https://archive.org/details/danielellsbergth00rayc
Interview with Daniel Ellsberg published in January 1990 edition of The Soviet American News. On Nuclear Weapons, the potential for peace, and perestroika.
Andrew Rice interviewed Daniel Ellsberg for a profile in New York Magazine.
Here are some passages:
“Keeping secrets was my career,” Daniel Ellsberg says. “I didn’t lose the aptitude for that when I put out the Pentagon Papers.” This might come as a shock, considering that the former Defense Department analyst is best known for leaking classified information nearly half a century ago, thus bringing about a landmark legal precedent in favor of press freedom and, indirectly, hastening the end of both the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration. But for many years, even as Ellsberg beat prosecution, became a peace activist, and wrote an autobiography titled Secrets, he still had something remarkable left to disclose….
The Doomsday Machine is being published at an alarmingly relevant moment, as North Korea is seeking the capability to target the United States with nuclear missiles, and an unpredictable president, Donald Trump, has countered with threats of “fire and fury.” Experts on North Korea say that the risk of a nuclear exchange is higher than it has been in recent memory. Ellsberg, as one of the few living members of the generation of theorists who devised our nuclear strike doctrines, has been grappling with such possibilities for much of his life. “It is kind of astonishing,” he says, “that people will put up with a non-zero chance of this happening.”….“It’s like living on Vesuvius — that’s what humans do,” Ellsberg said. “That’s why I think we’re likely to go.”….
Rick Perlstein interviewed Daniel Ellsberg in Esquire. Here are some highlights pertaining to Kim Jong Un and nuclear weapons:
Ellsberg: The war games we run against North Korea, which have been leaked, are always described as involving “decapitation.” And there have been news stories about the South Koreans developing a special “decapitation team.” Now, what can we expect? First, we can be virtually certain that Kim Jong Un has made provisions so that it would not paralyze his system just to kill him. That’s true of every nuclear state. But now let me add something that’s much less obvious. I’m pretty convinced—this is speculation, but it’s based on history and experience—that Kim has, in fact, also made provisions for massive retaliation if he is killed. A “dead hand” system….
The American people are being led to believe that they have to fear a surprise attack from Kim, which is crazy. It would be an act of self- annihilation if he did that. What he wants is a deterrent. Trump is threatening to do something crazy. Now, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that it’s totally incredible. Both sides are cultivating an image of impulsivity and backing it up with a readiness to use massive force. It really does have a chance of blowing up, and that’s the theme of my book. We should not be talking about or threatening or preparing to go to war against Kim Jong Un any more than he should be preparing to go to war against us. What does that leave? Negotiation.
[Referenced in Chapter 2 of The Doomsday Machine]
The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis: A Documented History
by Morton Halperin, 1966
From Daniel Ellsberg:
I consulted with my friend Morton Halperin when he began the research for this study, I believe, in 1963. Having participated myself in the Cuban Missile Crisis a few months earlier, I spent most of 1963 and the first half of 1964 doing research on nuclear crises at the RAND corporation in Santa Monica, California, for which Halperin was a consultant. When I joined the Defense Department as a full time employee in August 1964, as special assistant to the assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs (ISA), my purpose was really to pursue my investigation of this subject, in the hopes of reducing the chance of nuclear war in the future. When Halperin completed his study at the end of 1966, my draft notes on the offshore islands crisis of 1963 were a product of my consultation with Halperin in February 1963. In the mid 60s the crisis over Quemoy and Matsu, Offshore Islands in the Taiwan Strait, which is variously described as the Offshore Islands (OSI) Crisis, the Quemoy Crisis, or in the title of Halperin’s study “The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis,” was not generally perceived as having been a nuclear crisis, despite the fears expressed publicly by politicians and commentators that it could possibly have erupted into nuclear war. What Halperin discovered in his classified (Top Secret) study, was that the nuclear dimensions of this confrontation were taken very seriously by the Eisenhower administration, and in particular the military advisers and commanders involved. Indeed, Christian Herder, who succeeded John Foster Dulles as secretary of state, was reported to have said later, “The Cuban Missile Crisis is often described as the first serious nuclear crisis, those of us who lived through the Quemoy crisis definitely regarded that as the first serious nuclear crisis.” The reasons for this will be obvious every few pages of this study.
[Referenced in Chapter 8 of The Doomsday Machine]
Daniel Ellsberg’s Draft of the BNSP, May 9, 1961 (from his archives)
Parts of the same draft, obtained by the National Security Archive via FOIA, 1999
Ellsberg’s notes on the BNSP—notes written 1961, typed 1976
Referenced in:
Introduction
- Strategic Objectives and Command and Control Problems by Daniel Ellsberg (1960)
- “A Year of Disobedience and a Criticality of Consciousness” – Preface, Testimony, and Afterword by Daniel Ellsberg (1973)
Chapter 2
- The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis by Morton Halperin (1966)
Chapter 8
Chapter 20
P. 310: Lecture Series on “The Art of Coercion: A Study of Threats in Economic Conflict and War,” 1959
ACLU lawyers believe that Trump is likely to prosecute journalists and editors for publishing leaks of classified information, for the first time, using the Espionage Act. So far, the Espionage Act has been used for leaks to the American public only against government officials or former ones, of which I was the first, for the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
There were only two other such prosecutions before Obama; he prosecuted nine cases, or three times as many as all previous presidents together. It’s being taken for granted that Trump will follow Obama’s pattern, but also believed that he will go further to use the Act against reporters for the first time.
The Supreme Court might (or might not) find this application unconstitutional under the First Amendment (though the plain language of the Act–which was meant for spies, not leakers, and used only for spies before my case, applies as well to anyone who copies, holds, or passes on information “related to the national defense” including journalists, publishers (like Julian Assange or the New York Times) or even readers of the newspapers (!) as well as to officials.
Greg Mitchell reviewed The Doomsday Machine on BillMoyer.com:
“At a time when nuclear dangers grow, along with activism to combat them—elevated just this week by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons receiving the Nobel Peace Prize—Ellsberg’s book is a timely reminder of the nuclear threat and essential reading in the Trump era.”
Read the full review via the link above.
Here’s what Daniel Ellsberg said in today’s Freedom of the Press Foundation press release announcing its new board member, Edward Snowden:
[Snowden] is the quintessential American whistleblower, and a personal hero of mine, Leaks are the lifeblood of the republic and, for the first time, the American public has been given the chance to debate democratically the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Accountability journalism can’t be done without the courageous acts exemplified by Snowden, and we need more like him. . . .
The secrecy system in this country is broken. No one is punished for using secrecy to conceal dangerous policies, lies, or crimes, yet concerned employees who wish to inform the American public about what the government is doing under their name are treated as spies. Our ‘accountability’ mechanisms are a one-sided secret court, which acts as a rubber stamp, and a Congressional ‘oversight’ committee, which has turned into the NSA’s public relations firm. Edward Snowden had no choice but to go to the press with information. Far from a crime, Snowden’s disclosures are a true constitutional moment, where the press has held the government to account using the First Amendment, when the other branches refused.
Daniel Ellsberg’s opinion piece in the Guardian today:
In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution.
Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.
The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa – but that unconstitutionally sweeping warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, almost totally deferential to executive requests. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: “It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp.”