by SAUL LANDAU
In 2005, teaching a history class to university juniors and seniors, I mentioned the Vietnam War. I noticed glazed looks in the eyes of several students. I asked a young woman born about a decade after that war had ended: “You know when the Vietnam War occurred, right?”
She wrinkled her brow, bit her lip and said, hesitatingly: “Wasn’t it after the Greco-Roman era?”
Some students knew, but most were unsure. Neither parents nor teachers had taught them recent history. A new film will now help fill that void.
“The Most Dangerous Man in America” (produced by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith; photography by Vicente Franco) earned his film title from those in the heights of power–not by robbing banks or committing serial murders; rather, he revealed US government secrets.
Ironically, our enemies (the Soviet Union and China at the time) had no interest in the “top secret” documents Daniel Ellsberg (the film’s narrator) leaked to the media and Congress in 1971 as “The Pentagon Papers.” The US public, however, should have responded to the contents of those seven thousand super classified pages with shock and anger.
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