Condemning WikiLeaks, State Promotes Pentagon Papers Film

Even as it has condemned the publication of classified diplomatic cables on WikiLeaks as a threat to human rights, the State Department has selected a documentary about the man behind the Pentagon Papers leak as part of a film series that will tour the world promoting "civil rights."

The film, entitled "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," is about the man who leaked 7,000 pages of top-secret documents about the Vietnam War to the New York Times.

Funded by the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and curated by the University Film and Video Association, the program will bring this film to more than a dozen countries, including Uzbekistan and Greece.

Daniel Ellsberg said that he hoped that "this film that the State Department is sending around the world to show a triumph of American democracy" would convey the message that "one can aspire to have a democratic system in which you don't have to get killed by the hundreds to kill a criminal regime." He spoke at a panel organized by the Silicon Valley forum, the Churchill Club, on Jan. 19.

"My new normal is to protect people who are unwittingly, unknowingly, often the subject of reprisals because of their mention in those cables," Michael H. Posner, assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, said at a Jan. 13 briefing on the state of civil liberties, NextGov's Aliya Sternstein reported.