were discovered, Richard Nixon became the only sitting President to ever resign from office.

The excellent two-hour film The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009) details this incredible story from  beginning. to end. Ellsberg was certainly no threat to the nation when he began his career with the Pentagon. He was a Harvard graduate who had worked at the think-tank Rand Corporation as a consultant to the Department Of Defense for years. When he actually joined the DOD he reported to the top dog, Secretary Of Defense Robert McNamera.

Ellsberg spent two years in Saigon as a State Department bureaucrat, to see the war first-hand. He then returned to Rand and was put to work on a top-secret project of McNamera’s called “U.S. Decision-Making in Vietnam 1945-1968.” This report is what was eventually leaked to the press as the Pentagon Papers. The study indicates that U.S. involvement in Vietnam stretched all the way back to the Truman-era. Every president since had maintained the disastrous course, despite mounting evidence that the war was unwinnable.

Article Author: Greg Barbrick

Greg Barbrick is a Seattle native who was first published in 1988, in his hometown music magazine, The Rocket. Since then his work has appeared in print and online for numerous sources. He Googles himself so often that his mother told him it would make him go blind.
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