From Ellsberg’s 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” Daniel Ellsberg is best known for having made public the Pentagon Papers in 1971. They showed the world that the U.S. government had lied about planning war on Vietnam and using a lie to start it.
At the same time Ellsberg had copied and taken 7,000 pages from the nuclear command and control system in the US – that also contained the targeting for a first strike launch against the Soviet Union and China. Ellsberg always said that this was information even more vital for the world to have than the Pentagon Papers. And in part one of this program he described how these records were lost in their hiding place after a landslide .
Daniel Ellsberg managed to reconstruct the files from his own notes and from material that now has become declassified. That led to his 2017 book: “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner”
On Dec 13, 2017, Daniel Ellsberg was on stage at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He had an engaging conversation with the Club’s President, Dr. Gloria Duffy. She takes Ellsberg back to 1961, when Ellsberg gets the data on the number of deaths of civilians in a nuclear war to pass on to President Kennedy.
This broadcast is part of a celebration of the work and life of Daniel Ellsberg. He recently disclosed that he has incurable cancer.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
