But it is also this moment when the film — which is based largely on Ellsberg’s own memoirs and four long interviews conducted with him — finally begins to diverge from biography (if not hagiography) into the many issues raised by Ellsberg’s action. The New York Times, for example, had to decide whether to publish the information or not. Outside counsel believed that publication would probably ruin the company; house counsel James Goodale believed it was a First Amendment issue, asking “what the hell have we been fighting for in this country for the past 300 years” but for no prior restraint on publication?
They also, though too briefly, explore the negative consequences of the leak: Ellsberg had betrayed his colleagues, his family, and his government in order not to compromise on his moral position. Though the recordings of Nixon’s curse-filled fulminations are darkly comic, he has a good point when he describes the leak as “an attack on the integrity of government.” This document was among the most highly-classified of the entire war; moreover, it didn’t necessarily have the intended effect — it took two years for Congress to vote to cut off funds for the war effort, the day before a decision was handed down in Ellsberg’s trial.
As to his colleagues, Ellsberg recognized that he had betrayed a trust with them. But in response, he mentions the E.M. Forster quote: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” He disagrees strongly with that sentiment: “I was not discharging my responsibility [to the country] by keeping those secrets,” he says at an earlier moment. “We are talking about many, many, many lives.”
* * *
Last September, The New York Times dismissed the film as a re-telling of an old, worn-out story jacked up with Errol Morris-style atmospherics. (Ironically, Morris was one of three filmmakers competing with Goldsmith and Ehrlich for Ellsberg’s consent to make a film about his life.) But over the course of the past month, whenever I mentioned this film and its subject, the response I almost always received was “who? what?” Though it’s possible that my managing editor, hair stylist, violin teacher, my wife, and half a dozen other friends are not a representative sample, it seemed that nobody under the age of 60 knew of this story, though it took place just 40 years ago.
So when I met Goldsmith and Ehrlich in San Francisco earlier this month, I mentioned the charges made in the Times review. They dismissed them as ridiculous. “Of course it’s old news to the Times,” Ehrlich said. “They played a major role in the story!” She added that the intended audience was younger people anyway, not only to educate them about a landmark event in recent history, but to put before them an example of how one extraordinary man acted from conscience.
“We forget our history,” Goldsmith said, “even our very recent history, even our parents’ history, all too quickly. And if we hadn’t forgotten this history, maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Yes: those wars, our wars, our wars that few besides the families of the soldiers seem to think or care about much, since none but they are in danger of being swept off the street to go die on dusty battlefields, far distant. While Goldsmith and Ehrlich have wisely avoided making any direct allusion to our ongoing wars, it’s clear they would not have even made the film if it couldn’t be understood as an object lesson for today’s audiences. When they started work on the project five years ago, Goldsmith said, our wars had just begun, we had been lied into Iraq and possibly lied into Afghanistan, and despite the strong anti-war sentiment in the country, there was no viable anti-war movement: the opposition was disorganized and aimless. “It was like the Congress and the public were either unwilling or unable to contradict the military direction of the country,” he said, adding that “the spirit of the Vietnam years, and the courage behind the act that Ellsberg carried out, was sorely missing, and is still missing. It’s not like things have changed much since then.”
* * *
During jury selection for Ellsberg’s trial, his attorneys were advised to avoid selecting middle-aged jurors. The reason was simple: Ellsberg was a man of principle, and those of middle age had already, inevitably, compromised on whatever principles they may have earlier held in order to accommodate the difficult choices presented by real life. Such jurors wouldn’t have much sympathy with a man who had refused to set aside his moral principles, who had thereby thrown away everything he had ever worked for, and into the bargain had also committed espionage, and had betrayed his colleagues, and was also discarding the needs of his wife and children. In fact, they would be likely to only feel contempt for such a man. A man who acts from his principles can only be sure to find sympathy among young people, who for the most part still have the luxury of living according to their own.
For these same reasons, it’s not surprising that the film has played so well to students. Ehrlich pointed out that Ellsberg’s story is about “spiritual and political transformation,” and his principles can be inspiring to those who are still open to transformation. At the Palm Springs International Film Festival, for example, they held a special screening for 1,000 students, and afterwards, Ehrlich told me, they not only received sustained applause, but “a hundred hands went up with questions: What can I do to make the government better? What can I do to be a better citizen? What can I do to act out of conscience?”
