The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of Daniel Ellsberg, Former Nuclear War Planner

in December 2017 Dan Ellsberg joins us to talk about his book the Doomsday Machine Confessions of a nuclear war planner in 1961 Dan Ellsberg was a consultant for the Pentagon in the white house where he drafted President John F Kennedy's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's plans for nuclear war so you made copies of top secret reports for plans about nuclear war years before you copied the

for nuclear war by President Eisenhower which was fairly shocking to McGeorge Bundy even though Kennedy chose to renew that delegation as other presidents have but I was given the job of improving the Eisenhower plans which was not a very high bar actually at that time because they were on their face the worst plans in the history of warfare a number of people who saw them but

very few civilians ever got to look at them in fact The Joint Chiefs couldn't really get the targets out of General Lemay at the Strategic Air Command and there was a good reason for that they were insane they called for First Strike plans which was by order of President Eisenhower he didn't want any plan for a limited war of any kind with the Soviet Union under

any circumstances because that would enable the Army to ask for enormous numbers of divisions or even tactical nuclear weapons to deal with the Soviets so he required that the only plan for fighting Soviets under any circumstances such as an encounter in the Berlin Corridor the access to West Berlin or over Iran which was already a flash point at that point or Yugoslavia if they'd gone in

however the war started with an uprising in East Germany for example however it got started Eisenhower's directed plan was for all-out war in a first initiation of nuclear war assuming the Soviets had not used nuclear weapons and that plan called in our first strike for hitting every city actually every town over twenty five thousand in the USSR and every city in China a war with Russia

would inevitably involve immediate attacks on every city in China in the course of doing this there were no reserves everything was to be thrown as soon as it was available it was a vast Trucking operation of thermonuclear weapons over to the USSR but not only the USSR the captive Nations the east Europe satellites in the Warsaw Pact were to be hit in their air defenses which

were all near cities or transport points there are Communications of any kind though they were BT they were to be annihilated as well I couldn't believe when I saw these at the Joint Chiefs actually had ever calculated how many people they would actually kill in this course in fact Colonels were friends of mine in the air staff told me they'd never seen an actual figure for

the total casualties we had exact figures of the number of targets and how many planes would be needed and every sort of thing many calculations but not victims so I drafted a question which the aid to make George Bundy Bob Comer sent to the Joint Chiefs in the name of the president and the question was in the event of you're carrying out your general nuclear war

plans which were first strike plans how many will die first I asked in the USSR in China alone in the thought that by the way they'd be embarrassed to discover to say we have to have more time we've never really calculated that I was wrong and my friends were wrong in the Air Force they came back with an answer very quickly 325 million people in the

USSR and China alone well then I asked all right how many all together and a few days later a hundred million in east Europe the captive Nations another 100 million in West Europe are allies from our own strikes by Fallout depending on which way the wind flew and however the wind blew a third hundred million in adjoining countries neutral countries like Austria and Finland or Afghanistan

then Japan Northern India and so forth a total a 600 million people that was their time by the way when the population of the world was 3 billion and that was an underestimate of their casualties a hundred holocausts it was very clear that they hadn't included I hadn't asked actually what would Russian retaliation be against us and against West Europe they were thought at that time

wrongly to have hundreds of weapons against the U.S but they did have hundreds of weapons against West Europe no question West Europe would go under any circumstances if we were defending West Europe Germany for example we were planning to destroy the continent in order to save it 600 million that was a hundred holocausts and when I held the piece of paper in my hand that had

that figure that they'd sent out unembarrassedly you know proudly to the president here's what we will do I thought this is the most evil plan that has ever existed it's insane the weapons the Machinery that will carry this out this is no hypothetical plan like Herman Khan might have conceived at the Doomsday Machine that he thought up at the Rand Corporation is my colleague this was

an actual War plan for how we would use the existing weapons so many of which I'd seen already that time Pentagon Papers whistleblower Den Ellsberg speaking on Democracy Now in December 2017 about his book the Doomsday Machine Confessions of a nuclear war planner