Archival program – Updated from January 2018 broadcast – In 1969 Daniel Ellsberg secretly copied the plans for the United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967, later to be published as the Pentagon Papers. What was not known widely until late 2017 is that Ellsberg also copied the top secret plans for nuclear war that he consulted on for the Department of Defense and drafted for Secretary Robert McNamara.
Some of these papers, along with his first person report of the history of nuclear war planning, have now finally been published to high acclaim. The publication comes at an extraordinarily auspicious and dangerous time as nuclear tensions are mounting and the US president is challenging North Korea.
This program begins with two excerpts from the Nobel Awards in Oslo. ICAN, The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their efforts “to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and their “ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”.
ICAN is a coalition of non-governmental organizations in 100 countries. They are promoting the implementation of the United Nations Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty. This landmark global agreement was voted on in New York City on July 7, 2017.
Daniel Ellsberg toured for his most recent book – The Doomsday Machine. Even though the book is in large measure a memoir Ellsberg is always being asked questions about the nuclear threats of the day, North Korea and President Trump’s public announcements about fire, fury and total destruction.
Ellsberg spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on December 12, 2017. He was being interviewed by Dr. Gloria Duffy, President and CEO of the Club.
Ellsberg shows that the legacy of this most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization–and its proposed renewal under the Trump administration–threatens our very survival. No other insider with high-level access has written so candidly of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, and nothing has fundamentally changed since that era.
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