07/03/23 07/03/23 [captioning made possible democracy now! amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> it was the evening of october 1, 1969, when i first smuggled several hundred pages of top-secret documents out of my safe at the rand corporation. the study contained 47 volumes, 7000 pages. my plan was to xerox the study and reveal the secret history of the vietnam war to the american people.

amy: pentagon papers whistleblower daniel ellsberg, has died at the age of 92 just months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. his actions helped take down president nixon, end the war in vietnam, and lead to a major victory for press freedom. henry kissinger once called ellsberg "the most dangerous man in america." today we honor the life and legacy of ellsberg in his own words. >> if i were asked what regrets i have today, they would have to do with doing a job i was asked to do that i knew was wrong for the country, and i did it to the best of my ability. the war was carried on by people who acted like that amy: we will also look at how dan ellsberg became deeply involved in the anti-nuclear movement, which he detailed in his book "the doomsday machine: confessions of a nuclear war planner" and his concerns about ukraine, china, and more.

all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. today we spend the hour remembering the life and legacy of one of the world's most famous whistleblowers, daniel ellsberg. he died on june 16 at the age of 92 just months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. his family said he died peacefully at home, in no pain, and released a statement that "daniel was a seeker of truth and a patriotic truth-teller, an antiwar activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, a dear friend to many, and an inspiration to countless more." his son robert ellsberg shared how his father once said he would want his gravestone to say, "he became a part of the anti-vietnam and anti-nuclear movement."

in 1971, daniel ellsberg, then a top military strategist working for the rand corporation, risked life in prison by secretly copying and then leaking 7000 pages of top-secret documents outlining the secret history of the u.s. war in vietnam. the leak would end up helping take down president nixon, help end the war in vietnam, and lead to a major victory for press freedom. henry kissinger once called ellsberg "the most dangerous man in america." in 2009, a documentary of the same name told his story. pres. johnson: we are going to win. pres. nixon: quit making national heroes out of those who steal secrets and publish them in the newspaper. >> the hundreds of thousands we were killing was unjustified homicide,

and i couldn't see the difference between that and murder. murder had to be stopped. >> this weekend, portions of a highly classified pentagon document came to light for all the world to see and brought cries of outrage from washington. pres. nixon: we gotta get this son of a bitch. >> yes, kennedy did send in troops in violation of the geneva accord. johnson did start the buildup before he said he was going to. these guys were lying through their teeth when they were talking to us. and here it is in black and white. there's no way of denying it. >> "the times'" building is encircled by armed guards. we are printing tomorrow a top-secret government document. >> a name has now come out as the possible source of "the times" pentagon documents. it is that of daniel ellsberg, a top policy analyst for the defense and state department. >> i am prepared to answer to all the consequences of these decisions. >> henry kissinger said that daniel ellsberg was "the most dangerous man in america" and he had to be stopped. >> the study was 47 volumes, 7000 pages.

it would take me months of xeroxing. we've dropped another 200,000 tons of bombs on indochina. that's 10 hiroshimas, one hiroshima a week. >> what has remained significant about the release of the pentagon papers is the decision by a public official to give priority to conscience as compared to career. pres. nixon: daniel ellsberg, whatever his intentions, gave aid and comfort to the enemy. >> it was a crime from the start, carried out by four presidents. and now a fifth president was doing the same. i am not going to be part of this system of lying anymore. it wasn't that we were on the wrong side.

we were the wrong side. amy: that's the trailer for "the most dangerous man in america: daniel ellsberg and the pentagon papers" directed by judith ehrlich and rick goldsmith. the nixon administration went to extraordinary lengths to silence and punish ellsberg, including breaking into his psychiatrist's office. he was charged with violating the espionage act and faced over 100 years in jail. but the government's misconduct led to charges against him and anthony russo being dismissed. ellsberg said he had been inspired to leak the documents by antiwar protesters. in fact, shortly before "the new york times" first reported on the pentagon papers, ellsberg took part in an antiwar protest in washington, d.c., on may day 1971 as part of an affinity group with noam chomsky and howard zinn. over the past 50 years,

daniel ellsberg remained a leading critic of u.s. militarism and u.s. nuclear weapons policy, as well as a prominent advocate for other whistleblowers. he wrote a memoir "secrets: a memoir of vietnam and the pentagon papers," as well as the 2017 book "the doomsday machine: confessions of a nuclear war planner." today we'll feature our interviews with ellsberg over the years about vietnam as well as ukraine, china, and the threat of nuclear war. we begin with our most recent interview, which was april 27, when ellsberg joined us from his home in kensington, california. he talked about how he went from being a military analyst to a whistleblower and why he risked going to jail in an effort to end the vietnam war. >> just yesterday was my wife's birthday. and we recall that it was on april 17, 1965 -- not everyone can remember their first date like that,

but that was the first sds march against the war. and i was working in the pentagon on the war, pursuing the war. she was going to interview people in a nationwide interview program she had, and she induced me to carry her uher heavy phonograph around with her -- tape recorder, to interview people. and i marched up to the white house hoping -- carrying that recorder and hoping that i would not be in any picture of "the washington post," where my colleagues at the pentagon would say, "what? he's protesting the war?" on my one day off from the war during this. but the next day, i induced her to go to the cherry blossoms, and that was our first date. and we've been together ever since. so that was 57 years ago. amy: she really was the one who exposed you, is this right, to the antiwar movement by forcing you to carry her tape recorder? i mean, you were protesting right outside where you worked. you had gone from rand corporation to the pentagon.

>> actually, it was outside the lincoln memorial where we heard the speeches, and then we marched toward the white house and around the white house. i went back that evening to the pentagon, where i was working, having gotten her to promise to meet me the next day to go see the cherry blossoms. but i was very much in sympathy with what i was hearing on that stadium from i.f. stone and others about the war. i felt at that time, as a cold warrior, that we were picking the wrong place to plant the flag on this one. this was a loser. and i was not enthusiastic about our getting involved in it. but that was my job, and i did it all too well. if i were asked what regrets i have today, they would have to do with doing a job i was asked to do that i knew was wrong for the country, and i did it to the best of my ability. the war was carried on by people who acted like that. amy: so i want to talk about what you decided to do

and how seminal, how key, the antiwar movement was to your thinking, not only meeting patricia, but also seeing those war resisters, what were called draft dodgers, the draft resisters, who said they'd rather be in prison than on the frontlines in the war in vietnam. >> well, many, many people -- when the pentagon papers came out, a lot of people in the antiwar movement said, "what's new about this? this what we've been saying all along," which was true, which was we had taken up a french neocolonial role, an imperial role, essentially, against the self-government of vietnam and sovereignty of vietnam, and were doomed to suffer the same fate as the french, essentially, to keep killing people and losing people until we finally decided to go home and leave them ruling their own home. well, that was known inside. the insiders who were pursuing the war and dropping the bombs, millions of tons of bombs --

it came to me even later than this -- knew the same thing and were doing it likewise. the question was what to do about it. all the people i was working with in the government by that time felt -- everyone i could think of felt the war was hopeless, essentially.

footsteps of rosa parks in the south and martin luther king and others, and to say, "no, this is wrong. you have to do this over our bodies. we will not participate in this, because it's wrong." and i realized, when i met young men like this, like bob eaton and randy kehler, who were on their way to prison,

simply to make the strongest message they could, which i believed, as well, that the war was wrong. i realized i could think of doing what they did, too, instead of just talking to insiders, who felt as i did but agreed there was just nothing you could do about it, as long as the president wanted to carry on the war and his subordinates wanted to keep their jobs under the president, that they could, in fact, dissociate themselves from it and denounce the war openly. very recently, we've seen very many comments that what the pentagon papers showed was that the war was not winnable. actually, that had -- and that's why i gave the pentagon papers, and that was the effect of them. actually, none of the people who went to prison to protest the war did so because they thought the war was not winnable. they did it because they thought the war was wrong. and that's something, i think,

that people have not succeeded -- have not been willing to recognize all these years, not just that the war -- not just that the u.s. had taken on some noble measure that it wasn't quite energetic enough to pursue or had other -- or was easily distracted from, or something like that, but that our country was, like so many other countries, capable of doing wrong and killing people without good reason, and, in effect, an imperial kind of operation like that of the japanese or the french after the japanese or the chinese before either of them. and those are the footsteps we were walking in. well, i think, to this day, the very idea that the u.s. is in some ways comparable to those empires, that it is an empire, is a taboo, and a very unfortunate one because it makes it impossible to understand what's going on. why are we doing this? what's happening? why in the world are we in this position,

time after time, of fighting against the self-determination or the nationalism of other countries, and taking on those murderous tasks as opposed to dealing with problems at home? i think of our country as a covert empire, where "covert" is a term of art in the pentagon and the cia, in particular. and i worked with cia people in vietnam. my immediate boss there was a retired cia general, general edward lansdale. and the word "covert" means plausibly deniable. it means not just secret, i'm doing something that i don't tell you about, but that i plant evidence to suggest that i'm doing something different and i'm not doing it, somebody else is doing it, and the person above me is somebody else -- layer after layer to prevent the president from holding any accountability for what's happening. i think we not only feel we need and do be able to plausibly deny that we are an empire,

that we run other people's governments, other people's police forces, that we decide who goes to jail and who gets shot in that country. and second, we deny the means we do to keep it a covert empire -- assassinations, paramilitary, military buildups, and even overt wars, in some cases, as in vietnam or iraq. amy: dan, i wanted to go to that decision you made after giving your 13-year-old son robert a copy of thoreau's essay on civil disobedience, the civil disobedience you engaged in. this is a clip from that 2009 documentary "the most dangerous man in america: daniel ellsberg and the pentagon papers." >> it was the evening of october 1, 1969, when i first smuggled several hundred pages of top-secret documents out of my safe at the rand corporation.

the study contained 47 volumes, 7000 pages. my plan was to xerox the study and reveal the secret history of the vietnam war to the american people. >> the fbi was trying to find out who gave "the new york times" a copy of the pentagon's secret study. >> pow! like a thunderclap, you get "the new york times" publishing the pentagon papers, and the country is panicking. >> this is an attack on the whole integrity of government. if whole file cabinets can be stolen and then made available to the press, you can't have orderly government anymore. >> a name has now come out as the possible source of "the times" pentagon documents. it is that of daniel ellsberg, a top policy analyst for the defense and state department. pres. nixon: i think it is time in this country to quit making national heroes out of those who steal secrets and publish them in the newspaper.

>> in the first year of marriage, we're talking about him going to prison for the rest of his life. >> dr. ellsberg, do you have any concern about the possibility of going to prison for this? >> wouldn't you go to prison to help end this war? >> we felt so strongly that we were dealing with a national security crisis. henry kissinger said that dr. daniel ellsberg was "the most dangerous man in america" and he had to be stopped. "the most dangerous man" in america by judith ehrlich and rick goldsmith. i remember when we had you on, dan, so many different times, beginning 27 years ago. you were one of our first guests on democracy now! but when this documentary came out, you and patricia, your wife, came on the show with the directors. this goes to that point where you understood the stakes of what you were going to do. you brought your two little kids, 13-year-old robert, 10-year-old mary, to help you --

not that they completely understood what you were doing -- xerox the 7000 pages of the secret history of vietnam, u.s. involvement in vietnam? >> that's right. i hadn't really meant to bring my daughter, but on the second occasion -- at all. she was only 10. but she had complained about being left in the car when i went up to do some last-minute xeroxing with robert. and once she was up there, she complained about being given nothing to do. so we gave her scissors. and when, by mistake, the police came to the door for the second time during this project because the owner of the shop had not turned the key correctly and had set off an alarm in the police station -- so when the police arrived at the door, they found my son, who was 13 at that time. robert was running the xerox machine, and i was collating on the floor various copies we were making.

and mary, who was 10, was cutting "top secret" off the tops and bottoms of the pages with the scissors -- kind of a family project. so they saw how innocent it was and they left. but my objective with my son, in particular, was to let him see that there were times when the best thing you could do, you really needed to say no to a government policy even at the risk of prison. and i wanted him to see that i had not gone off my nut, as i would be described shortly, i was sure, that i was not acting as a traitor or fanatically or hysterically. i was just doing something in a businesslike way that i felt had to be done even though it had a risk. i wanted to plant that idea in his life. and it took hold, as it did with my daughter. my son is the editor-in-chief of orbis books, the catholic seminary of liberation theology

publishing house, and my daughter is head of a violence against women project, a worldwide project at american university, both of them having been arrested at various times. it's a family that -- amy: and you wanted them to know this because you recognized that this could be among the last time you were spending with them. >> i would see them. yes, i thought they'd otherwise just see me through heavy glass in a prison and would have -- the way that julian assange has had to grow up with his young sons in his total-security prison in belmarsh for having facilitated truth-taking of the same kind that i've done. as a matter of fact, his is the first prosecution of a journalist for putting information out. and it will not be the last if he's successfully extradited over here. so he has a couple of children who've seen him, literally, only in prison -- and better than not seeing him at all.

that's certainly the case. but what he -- i revealed this year that i had the information from julian assange, essentially, that chelsea manning had given assange and which was later put out in the papers. i had that before the papers, before the newspapers had them, meaning that i was as indictable right now as i'm talking to you as any of the people who have been indicted by this justice department, because they're working with a law whose plain language is, on the one hand, unconstitutional from the point of view of the first amendment, but, read properly, just says that anyone who reads or handles or stores a piece of paper that has been marked to be protected, marked classified by the government is subject to imprisonment. that implies even to readers of "the new york times" and very definitely to journalists, like charlie savage or the publishers or julian himself.

in other words, in that respect, we've gone backwards since that day. that was -- after all, mine was the first prosecution of anyone for telling the truth to the american people. and there have been several dozen since. and the first one of a journalist, actually, is i think, just preceding the first one of a reader, before we get there. so this law, the espionage act, very much needs to be repealed or rescinded in such a way that it does not serve like a british official secrets act, which was a perfect law for an empire. amy: dan, even before the pentagon papers were published in "the times," but after you had given the secret -- the top-secret report to "the times," you were trying to end this war any which way. we're broadcasting this show on may day, on may 1. and it was may 1, 1971,

that you led a small affinity group that included, what, howard zinn, the late great historian, and noam chomsky, to washington to protest the war. i think howard would get arrested later that day. but can you talk about that moment, that protest with howard, noam, and others? >> well, the idea was that if they won't stop -- it was rennie davis' idea -- that if they won't stop the war, we'll stop the government. and so, they had -- they had about 25,000 people, which was not enough, actually, to do it. but we were in affinity groups. and as you say, i was in a very privileged one, privileged for me, with howard zinn and noam chomsky and marilyn young and fred -- a number of others, mitch goodman, mark ptashne. and we did, in fact, get beaten over the head on the streets on several times and got the advantage of testing -- field testing, their pepper sprays directly into the face,

which is very effective, if i can -- i'll give a little blurb for it here. it is very disorienting indeed. and then, again, we thought it was pretty much over when they began just clearing the streets of georgetown by arresting everybody there, including, to their fault, a number of congressman's children who were shopping in georgetown. 13,000 people were arrested and put in rfk stadium, without any warrants, without any paperwork as to why they'd been arrested, why they were there. so in the end, they were paid a small indemnity for having done that. amy: daniel ellsberg, pentagon papers whistleblower speaking in april. he died june 16 at the age of 92 just months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. when we come back, we hear from daniel ellsberg on ukraine, on china, the threat of nuclear war, and more.

■■ [music break] amy: "written in the mind of man, song for daniel ellsberg" by james stein.

this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. today we remember pentagon papers whistleblower daniel ellsberg, who died on june 16 at the age of 92 just months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. his actions helped to take down president nixon, end the war in vietnam, and lead to a major victory for press freedom. over the past 50 years, ellsberg remained an anti-war and anti-nuclear activist who inspired a new generation of whistleblowers. we return now to our interview in our april interview when i asked dan ellsberg about what a recent leak of pentagon documents say about the war in ukraine. >> it's shown from the reaction to these leaks, 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 papers showed,

that there is no real prospect for progress and that killing people is, on either side, unjustified by any prospect of any humane result. intelligence 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 -- the people who are making our foreign policy? if that doesn't define a crisis and emergency, 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 direct u.s. participation in the war,

shooting russians, as i say, for the first time since 1920. a 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 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 that they cannot yet operate, the tendency to send americans to operate those tanks and get them right away into business will be very strong along with that. i can only hope that biden will be pressed by a large part of the public, pressed not to involve the u.s. directly in that war, and to be pursuing negotiations, which it is currently absolutely eschewing, is rejecting the idea of negotiations.

there's increasing information that one year ago, in early april 2022, zelenskyy and putin essentially had an agreement, were within very close to an agreement, on a prewar status quo, returning to a prewar status quo in crimea and the donbas in relation to nato and everything else, but that the u.s. and the british, boris johnson, went over 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 say that with all seriousness to the idea that we needed to see people killed on both sides in order "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 both incredibly 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. putin had no choice but to kneecap himself and to give himself 800 more miles of adversarial border with finland and to resuscitate nato and get these arms sales and so forth -- is just absurd. amy: 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 revealed that information right after "the economist" magazine had a cover with taiwan on the cover and a big bull's mark, bull mark on the front of it showing that it was,

"the most dangerous place" in the world at that point. and what was at stake 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, supporting it in a way which the chinese were totally forecasting would lead to war, that they would not accept it any more than lincoln accepted the secession of the confederacy in this case. and we were pressing for that 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 is inscrutable to me.

amy: and you said that these nuclear war plans over the taiwan straits were made in 1958? >> 1958, yeah, that's right. and by the way, there was almost a corresponding crisis earlier, in 1954, 1955, so this was known as the second taiwan crisis in the 1950's. 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 mile or mile and a half off from the mainland. to keep those rocks from control by beijing, we were prepared to send in u.s. planes to block that blockade -- send in u.s. 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 ok'd 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 -- attacks 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, killing, as our estimates were at that time, 600 million people, 100 -- amy: and their relevance today? >> 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.

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 destroying china?" to which the answer is, "well, do you really want to destroy russia and not china also? we'll 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 complex, ok? this is insanity. this is a form of insanity as a kind of myth and hoax that has taken over the public. it is as insane as qanon or as the belief that trump is the president currently of the united states.

and yet, the 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 donbas or taiwan. that's insane. who is going to face up to that? i call again to the young people like greta thunberg has mobilized on us to say, "the adults are not taking care of this, and our future absolutely depends on this changing somehow fast, now." the picture i was looking at, which i can show you here, i guess -- i just happen to have it by me here -- was when i was in norway.

i was getting an olof palme award. and we went over to where this girl had just started fridays for the future and a strike on climate -- at first, days and weeks entirely by herself. and then, eventually, she was joined by a few others, as you can see in that picture. this was, i think, in early january after she had started. she had 50 or 60 people in the snow on friday morning, not saturday morning, not sunday morning but instead of going to school. people said -- her teacher said, "this is all very well, what she's doing, but she needs to be studying in school." and her attitude was, "what is there going to be to study about, or what use will that make, if the climate has changed the way it's going?" the reason i admire her so much is not only the brilliance of this movement, her acting on her own initially, taking the initiative, inviting others,

doing it in the form of a general strike, which is -- i think, is a really important way of demonstrating nonviolent action, their withdrawal of support. amy: daniel ellsberg, speaking in april. he died june 16. when we come back, we talk to him about "the doomsday machine: confessions of a nuclear war planner." ■■ [music break]

amy: "thank you daniel ellsberg" by bloodrock. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. today we remember pentagon papers whistleblower daniel ellsberg, who died on june 16 at the age of 92 just months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. in december 2017, ellsberg joined us to talk about his book "the doomsday machine: confessions of a nuclear war planner." the book is based in part on his role drafting plans for nuclear war for defense secretary robert mcnamara in 1961

while john f kennedy was president. amy: so you made copies of top-secret reports for plans about nuclear war years before you copied the pentagon papers -- >> that's right. amy: and released them to the press? >> essentially, my notes, and sometimes verbatim excerpts, not the entire plans themselves, but on plans that were then unknown to the president, to begin with, to president kennedy. i briefed his aide mcgeorge bundy in his first month in office on the nature of the plans and some of the other problems, like the delegation of authority to theater commanders 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 a 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 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 flashpoint at that point, or yugoslavia, if they had 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 25,000 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 -- pardon me -- 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, their transport points, their communications of any kind. so they were to be annihilated, as well. i couldn't believe when i saw these that the joint chiefs actually had ever calculated how many people they would actually kill in this course.

in fact, colonels who were friends of mine in the air staff told me they had 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 aide to mcgeorge bundy, bob komer, sent to the joint chiefs in the name of the president. and the question was, in the event of your carrying out your general nuclear war plans, which were first-strike plans, how many will die? first i asked, in the ussr and 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 altogether?" and a few days later, 100 million in east europe, the captive nations, another 100 million in west europe, our allies, from our own strikes, by fallout, depending on which way the wind blew. and however the wind blew, a third 100 million in adjoining countries, neutral countries, like austria and finland, or afghanistan then, japan, northern india and so forth -- a total of 600 million people. that was a time, by the way, when the population of the world was 3 billion. and that was an underestimate of their casualties, 100 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 100 holocausts. and when i held the piece of paper in my hand that had that figure, that they had 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 -- this machinery that will carry this out, this was no hypothetical plan like herman kahn might have conceived at the doomsday machine that he thought up at the rand corporation as my colleague. this was an actual war plan for how we would use the existing weapons, many of which i had seen already that time. juan: dan ellsberg, the colossal carnage that they were envisioning as a result of this first-strike use was doubly --

made doubly worse, as you reveal, by the fact that the image that we have that the president is the one who holds the switch or has his hand on the button is not true, that many people have the capacity to initiate a nuclear war. if you could you talk about that as well? >> to start with, even if it were only the president, no one man -- really, no one nation -- should have the ability -- the ability even -- to threaten or to carry out 100 holocausts at his will. that machinery should never have existed. and it does exist right now, and every president has had that power and this president does have that power. but the recent discussions of that, which emphasize his sole authority to do that, don't take account of the fact that he has authority to delegate. and he has delegated. every president has delegated. i don't know the details of what president trump has done

or since the cold war. every president in the cold war, right through carter and reagan, had delegated, in fact, to theater commanders in case communications were cut off. that means that the idea that the president is the only one with sole power to issue an order that will be recognized as an authentic authorized order is totally false. how many fingers are on buttons? probably no president has ever really known the details of that. i knew in 1961, for example, that admiral harry d. felt in cincpac, commander-in-chief of pacific for whom i worked as a researcher, had delegated that to 7th fleet, down to various commanders, and they, in turn, had delegated down to people. so when you say, "how many altogether feel authorized?" if their communications are cut off -- and that happened part of every day in the pacific when i was there. communications got better but the delegations never changed.

we have never allowed it to be possible that an enemy could paralyze our retaliation by hitting our president or our command and control. and neither did the russians. when president carter and then president reagan advertised the fact that their plans emphasized decapitation, hitting moscow, above all, which the french and british always planned to do, by the way with their smaller forces -- and when that became clear, the russians instituted what they called a dead hand, a perimeter system, in russian, which assured that if moscow was destroyed, other commanders would have the power and would be told to launch their strikes. there was even a plan to do that automatically by computer, as a number of our military always recommended, to make the whole thing computerized, as in the doomsday machine of herman kahn and stanley kubrick. but generally, they allow for lower-level majors, colonels to decide "the time has come.

we've lost our commanders. the time has come to go." that's almost certainly true in north korea right now. amy: pentagon papers whistleblower daniel ellsberg, speaking on democracy now! in december 2017 about his book "the doomsday machine: confessions of a nuclear war planner." two years later in 2019, i spoke to dan ellsberg a day after the justice department charged wikileaks founder julian assange with 17 counts of violating the espionage act for publishing u.s. military and diplomatic documents exposing u.s. war crimes. assange is locked up in london and faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited and convicted in the united states. >> yesterday is a day that will be -- live in the history of journalism, of law in this country, and of civil liberties in this country

because it was a direct attack on the first amendment, an unprecedented one. there hasn't actually been such a significant attack on the freedom of the press, the first amendment, which is the bedrock of our republic, really, our form of government, since my case in 1971, 48 years ago. i was indicted as a source. and i warned newsmen then that that would not be the last indictment of a source if i were convicted. well, i wasn't convicted. the charges were dropped on governmental misconduct. and it was another 10 years before anybody else faced that charge under the espionage act again, samuel loring morison. and it was not until president obama that nine cases were brought, as i had been warning for so long. but my warning really was that it wasn't going to stop there, that almost inevitably there would be a stronger attack directly on the foundations of journalism, against editors, publishers, and journalists themselves.

and we've now seen that as of yesterday. that's a new front in president trump's war on the free press, which he regards as the enemy of the people. amy: and the trump administration saying julian assange is not a publisher, is not a journalist, that's why he is not protected by the first amendment? >> in the face of this new indictment, which -- and let me correct something that's been said just a little wrong by everybody so far. he doesn't just face 170 years. that's for the 17 counts on the espionage act, each worth 10. plus, he's still facing the five-year conspiracy charge that he started out with a few weeks ago. i was sure that the administration did not want to keep julian assange in jail just for five years. so i've been expecting these espionage act charges. i really expected them later after he was extradited, because adding them now makes it a little more complicated for britain

to extradite him now, as i understand it. they're not supposed to extradite for political offenses or for political motives, and this is obviously for both political motives and political offenses. so from julian assange's point of view, it makes extradition a little more difficult. why then did they bring it right now? well, coming back to the case, by the way, that i faced, i faced only 11 felony act charges, each worth 10 years in prison, plus a conspiracy charge worth five. so i was facing exactly 115 years in prison. he's facing exactly 175. now, that's not a difference that makes any difference. in both cases, it's a question of a life sentence. i think that the reason they brought these charges so soon, they had until june 12, was to lay out -- the necessity to lay out for extradition all the charges they plan to bring. and i don't assume these are the last ones. they've got a couple weeks left to string up some new charges.

they started out with a charge that made julian look something other than a normal journalist. the help to hacking a password sounded like something that, even in the digital age, perhaps most journalists wouldn't do, and that would hope to separate him from the support of other journalists. in this case, when they had to lay out their larger charge, this is straight journalism. they mention, for instance, that he solicited investigative material, he solicited classified information -- terribly, he didn't just passively receive it over the transom. i can't count the number of times i have been solicited for classified information starting with the pentagon papers, but long after that, and that's by every member of the responsible press that i dealt with -- "the times," "the post," ap, you name it. that's journalism. so what they have done is recognizable, i think, this time to all journalists,

that they are in the crosshairs of this one. they may not have known enough about digital performance to help a source conceal her identity by using new passwords, as julian was charged with. they may not be able to do that. but every one of them has eagerly received classified information and solicited it. so every journalist -- and not only in this country and not only at the federal level. already, brian carmody in san francisco has had his house broken into with sledgehammers to get all his material, looking for his source in a local dispute. daniel hale, nsa, has been brought -- i think that president trump has, in effect, opened the doors to these kinds of constitutions in state and country jurisdictions. state and county, i meant to say, jurisdictions. and undoubtedly in other countries, as well, that may not have a first amendment but have --

looking to some precedent for the united states. that's what it's able to do. so there's a full-scale, multi-front war going on not only in this country, and president trump is leading the way. amy: we end our show with daniel ellsberg in his own words on may 18, 2018, when i spoke to him at a right livelihood laureate gathering at the university of california-santa cruz. i asked him what message he had for government insiders who are considering becoming whistleblowers? >> my message to them is, don't do what i did. don't wait until the bombs are actually falling or thousands more have died before you do what i wish i had done years earlier, in 1964 or even 1961, on the nuclear issue. and that is, reveal the truth that you know, the dangerous truths that are being withheld by the government, at whatever cost to yourself, whatever risk that may take. consider doing that because a war's worth of lives

may be at stake. or in the case of the two existential crises i'm talking about, the future of humanity is at stake. so many graduating classes, i think, have been taught -- have been told year after year for half a century that they face a crossroads or that much depends on what they do. that's no exaggeration right now. it's this generation, not the next one, the people living right now, that have to change these problems fast. and i think truth-telling is crucial to mobilize that. amy: what is the information that you think most needs to be revealed right now? >> well, i'm certain that there are studies in the pentagon and cia and the nsc right now that reveal two things -- that it would be disastrous, catastrophic, to go to war against north korea even though the immediate casualties would be measured in millions rather than billions,

which is the nuclear winter problem. and likewise, it would be catastrophic to be at war with iran, a nation four times the size in population of iraq. and as i say, we've never faced up to the human cost of that war, iraq. so i'm sure there are studies -- top-secret, secret, confidential or higher than top-secret that make this very clear. i would say that john mattis, the secretary of defense, should not wait until the bombs are falling before he reveals those truths to congress and the public. and if he doesn't do it -- and he's very unlikely to do it -- then his secretary or his aides or assistant secretaries should risk -- sacrifice their careers to avert these wars, which must not happen. amy: pentagon papers whistleblower daniel ellsberg died june 16 at the age of 92 just months

after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. our deepest condolences to his family. his wife patricia, his children robert, mary, and michael, his grandchildren and his great-granddaughter. that does it for our show. i'm amy goodman. thanks so much for joining us.

hello, and welcome to nhk "newsline." i'm catherine kobayashi in new york. russian leaders say a mutiny by the wagner mercenary group has not affected what they call their special military operation, and they say enemy attacks over the last few weeks have been unsuccessful. but ukrainian leaders say their troops have been