Months Before Death, Daniel Ellsberg Warned Crisis over Ukraine & Taiwan Could Lead to Nuclear War

who inspired a new generation of whistleblowers we return now to our interview in April when I asked Dan about the latest leak of Pentagon documents by 21 year old Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira who was indicted last week on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information I asked Dan Ellsberg about what the leaks say about the war in Ukraine it's shown from

the reaction to these leaks and the major leak being once again like the Pentagon papers that when a war appears to be stalemated it may be stalemated from the inside just as well that's what the Pentagon paper showed that there is no real Prospect for progress in that killing people is on either side unjustified by any Prospect of any Humane result intelligence's estimates have shown that

a year from now we will probably be in pretty much the same positions a stalemate and will not be willing to negotiate what does that say about our uh the people who are making our foreign policy if that doesn't Define a crisis an emergency uh what would well yes I suppose the prospect that we're about to lose within a month and that's not what either is

facing yet I don't want to test how either side reacts if they're facing that if the U.S were to do what Biden is urged to do by many which is to direct U.S participation in the war shooting Russians as I say for the first time since 1920. year after two years after the first world war ended we were still shooting at Russians against Bolsheviks in 1920

every Russian knows that how many Americans know that any so uh that they have that very much in their memory when Biden is urged to send direct planes that ukrainians can't yet operate like the F-16 tanks uh that the uh they cannot get operate the tendency to send Americans to operate those tanks and get them right away into business will be very strong along with them

I can only hope that Biden will be pressed by a large part of the public press not to involve the U.S directly in that war and to be pursuing negotiations which it is currently absolutely uh eschewing is rejecting the idea of negotiations there's increasing information that one year ago in early April 2022 the zielinski and Putin essentially had an agreement with him very close to an

agreement on a pre-war uh status quo returning to a pre-war Stratus clue in Crimea and the donbas in relation to Nato and everything else but that the U.S and the British of Boris Johnson went over that and said we are not ready for that we want the war to continue we will not accept a negotiation I would say that was a crime against humanity and I

see that with all seriousness to the idea that we needed to see people killed on both sides in order to quote to weaken the Russians not for the benefit of the ukrainians but for an overall geopolitical strategy was wicked and however the war started and I think with uh both incredibly uh bad judgment by Putin and aggression and atrocity and on the other hand provocation by

the United States in the sense of policies that were consciously foreseen to increase the probability of a Russian crime of this sort tells me that I think there were a lot of Americans who wanted this war and they got exactly what they wanted even better than they could have imagined huge arms sales to our allies the U.S again having an essential role in Europe with an

indispensable enemy an enemy that we could not run the world without Russia and Russia stepped into that role very willingly to say that Russia had no choice but to do what they did do is fairly absurd that's like saying you can provoke a person to shoot themselves in the foot or in this case to kneecap themselves uh Putin had no choice but to kneecap for himself

and to give himself 800 more miles of adversarial border with Finland and to reassuscitate resuscitate NATO and get these arms sales and so forth It's just absurd I also wanted to bring up China because in 2021 you revealed that the government had drawn up plans to attack China with nuclear weapons over a crisis in the Taiwan Strait can you talk about the relevance of that today

and when you got that information yes I reveal that information right after The Economist magazine had a cover with Taiwan on the cover and a big bullsmart uh boomwork on on front of it showing that it was quote the most dangerous place in the world at that point and what was its think was a U.S intervention in the politics of China namely supporting a secession movement

an independence movement by a portion of China regarded almost universally by Chinese as part of China uh supporting it in a way which the Chinese were totally forecasting uh would lead to war that they would not accept it any more than Lincoln except in the secession of the Confederacy in this case and we were pressing for them in a way that I have to say I

can't entirely understand people act as if they want war with China how can that be selling them arms yes I see that but why they why they want to change the relation of Taiwan which has been pretty much the same since 1979 right now in a way that the Chinese guarantee us will lead to War uh is inscrutable to me and you said that these nuclear

war plans over the Taiwan Straits were made in 1958. 58 yeah that's right and by the way the there was almost a corresponding crisis earlier in 1954-55 so this was known as the second Taiwan crisis in the 50s but the idea there was that we would initiate nuclear war if the Chinese successfully bombarded by artillery islands that were within artillery range actually within visual range of

the Mainland very easy a couple of them are just a minor mile and a half off from the mainland to keep those rocks from control by Beijing we were prepared to send in U.S I'm trying to block that group blockade sending us ships to break that blockade and if the artillery kept that off or there was a danger of losing U.S ships we would hit Chinese

targets as much as as far away as Shanghai which would certainly in Eisenhower's terms and who okayed this if necessary if necessary to get through to those islands we would initiate nuclear war and he foresaw that as leading to Russian the Ally of China on on Taiwan and on Okinawa on Guam even on Japan which in turn guaranteed in terms of our planning all-out nuclear war

hitting every city in Russia and China uh killing as our estimates were at that time 600 million people and their relevance today it's over Taiwan and that was what they that's what they were planning to do then the number of Targets in China has not reduced since then uh the uh that was a time when any fighting with the Russians under Eisenhower even if it started

over Berlin was guaranteed to include targeting China as a whole as well that may have changed to some extent but to a large extent at various times we've still continued to say shouldn't we have a plan for war with Russia that doesn't include uh destroying China to which the answer is well do you really want to destroy Russia and not China also will be destroyed in

the process that would leave China ruling the world in short Russia and China have to be regarded as a joint Target conflict okay this is insanity this is a form of insanity is it kind of myth and hopes that has taken over the public it is as insane as Q Anon or as the belief that Trump is the president currently of the United States and yet

a belief that we can do less bad by striking first than if we strike second is what confronts Us in Ukraine with a real possibility of a nuclear war coming out of this conflict in other words of most life on Earth not all most life on Earth being extinguished as a matter of the control of Crimea or the Don boss or Taiwan that's insane Pentagon Papers

whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg speaking on Democracy Now in April soon after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer he died Friday at the age of 92.