Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith's compelling documentary, "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," charts the personal and political evolution of the Pentagon wunderkind turned anti-Vietnam War leaker-in-chief. (Listening to tapes of Nixon's paranoid yakking about Ellsberg and the war is alone worth the price of admission!) It's a mini-masterpiece in the tradition of Errol Morris's "The Fog of War": The narrative thread of Ellsberg's life sews together executive-branch hubris, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal.
Two Northwesterners make cameos: The late John Ehrlichman testifying before Congress, and Seattle's Egil "Bud" Krogh, the magnanimous former White House aide and leader of the Plumbers, the extralegal team that broke into the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
What's the definition of atonement? Ellsberg wrote the introduction to Krogh's 2007 book, Integrity.
Playing through Friday (3/19) at the Landmark Varsity in the University District.
