Whistle-Blowers: A Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg and John Dean

John Dean was White House Counsel to President Nixon for 1000 days and, subsequently, a whistle-blower on the Watergate scandal.  Today, Dean is a political analyst who often appears on MSNBC and is author of ten books on American political life, including Worse Than Watergate, Conservatives Without Conscience, and Broken Government. He has just reissued a paperback version of Blind Ambition, which had been out of print for two decades. 

Daniel Ellsberg is a former RAND strategist and Pentagon insider who released top secret documents known as "The Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times in 1971.  His actions directly contributed to the end of Nixon presidency and the Vietnam War.  He is the author of Secrets: a Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.

Judith Ehrlich is coproducer and codirector, with Rick Goldsmith, of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

Ehrlich's 2002 ITVS coproduction, The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It, tells the story of conscientious objectors to World War II. It was broadcast nationally on PBS and won major U.S. history film awards. She is currently in production on a film about  Italian American internment and relocation during WWII. Ehrlich has directed dozens of films for nonprofit clients on issues of peace, poverty, and citizen rights.

Rick Goldsmith is coproducer and codirector, with Judith Erlich, of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Goldsmith is an independent documentary filmmaker whose films deal with themes of risk, conscience, dissent, and commitment to ideals.   

His Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press (1996), a look at suppression and censorship in the news media, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.  Goldsmith also coproduced and codirected Everyday Heroes (2001), a behind-the-headlines documentary about AmeriCorps (the domestic Peace Corps).

Ann Beeson is a distinguished social justice lawyer and a zealous advocate for the transformative power of culture. She is currently a senior fellow with the Open Society Foundations. Having worked as an executive in law and philanthropy for many years, she is dedicating the next phase of her career to pursuing two of her passions: expanding support for the role that culture plays in social change and building the progressive base in her home state of Texas. She recently moved back to Austin from New York City with her family.

Beeson was the executive director of U.S. Programs at the Open Society Foundations from 2007 to 2011. At the Foundations, she launched programs to strengthen government transparency and address the crisis in journalism, increase the capacity of Muslim, South Asian, and Arab organizations to advocate on their own behalf, and advance achievement for African-American men and boys. 

Ann was previously the national associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she worked from 1995-2007. She argued twice before the U.S. Supreme Court, litigated numerous cases around the country, and launched groundbreaking programs to stop the erosion of civil liberties in the name of national security and to expand the use of international human rights strategies in the areas of immigrants' rights, women's rights, and racial justice.

In June 2007, Beeson was named one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America by the National Law Journal. Ann was a law clerk for the Honorable Barefoot Sanders, then chief judge for the Northern District of Texas. She holds a law degree from Emory University and a master's degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Texas.