One year ago on June 16th 2023, the famous whistleblower and anti-war activist Daniel Ellsberg passed away. From his beginnings as an archetypal "Cold Warrior" who worked at the highest levels of governmental war planning, to becoming one of the most passionate anti-war activists in the world, Ellsberg’s legacy is well worth examining.
As a brilliant economist at Harvard, Ellsberg transferred his skills towards a prestigious consultant job at the RAND Corporation think tank conducting research for the government on nuclear strategy. In the RAND office in sun-baked Santa Monica, Ellsberg spent long days and nights mulling over how to prevent a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (now Russia), which he saw as a highly likely event. In fact, Ellsberg admits that he never invested in RAND’s “extremely generous” retirement plan because he doubted he would live long enough to reap the benefits.
Ellsberg hauntingly recalls in his essential book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, the state of nuclear war planning in the early Cold War. In it, Ellsberg details unique observations he encountered about low-ranking military officials’ pre-delegated responsibilities to initiate nuclear strikes, communications break-downs, and an overall lack of safety procedures around nuclear weapons.
Back in the Eisenhower administration, there existed only one nuclear war plan, and it would entail nuclear annihilation of not only the nuclear-armed Soviet Union but also China (who would not yet acquire nuclear weapons for several years, but they would still be attacked irrespective of whether they were involved or not), predicting the immediate deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Ellsberg recalls this passage from former Assistant Secretary of Defense John H. Rubel, who also witnessed these insidious plans:
“I thought of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, when an assemblage of German bureaucrats swiftly agreed on a program to exterminate every last Jew they could find anywhere in Europe, using methods of mass extermination more technologically efficient than the vans filled with exhaust gases, the mass shootings, or incineration in barns and synagogues used until then. I felt as if I were witnessing a comparable descent into the deep heart of darkness, a twilight underworld governed by disciplined, meticulous, and energetically mindless groupthink aimed at wiping out half the people living on nearly one third of the earth's surface. Those feelings have not entirely abated, even though more than forty years have passed since that dark moment.”
This singular war plan was called SIOP-62 (Single Integrated Operational Plan), and it was approved by President Eisenhower. When asked why China had to be attacked, the “Commander in Chief” of the Strategic Air Command Thomas Power responded:
“Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. . . . Look. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!”
Despite knowing this, Ellsberg continued working his way up until he was a direct advisor to President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The insanity of SIOP-62 was changed in no small part due to his actions.
Nevertheless, reckless war-mongering by the Kennedy administration in Cuba brought the world closer to nuclear war than it has ever been. As someone who operated from the inside, he came to learn more and more in the days and years since that the Cuban Missile Crisis was far more dangerous than was assumed at the time.
As the United States enacted a naval blockade around the island nation of Cuba (which had, in a year, seen a failed US-backed invasion, and a secret campaign of state-terrorism) to prevent any installation of Soviet missiles, the world held its breath. Even though the U.S. had also installed nuclear missiles in Turkey and engaged in aggression against Cuba, Kennedy dragged the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust, which he estimated had a probability as high as 50% during the crisis.
“Who were these people I was working for? Were they all insane?”
Ellsberg continued to work for McNamara through the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations as the U.S. invasion and war in Vietnam escalated significantly over the years. As a Cold Warrior, Ellsberg bought into the typical rhetoric of the “domino theory” and the need to combat so-called communist expansionism.
But as Ellsberg caught his superiors, including McNamara, lying again and again, he worked on the top-secret government-commissioned history of the decades-long conflict in Vietnam known as the “Pentagon Papers”. Ellsberg read how successive American administrations increased their involvement in Vietnam by supporting French re-colonization, crushing democratic uprisings in South Vietnam to support an unpopular military dictatorship, and utilizing some of the most asymmetrical warfare in the largest bombing campaign in human history.
Most critically, Ellsberg recalls the moment his life changed. It was when he met anti-war draft resister Randy Kehler at a War Resisters International meeting, announcing his intention to go to jail for his principled position to reject being drafted to fight an immoral war. This moment moved Ellsberg.
“It was as though an ax had split my head, and my heart broke open. But what had really happened was that my life had split in two.”
From that point onward, Ellsberg committed to leaking the Pentagon Papers to the public, even though such an act would likewise land him in prison. Secretly copying the 7,000 + page government document with his son, he strategically sent these papers to the New York Times to publish.
Upon seeing official evidential admittance of U.S. war crimes by the government exposed for the world to see, the Nixon Administration went berserk. Nixon successfully shut down the Times’s publications of the documents, resulting in the infamous Supreme Court case: New York Times Co. v United States (which the Times won). Ellsberg then sent the papers to the Washington Post who began publishing them, until they were stopped as well, so Ellsberg sent the papers to U.S. Senator Mike Gravel who began reading the papers on the Senate Floor.
During all of this, Secretary of State (and war criminal) Henry Kissinger, who had previously been a colleague of Ellsberg's, was concerned about another matter: Kissinger knew of Ellsberg’s access to U.S. nuclear war plans, prompting Kissinger to label him as the “most dangerous man in America”.
It just so happened that Ellsberg did possess similar secret documents on U.S. nuclear war plans, but tragically they were all lost forever in a freak accident.
On the run for several weeks, Ellsberg surrendered to the government to be prosecuted under the vague World War I era 1917 Espionage Act, which forbids speech the state deems subversive during wartime (a law many consider to be unconstitutional).
Meanwhile, the Nixon campaign enlisted the “White House Plumbers” (whose job was to “fix leaks”) to break into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to acquire personal information to destroy Ellsberg’s reputation. As Ellsberg’s trial neared a conclusion, prosecutors investigating a mysterious break-in at the Democratic National Convention’s office in the Watergate Office Building in Washington DC began to uncover evidence about the burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, officially linking the Watergate break-in to the White House. Nixon’s presidency was effectively over, and Ellsberg was released on a mistrial.
Ellsberg continued his activism throughout the rest of his life, getting arrested dozens of times for civil disobedience in the decades since. Ellsberg supported and participated in the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, the protests against the War on Terror, and supported whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Daniel Hale, Mordechai Vanunu, Julian Assange, and others.
Ellsberg in his final days continued to warn the public that the threat of nuclear war remains greater than ever before, and requires immediate civic action in response.
“I believe that the urgency of the need to reduce the dangers of nuclear war calls for every form of nonviolent political and grassroots activity—from letter-writing to Congress and editors to lobbying, political campaigning, lectures, teach-ins, and demonstrations—in all of which I have participated.”
The Doomsday Clock, the metaphorical indicator of how close we are to experiencing a nuclear war, rests at 90 Seconds to Midnight, the closest it has ever been in its 75 years of existence. We bear witness to immoral U.S. warfare in Gaza, Yemen, the DRC, and elsewhere, as our government increases tensions with nuclear-armed Russia, China, and North Korea.
“There has never been a greater need for civil courage in our citizenry and officials. Will it, can it be evoked in time? To have a basis for hope, we must speak and act as if it can. That is what my life and work are about.”
Let us reflect on that work and continue it until the world is safe for all.
Robert Schaefer, PCC Anti-War Club Member
Wonderful summary of Ellsberg’s activism. I enjoyed reading this and revisiting events in my own lifetime. I agree with the author that Ellsberg’s contributions were remarkable.