Hearts and Minds (1974)

Daniel Ellsberg : The question used to be: might it be possible that we were on the wrong side in the Vietnamese War? But, we weren't on the wrong side. We are the wrong side.
Daniel Ellsberg : We thought of ourselves, I think, as trying to defeat Communists. Defeat. Accepting a view of the Walt Rostow kind of view of covert aggression of some kind. The kind of view that enabled you to think of the conflict in World War II terms. That was an unquestioned assumption. It had an idealistic flavor to it. But, it was the underpinning of an imperial policy, basically. I shared the assumption. Very easily. And felt it, as an idealistic one, really. We were doing something for them.
Daniel Ellsberg : The people who are living in the jungle, under the bombs, without pay, without their families, are doing so because they're fighting for independence. Because they are fighting for, in this case, for unification. They're fighting for revolution. Of course, the name for a conflict in which you are opposing a revolution is counter-revolution. And this was something we never admitted to ourselves at all. It's what we were really doing.
Daniel Ellsberg : The American public was lied to month-by-month by each of these five Administrations. As I say, its a tribute to the American public that their leaders perceived that they had to be lied to. It's not a tribute to us that it was so easy to fool the public.

Daniel Ellsberg: Self - Former Aide, Defense Dept., Rand Corp.