 So not too long ago the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the Mechanics Institute stands as a beacon of what a cultural institution can be for its citizens So when I wrote open the paper and I read that out loud, I thought well, that's something to aspire to for sure and You know as I think about Mechanics Institute, I think about a place and I look at all these books I think about a place where the truth is pursued. I think about a place where beauty matters I think about a place where people can escape. I think about a place where people belong and I think about a place where the future is imagined and finally I Think it's a place that makes San Francisco Well San Francisco So another place like that is City Lights bookstore, which is a co-sponsor of this event tonight So I love that Mechanics Institute and City Lights bookstore come together and I think is Peter Maravallis in the room There he is. So Peter like his founder like the founder of City Lights Lawrence Farrell and Getty They are treasures unto themselves and we're just so grateful that you're here tonight. Thank you Peter So we've been doing our best here at Mechanics Institute memberships up. You're supporting us like never before and we're grateful for that And I remember the last time Robert Rosie Rosenthal was here tonight's interviewer and He was here for a program discussing the attacks on the journalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and That evening he was one of the most articulate and thoughtful people I had heard talk about freedom of the press and how it contributes to our democracy And I I learned that that that thinking is rooted in experience He's a man who's worked at the New York Times In fact, if you've seen the post he might have been one of those bright-eyed Guys in the back room at the New York Times going through the Pentagon Papers Making the photocopies He was a foreign correspondent in Africa and more torn countries For which he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize He was the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer Managing editor of our hometown paper the San Francisco Chronicle and Since leaving the Chronicle he's done an amazing job as a leading force behind the Center for investigative reporting based in Berkeley That's doing incredible incredible work these days. Thank you for that So it's my pleasure to turn the microphone over to Rosie a good friend and Daniel we are just thrilled to have you here at Mechanics Institute. Thank you for coming and thank you for all you've done Which reeks of wisdom and knowledge and we're sitting with someone I think is one of the more remarkable human beings of the last part of the 20th century into the early part of the 21st century whose life really for me symbolizes integrity and courage and wisdom and We're gonna talk tonight about his newest book You know the doomsday machine for general nuclear war carried out as planned How many people will be killed in the Soviet Union in China? What was your reaction when you saw that graph? Not on Go for it. Okay. Can you hear me now? Sorry, sorry about that. I was saying that I Produced this graph a lot of you've seen the book or some will have them from memory. It's very simple obviously Hard to forget and I put it in it has a heading top-secret sensitive and for the president's eyes only and I wasn't the president but I had I had written the question to which this was an answer so the presidents One of his the deputy assistant for national security Bob Comer showed me the graph Which was their answer and the question was as he said how many people would be killed in the USSR and China only? I won't say at this moment it takes a little too long explaining the book why I limited it to that At that point they did have an answer and Which I had thought they had not actually calculated I was surprised that they came right back with that answer but So I had to enlarge the question since they apparently did have a simple calculation of this and I said okay How many would be killed all together if your plans the joint chief's plans were carried out as Planned there's no divine wind that Disturbs it there. They don't preempt it doesn't go badly some way you hit the targets. You mean to tit I was to paraphrase here How many people will die all together and the answer was 600 million Which 100 holocausts is the way I saw that and That included a hundred million of our allies in West Europe We weren't targeting them in NATO Although strictly speaking as the war went on if it went on even hours if there were Russian troops From East Germany. I've never mentioned this before but if they'd come into West Germany in the course of this process Yes, we would have targeted that we were targeting East Germany And near around Berlin Berlin would have gone from this but in any case Radioactive fallout from our own strikes in East Europe Would have annihilated up to a hundred million people in West Europe Depending which way the wind blew as they testified in Congress later But whichever way the wind blew another hundred million would be killed in East Europe And a lot of people here will remember that those were the captive nations then and they were captive they were result of World War two Soviet Union occupy them and essentially installed regimes of their own liking that was early regime change in effect In other words, it was part of a Soviet Empire in that and we called them the captive nations But we were going to annihilate over a hundred million of them in our strike Actually, not too many from bases, but from air defenses so that our planes could come into Russia They had a lot of air defenses in Poland and Hungary and Romania. So I'm gonna interrupt you So you you knew all that how did you feel I read that? How did you feel when you saw that? well You're a real journalist. I'm sitting next to you. It's funny That's the question when a catastrophe has just happened You know and the house is burning and and everybody's fleeing. How do you feel about this? How did I feel when I discovered that the people I had beer with in the evening the kernels who I was working with on the Air staff and the giant staff were producing these plans during the day and apparently knew it and their chiefs knew it and these were Americans and I was stunned I thought This piece of paper Initially the 300 million Should not exist nothing it should refer to nothing that does exist And I knew that it referred not to hypothetical calculations Even before computers on the whole but that wasn't Slide rule stuff. This was the estimate of what they would do with bombs that were waiting all over the world Thousands of them a number an increasing number in submarines and increasing number in holes in the ground in missiles But air bases all over the world and aircraft carriers that were planned as Simultaneously as possible, which is a relative matter To truck over thermonuclear weapons to the Sino Soviet block no matter how the war had started over Berlin over Yugoslavia perhaps over Iran In uprising in East Europe China was to be annihilated and this is 1961 now actually the Sino Soviet block had begun breaking up in 59 and 60 and 61 that's another story But and many people knew that but many people did not know that in the government in the plans Anyway, we're don't leave that other Kami country alive to pick up the marbles As kind of where they used to talk basically to to be the survivor of A war in which we've destroyed the Soviet Union. They may have destroyed us. So China has to go to So as I say 600 million I I thought this was the most evil plan that had ever existed in the history of our species and Insane simply an insane plan Done by people who I knew were like you and me frankly like they were not monsters I just met one man tonight who when I was writing The plans for this thing the draft I just signed a book for him. He was outside the White House protesting testing Nuclear testing well as I said to him You were on the right side then I Actually was not in favor of testing. I must say at that point I was working inside to deter a Soviet attack. Nevertheless, I was in the Pentagon And as I said if I'd been out with you I would have less to confess in the subtitle of this book Confessions of a new pre-war so it's 1960 you stayed within the Pentagon and One of the things you knew at the point when you saw that because you've done your you've been done the Fieldwork was how screwed up the whole concept of one guy has a button and control the whole question of delegation Well, can you talk a little bit about there's learned doing that and is it relevant today? Okay? Can I separate two issues and I'll come back to one of them the issue? We've just been talking about is Not Genocide There's no 600 million race by any standard of race Anybody there it's not just Multi-genocide, you know, it's super the USSR itself had you know Dozens and scores of ethnic groups all of which would be annihilated by this so this we're talking about a plan here for genocide There's no way not, you know talking about screwing that up is you know, that should not exist as a plan however In terms of the idea of having some weapons not to give the Soviets a monopoly such as we'd had the beginning seemed to me to make sense then as a deterrent and The question was supposing it had not been Thousands of weapons and hundreds of millions of people but let's say World War two levels of damage herb York once said what's the most amount of killing that one man Should be able to do in a day or a week or a month. He said well supposing it were World War two 60 million all together that's as much as one person, you know, it's a it's above that's an upper limit to what one person should be able to Control, okay, there are nine nuclear states now he said To kill 600 a 60 million people with thermal nuclear weapons takes a hundred kiloton weapons No more than a hundred Conceivably you could run it up to 200 if they didn't all get there and so forth, but really not more than much a hundred closer to a hundred He said that in 1982 in 1967 under little me Jay We had 37,000 nuclear weapons Not a hundred not 200 not a thousand 37,000 weapons mostly thermonuclear the Russians got about 35,000 or so about that time that the top level for the world between the two of us when there were only two With 67,000 nuclear weapons and they say a hundred of which Would cause the casualties of World War two in a day or a week So I'm saying we're now talking about something that just transcends human language You can't say screwed up you even evil doesn't seem right. It's just outside Language somehow But by the way, I have to say this the 600 million was wrong first of all It turned out much later. I didn't know it at the time, but a whole book has been written on this They weren't including the damage from fire Fire too hard to calculate depends on the wind depends on the structures depends on the flammable material and so forth So they didn't calculate that only blast Immediate prompt radiation and fallout, but fire is the main effect of thermonuclear weapons So we're really talking about a billion right there. That's before there's any Soviet retaliation Say a billion and a half altogether. There were three billion people in the world then so that's half the population of the world It's not what John Somerville later called Omnicide Omnicide is what it turns out. We would have done in fact and I'll say this and let me see it would have to come Out of entry so let me say it now It was not for another 20 years that People like Carl Sagan and Brian Toon and Alan Robuck and others Calculated what the effect would be of smoke Lofted from the fires from the fires not from the blood and the blast and the fire storms It would be created would loft this smoke By the hundreds of millions of tons of smoke and so it into the stratosphere Not into the lower atmosphere in the stratosphere where it would not rain out that has been true all along But we didn't know it till 1983 and people managed to doubt it the way they An entire party in this country still doubts climate change, right? Well, what I'm about to say is no longer any more controversial than man-made climate change And that is after the last 10 years and that is the smoke that didn't burn out Didn't rain out would go around the world blow very quickly within days and Reduce the sunlight reaching the earth by about 70% Producing a winter effect all year an ice age effect that would kill all the harvests and all the most of the vegetation and starve Nearly everyone that was true in 1961, but it was even true 10 years earlier in 1950 So that's the reality of what we're talking about you were saying about being screwed up And I'll just say in one sentence even if we'd had 10 weapons or 15 weapons the fact remains that the Well as somebody said of Donald J. Trump His his friend Thomas Bannock isn't it right said he's not only crazy. He's stupid These plans were insane and crazy. They were also Stupid and reckless because they did involve for example Hitting Moscow in the very first wave. That's always been true To this day, which means that there is no possibility of ending the war Whatever weapons remain on either side or all sides are now without a central leader and they make their own decisions I mean as to where they go It's not a really good plan in my opinion, but I was never able to get the military to agree to that So did that the question of command and control and what he's saying is that part of the strategy wasn't just to hit military Facilities, but if you take out the brain Who do you then negotiate with yeah? I'm saying that that to me. What do you call that? I would call that Stupid but then yet the chance of doing that was stupid Was that something that you were able to debate? Yeah, well not a matter or happiness I know in the book you you think that McNamara, though he wouldn't acknowledge it Understood no matter did so we actually we actually under McNamara when I say on April 7th my birthday I did a draft of new guidance Which allowed for withholding an attack on Moscow now remember Moscow I don't remember you don't know this but Moscow at that time was would be the recipient of a hundred and fifty eight nuclear weapons Because every you know every unit in the world that could on a one-way suicide mission get their fighter bomber into Moscow Would do it so everybody was piling on to Moscow and essentially that's remained true still Cheney is described in a recent book as having Cheney remember Dick Cheney Darth Vader here and he was a he was appalled as Secretary of Defense discover How many weapons were targeted on Moscow now? That's almost 40 years after I supposedly put a withhold into this into this plan So they never took that seriously not hit Moscow. No come on. Give us a break. So it's set the time frame So it's 6162 you were you were in the room you were in the Pentagon during the Cuban Missile Crisis Yeah, but five or six years later you decided you had to get the Pentagon papers out What did you ever eight years eight years later 68 69 9? So what in your mind changed that you wanted to get the Pentagon papers out? Did you have a reaction like people have to know about this? Well, I know in the book you talk about a regret but that give us the time thinking then Did you ever think this information has to get out to the public then or you just was so much part of the system You couldn't do that Nobody had ever done such a thing. So it wasn't in my mind earlier Congress Was I don't blame myself entirely for not having put it out earlier because a was it was literally kind of unthinkable and Be not entirely practical because it was a question of getting the nuclear material or later Vietnam to Congress Congress was read it was run now by southern Democrats the racist wing of the Democrat of the New Deal the basis for the New Deal was a Bargain between or you know a coalition between southern racist segregationists that was the Democratic Party then when I was growing up and Northern unions and some corporations and this and that civil rights people but it wasn't until 1968 the George Wallace peeled off the South as independent from the Democratic Party after Lyndon Johnson the Hero of Vietnam basically but after he did in fact put through a civil rights act and You know in two ways in 64 65 Which lost the South for the Democrats? Forever as he said it's his head for a generation or two They've never come back. They went to Wallace then in 72. They went to Nixon and that's where they've been since so a lot of you again or Almost old enough not as old as me, but anybody here older than me actually I'm 86 now wait a minute. Come on. Don't don't What very good. Okay. I I got such a thrill tonight that Lawrence Fern Goody sent me a hug and I sent him one back He's 99 so he's got 13 years on but Those of you who however are you know in the in the general range? will remember the solid south and that meant the solid Democratic so and that meant the Jim Crow Segregated South which was Democratic Run by the Democrats and now it's Republican and although it's not legally segregated anymore We've discovered now that we have an attorney general who now I'm not gonna joke about this. I Believe well, let me just say this is not what I believe. I would be very confident That our Attorney General Jeffrey sessions would like legalized segregation back Jim Crow back a partate back. That's our Attorney General and I was gonna say a little more speculatively I Think I've learned more about this country is passed in terms of the Civil War since Charlottesville at the age of 86 and I ever knew in my life before and I don't think I'd ever faced up to what I now believe in the last few months It's now kind of a new fact for me The South never gave up on slavery never accepted that slavery was wrong or had been wrong They were simply Defeated and they were occupied and then when the troops would came out as an election deal in 1876 Jim Crow was put in as a substitute and that's what we're seeing the resurgent of right now And that is part of our country not just our history, but our presence. Are you running for office? No, I'd rather go to prison. So you could but and then he's been arrested 86 times for civil disobedience so and protesting nuclear but I want to get back to the question you wavered on me and What did you ever consider? In that period I did start to say that to give the papers to Congress then meant giving them to Richard Russell and Senator Thurmond and others like that who They weren't only segregationists. They were also super hawks super anti-communist. I was anti-communist, but I Was anti-communist and unlike perhaps some people here. I'm I haven't recanted on that I think it was not I'm talking about communism in this country, which was never a threat At all met Stalin but in terms of Stalin's Russia It was as bad as I thought it was what it wasn't was Hitler's expansionist aggressive Attempting to take over the world by military means and thus nuclear means that I thought during the Cold War And that was a delusion and the book has a fascinating anecdote about Hitler when you're talking about the bombing of cities And but we're gonna have questions in a few minutes so you can start thinking about but I want to bring it to today If what how relevant, you know, everyone hears about the football The football how tell us about the football because I think you're you talking about history But a lot of what dan is talking about is completely relevant today And we don't know about the football the guy who's near the president who has a nuclear coach How important is that or is it supposed to the so-called football as a briefcase? Which you can see on google by the way if you put in football or president's briefcase or something You will see the president's aid carrying this leather briefcase About this high fairly heavy thing which has a computer in it. It has various it has diagrams showing the different options That he could use in nuclear war and would have four minutes to decide on if there was If the hawaii alert had gone to the white house and was for real As has happened More than once in other words the hawaii alert went to People in their car, you know in their cell phones and whatnot But false alarms that actually reached the joint chiefs The norad the air defense command and so forth and even the president's assistant in the past And fortunately were discovered to be false alarms a minute or two before life was ended And again not to exaggerate. We're not talking about life ending actually. I want to be very precise here I've recently learned didn't know it earlier that most biomass of living material on this earth Is microbial is microscopic Viruses including viruses bacteria, you know, so more than half Will most of that will remain But we're talking about the total extinction of most animals larger than a squirrel or a raccoon Not all humans because we're so clever and adaptable and we wear clothes and we make fires and houses and we Travel long distances unlike other animals We can probably survive one percent or so of the nuclear winter In australia or new zealand, uh ellen robuck tells me eating fish And uh, that's not a small number of people one percent is 70 million if it was that many it might not be that many And the ozone might finish them off but 99 percent go The cities go civilization goes and that is what is its stake if a false alarm occurred Involving russia as has often number of times happened Several times very seriously four or five times very seriously Hundreds of times less seriously in fact, uh, a study in congress in after there had been four serious false alarms in 79 and 80 by gold water and and heart Together a republican and a democrat They looked into this and they found that in the previous couple of years there had been 1500 Fairly serious slightly serious false alarms, but only these four or five or six They were quite serious if that happened during a crisis And some of them have like a war with uh, korea with north korea If we got an indication falsely that the russians were taking the side of the north koreans, we're getting into this and it was coming It would go up to trump and if that lasted four or five six seven minutes Into that, uh, it would end this would all end That's the sword of damoclese that jfk referred to Before the un in 1961 He said humanity exists on this sword. You remember a uh king Somebody was uh, it was jealous of the king's prerogatives and in the king said here you sit in my throne And he hadn't sit there and he had suspended over the throne for this purpose this person's benefit A sword suspended by a horsehair And he said that's what it means to be a king, you know to have this over you well JFK said this hangs over humanity and we've got to change this And that's what I was working for But jfk more than doubled the weight of that sword And reagan doubled it again and uh, obama is increasing it or reproducing it and uh, trump is increasing it and I was just thinking of this metaphor today. It so happens, but uh, kennedy did talk about Strengthening that horsehair, you know, let's put a withhold in I put in a withhold about hitting china You could make a decision. It wouldn't be automatic. I put in a withhold and this was a big one about hitting cities None of that had any effect. It turned out later that the plans that was just ignored The plans were always for hitting cities and something I learned in the course of reading this book writing this book I had to uh, uh, somebody sent me A document that I'd never seen it had been declassified Uh, just a few years earlier and I hadn't seen it in the national security archive And it was a document from 1968. Now remember I was writing these plans in 61 and uh, 68 Where was I? I don't know in 69. I was copying the pentagon papers In 68. No, I came back in 67. Okay. Okay. So I was reading the pentagon papers in 68 Actually, okay back at ramp So this document comes out um of a meeting With the joint chiefs and the president and walt rostow from the policy planning so forth And he was saying and cliford the new secretary defense in march top secret And it says We really should change the automatic plan for delegated authority So that there will be two possibilities Not just hitting china and russia. I read this document. I thought I thought I changed that in seven years earlier And says no there really should be it's in the book here I had to put it in the notes at the very end after the manuscript had gone in and I said I learned now I thought that was the one thing I'd done That might stick that china would not automatically be hit uh in the event of a war with russia And no in 68 they're saying that would be a good idea Let's separate it so that china is not automatically hit and they all agree. Yeah, let's do that So I'm gonna ask one more question and then we'll throw it out to the audience to set about right um so in in the uh At the end of the book you talk about some regrets about But why did you write this book now because here's a little backstory he some of this book was written many many years ago, but His publisher said no one would be interested And now it's 30 years later and it's 40 years and it's more relevant than ever So why did you why at this point in your life? Why did you feel you had to finish this book and get it done? I mean that you hope I mean it's been a difficult conversation hearing all this but What is there a solution? Is there a hope around this? What what do people have to do? I had uh, you know a A uh A reaction similar to that of id snodin Who was actually a libertarian republican before as a young man? He's still a young man. He's still young and he's still actually I think in one respect. He's a gun nut Actually likes the ex guns but uh as a libertarian against gun control laws and so on but Nevertheless the republican he had hopes that barack opama Would change the surveillance system the unconstitutional illegal surveillance that had been going on as he knew at the national security agency Under george w bush And he knew this everybody in nsa knew this was illegal. It was unconstitutional But they had kids in college as they told him they had Mortgages they had things they couldn't do anything about it And he was living in hawaii With a partner who's now with him in uh in musko, but he had hopes that barack obama would might carry out The plan he made at prog in his first year for which he got the nobel prize Later that year which was to move toward the uh, well that was toward the abolition nuclear war I'm sorry. His hope was somewhat that was my hope His hope was that obama would change the surveillance system and he quickly realized That's not going to happen. So This this is obama or chelsea manning three years earlier This information should be out Somebody should put it out Nobody else is going to do it So i'll do it And that last that last point which seems kind of obvious to the person I can say I identify with these two people more than anyone else on earth because we We went through that little syllogism there Whatever you want to call it and We reached that point. It seemed very new. Okay. Nobody else is going to do it. Uh, I should do it And uh, it turns out that that's very unusual actually so, uh I identify very much with chelsea manning But somebody asked me today. What do you think about her running for the senate in maryland? I said she's a friend and a hero mine and I wouldn't wish that on a friend or a hero And although I identify with chelsea. I realize she's a very different person for me. I would not run for the senate In maryland, but I did finally say okay Barack obama is not going to change the nuclear He said he would Like jfk You know two other people who said that jimmy carter at the beginning of the senate a world free of nuclear weapons ronald reagan a world free of nuclear weapons each of them enormously expanded as did obama and it's so the institutional corporate pressures and the political pressures I think these actually these fourth presidents who were sincere about that to a considerable extent But they had other priorities and that proved impossible for them and uh, so The president isn't going to do it So who can you have to do it? Okay, that's you got there Uh, one last thing. I'm because it's so remarkable. Uh, can you I know that you did this on your inspection tour around the world? Tell us what it was like to touch a nuclear weapon well Actually, I only remember with all this planning I was doing And I'd been in the marines which had scarcely any nuclear weapons and gave them up Eventually totally nuclear So, uh, in fact, I take I would like to take some comfort from the fact that it's extraordinary. It's unique That the secretary of defense is the marine the chairman of the joint chiefs is marine Which is almost unprecedented, I think and the chief of staff kelly is marine and I was just saying to patricia You know these guys they never had they never had anything to do with nuclear planning Uh, you know and they never relied on nuclear weapons Maybe they're people who could really change this and I would say by the way, that's not 100 impossible That is a possibility. I would rather I have a little more trust in them Then let's say hr. McMaster who was army and so forth, but then I would in an air force person generally Do I rely on them to stop this president? If he decides that the time has come to carry out a threat to pull the trigger. No, I actually don't At all and a last a last, uh, you asked me about touching the weapon Yes, so one time I saw the weapon in kunsan No, not kunsan. It was a kadena in okinawa And there were f 100s each with a 1.1 megaton weapons slung under it. This is a one person plane And each of these 10 or so planes on the alert strip One fighter bombers They weren't even included in the sack planning sack had such contempt for these fighter bombers that the They wouldn't be part of the 600 million calculation. These were just theater weapons that were out there 1.1 megatons Is half a world war two worth of explosive yield in world war two We dropped two million tons of high explosive in all theaters Two megatons two million tons each of these planes had 1.1 megatons under them They were 10 or 12 of them on alert strip. So there was one there on a on a dolly Going back. Here was this magic thing Uh, not too large about the size of the torpedoes we've seen from world war two And um, you know under a single fighter plane And I put my hand on it And it's warm It's like an animal warp From the plutonium From the radioactivity. This was a cold day a cool day. So here are these cool days. This is warm weapon But it's not really alive. It's not part of This biomass that i'm talking about It really is something else And what it has been designed to do By americans By one american university Has designed all of our nuclear weapons from the Hiroshima and the nagasaki weapons to the neutron bomb to the new weapons that are now being designed now There's a little more one university The university of california has two campuses Los alamos and livermore that are called campuses of the and los alamos of course is in uh, nevada Where is it nevada? Yeah And it has extraterritoriality you can vote in california elections Without an absentee ballot in los alamos because it's part of the university of california. Okay. I just mentioned this So it's been designed. It's been deployed. It was sent around by americans And now of course there's nine states that have this kind of thing only however three of those don't yet have h-bombs They're only at the Hiroshima and nagasaki level Which require and the h-bombs of the other set of the other six Require a nagasaki type bomb for trigger for detonators And the early h-bombs were a thousand times more powerful 15 megatons instead of 15,000 times. So anyway, here is this Non-living thing that has been designed by americans and now by others To participate in the annihilation of life And we've known that for 30 years. It's been confirmed for 10 years. It's been increased now by a republican over the plans of a democrat So we're in We're in trouble where the species is in big bad trouble So we're gonna have questions But you know what at the end of the book and I really urge everyone here to read it It's a part of his remarkable story. But you know, he's really an eyewitness He does say that you know that the one hope is really the room the people Can can the people really keep on this issue and raise the problem and really understand what's going on And there's a generation who really don't understand this and I think the book really It should be read. It's not ancient history and Thank you, dan if and let's we're gonna have some questions now from the audience anything you want to ask about Please wait for the microphone and we'll be alternating sides like to know Whether you have ever considered Where I would like to know whether you've ever considered the economic paradigm That supports all this activity The question I think I heard it was whether you've ever considered the economic paradigm that supports all of this activity Yes well, of course Russia is now a capitalist country right didn't used to be Uh of a kind they call it a cryptocracy, but you know, what is this country? So, uh, It's okay. So Russia now Under Putin who is also spending a trillion dollars over the next 30 years for his weapons His design labs have the same motives are done Prophets and maybe jobs maybe votes. I don't know how much he comes on that certainly in this country I don't think any of this would have happened on this scale If it weren't highly profitable to make this stuff. In fact, I think that the cold war Uh delusion that I suffered from and delusion in the sense Not that the soviets were not Tyrannous at home which they were as a matter of fact like kim jong un Tyrannous in fact, that's a rather Stalinist country right now, but the delusion that they were Bending all effort to take over the world like hitler hitler with nuclear weapons What did that get started and I think it heavily got started as a subsidy to the aerospace industry from 1946 on And for the next 40 years basically it was a marketing device This is an approximation obviously there's 10 other dimensions to it But this is a very big one a marketing device for selling weapons to the united states government On a cost plus basis, which is highly profitable and to our allies and it's supplying them now The same kind of thing that trump is boasting of right now That he is selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is he said means Jobs and it means votes and it means profits in this country to be used in Yemen Which is a crime against humanity That is I find I can almost not bear to think about To to face it all it's going on right now And creating conditions of famine that have led to the biggest cholera epidemic in history in Yemen And we are supplying targeting logistics support to that And it's trumped both of it jobs Uh, he's that's not a secret that we're selling weapons to Saudi Arabia And so far there's no that's where we are We have a military industrial complex in other words in congressional and corporate And you know in academic and various other dimensions to that as do other countries now But ours is really big and old and strong and uh That is very hard to beat But it's not quite impossible Actually as These institutions are so powerful and yet Look what happened to the communist party In Russia under Gorbachev or in apartheid in South Africa South Africa is no paradise of freedom now by any means But no one foresaw that Nelson Mandela would become president by a majority vote without a violent revolution So miracles are possible With humans participating and that's what we need to stop right now No Miracles are possible any other questions Mr. Ellsberg Can you tell us what is the shelf life of the weapons in our arsenal? And what is their half-life shelf? Yeah, he wanted the question is what is the shelf life of the weapons in our arsenals and the half-life? Yeah, well the as I say every weapon Needs a nagasaki type weapon, which is a plutonium Implosion weapon, but now they also use highly enriched uranium For these detonators and so forth also Which the half-life of plutonium is I think 23,000 years So after 23,000 years only half of it is left, of course You know, we're talking half of a 1.1 megaton weapon. So we're down to a quarter world war to after 23,000 years Is it gentlemen here? I don't know how to ask this specifically, but I would really like to know your thoughts about north korea and the current situation Did you he would like to know your thoughts the question was He didn't really know how to frame it, but he said what are your thoughts about north korea and the current situation? Yeah, uh As far as i'm aware, which is certainly no expert, but I we've all had to you know learn a lot in the last Months about this And year and so forth I can't first of all north korea is a tyranny like Stalinist Russia that's worst As a matter of fact I can't figure out that north korea is any kind of a threat to us Or anybody else unless attacked or unless they think they're about to be attacked which could be a mistake Except that we're certainly doing Trump is doing just about everything that can be imagined to promote That mistake that he's about to be attacked. We do exercises rehearsing invasion of north korea We publicly talk about assassination of their leader and decapitation like Moscow of their leadership in general And uh, uh, we're uh exercising in fact, we have just sent Uh b1 b2 and b52 still bombers to guam. We've reinforced them That looks You would not have to be clinically paranoid as kim jong-un and I I don't think he is by the way From all I've heard to think I'm about to be attacked And that's very dangerous. It doesn't threaten nuclear winter because 20 to 60 fission bombs, which is all north korea has Much less than any other of the eight countries nuclear weapons They can't create nuclear winter and I don't think there's enough on this is macabre stuff. I'm telling you here I'm perfectly aware. I'm not I'm not feeling late hearted about it But I'm saying it is simply a fact. There aren't enough cities in north korea to burn to the ground We did that once And by the way, we didn't create firestorms in 1950. We burned every city in north korea totally to the ground But unlike march 9th and 10th japan in tokyo We didn't create a fire in 1945 a special kind of fire. I'll just say which lost the smoke Into the stratosphere. So the fires we created in north korea In 1950 didn't go into the stratosphere and they didn't change the climate A different nor did they have nuclear weapons with which to retaliate This president people say is there anything different about him? Well to make threats of nuclear weapons is actually not new Every president has considered making those threats no president From harry trumanon And no kennedy no major kennedy and i'm not including my friend casinage Let's say the one percent or for that matter ron paul at one percent But every major no major kennedy has been willing to come close To announcing no first use. We will not initiate nuclear war people were very struck that trump wouldn't say that Well, hitterie wouldn't say that any more than trump would and nor obama obama actually considered it He seems to be the one president who who actually spent several years telling people Why don't we have a no first use policy? I don't know another president who did that? But he was overruled by his secretary defense ash carter said no, we can't do that And so he gave it up In short This is the first president since the cuban missile crisis 55 years ago Who is making threats of imminent attack Against the nuclear weapons state There are nine of those we haven't made threats of attack nobody had Against any of those states indian pakistan had actually against each other when they managed not yet to pull the trigger uh A last thought i know i'm going on here, but i'll just add this what a north korean war might mean It will not initially have this effective nuclear winter for the reasons i just described But it will have a lot of other effects aside from killing Pardon me, but this is the reality Killing several million people in the first week or so more violence than the human species has ever seen in a week Or a day So it will mean that that's what he's threatening, but that's only a few million However, it will almost certainly i haven't seen anyone say this It will mean first. It will mean nuclear war almost certainly Uh two-sided nuclear war That will mean since those amount to tests And there's been a moratorium on tests since the 90s It will mean the testing will restart which the republicans have been calling for for 20 years To restart nuclear testing that means that indian pakistan Will get thermonuclear weapons within a couple of years The difference most people, you know, even in this very informed audience. I know from experience most of you Would not be able to tell me I believe the difference between a and an h bomb a atomic weapon a fission weapon and a thermonuclear weapon Till i've just described it and i'm not going through that quiz now, but i am saying That the difference is that the indian pakistan get thermonuclear weapons Then whereas in india pakistan war which has threatened to break out several times. And by the way, I just read two days ago They are making explicit threats against each other like trumps This week, I didn't see that in any mainstream paper I happened to see a reference to it in an indian paper and I followed up the link on the internet And I discovered that over kejmer. They're both saying In effect, my button is as big as yours. I am as ready to initiate nuclear war as you are indian and pakistanis are saying that This week and I don't think that is Coincidental in terms of what's going on with kim jong-un and uh and our president, but anyway If they went to war now alan robach and rumbach and brian tune Environmental scientists calculated 10 years ago in 2007 in a peer-reviewed scientific article That the effect on the climate of their war with little fission bombs Only 50 each and they each have more than that now would Produce would reduce sunlight by about 7% instead of 70% And that would shorten growing seasons kill harvests Enough to starve the first estimate was About 900 million people who are currently the most malnourished But a year later ira helper and the head of international physicians for prevention nuclear war Made new calculations closer to two billion. Well, that's one third of the earth's population After the north korean war Which could be next week next month later this be after the olympics Almost surely that's good. But uh later this year from our president It would mean that then their thermonuclear weapons if they got together Would not kill a third of the earth's population It would be like ours three-thirds Almost three-thirds. So there's really a lot at stake here And we've got to stop this guy, but he didn't start these threats He didn't build this system to begin with it means we have to change Our entire foreign policy essentially and our defense policy We have to change how do you do this? But the political structure of the lobbyists and the retired officers and bowing Bowing lockheed martin and rathion are now bidding as they did under obama for a whole new set of Intercontinental ballistic missiles Which should not exist We should have gotten rid of them just by cold war standards 50 years ago 40 years ago Sir sir Hi, I just wondered If you would have a word of warning or caution or advice for mr. Snowden who still is apparently sitting On quite a bit of information. He hasn't released From your own experience Well, he put out You know wasn't in my experience so with his Clarences at nsa He put out an enormous amount of data, which I couldn't have done by the way in the pre digital era I did what I could with xerox, which is 7 000 pages. I couldn't have done it without xerox But he put out thousands of documents And he put out a lot of stuff that he said that he in his own opinion He would not put it out to the public He gave it to a handful of selected journalists and he said this is for your background to help you understand The context of this stuff and what the system is But it's not necessary for the public to know it. I just want you to understand it and he left it to their judgment I as far as I know Intercept which has is one of the places that has control of what he gave the digital Maddoxine the intercept With glenn greenwald and and germy skahill and others Has put out only a very small percentage I would guess less than 10 percent of what they got and So there's quite a bit still to come they still you know as they go over all this stuff They still come up with stuff all the time But there was a lot that he thought That he didn't give anybody that he knew in his head From his work in nsa He was people think that he just dumped out everything he knew Quite the contrary. He knew then and knows now a lot That uh, he didn't feel was in the public interest or necessity to put out any every listening post in china agents We just we just uh, I noticed two days ago. Was it uh arrested a spy from cia Was it who had uh led to the knowledge of a lot of our agents in china Well ed has told me he knew all that stuff. He's not the source of that. He didn't feel that was necessary and uh, so The same was true of chelsea manning by the way who had access to all his communications intelligence covert intelligence She put out nothing. I have one last point here. I mean she put out nothing That was higher than secret Well secret feeling that it couldn't be very damaging to the national security I didn't have time to read anything as low as secret When I was in the pentagon literally I tried to for a couple days and it was overwhelming. I said nothing but top secret Limited distribution executive distribution So I didn't even read of any stuff. She put out. I must say when I read What she put out. I thought jeez. Maybe I missed some stuff here because uh, I don't think in my day assassination squads were handled at the secret level Maybe they were I don't think so But now, you know, it's so routine under all our presidents that uh, you know, it just spread all over the place But I'll add one of the thing here Loomsbury was very concerned their lawyers were very concerned. Am I putting out anything classified? In this thing that's going to give them trouble now obama. I was the first to be prosecuted for disclosing leaking to unauthorized persons the press the public classified information the first In our head. I wasn't the first beaker. I was the first to be prosecuted under nixon Two more were prosecuted before obama obama prosecuted nine people for that And three times as many as all previous presidents put together Trump is almost certain not only to surpass that He keeps berating sessions for not indicting more people and sessions came back defensively and said well, we have 27 under under uh, investigation So if they prosecuted them all that would be three times obama but What he's really expected to do of trump is to go beyond obama and what mixon trot wanted to do with the time of my case Nixon intended to prosecute neil sheen head rick smith gnome chomsky Richard flock powers in people that I given parts of the pentagon papers to but including the journalists He was going to prosecute the journals, but the way my trial ended In with crimes revealed that had brought down That did bring down nixon then eventually including waterless wiretaps And uh when gnome chomsky asked do you mind telling us when I've been overheard, you know on warrantless wiretaps He and zen were dropped from further hearings before the grand jury, but they were going to be indicted Now trump is almost sure to indict journalists so I told bloomsbury was not too Anxious and you know to wave a red flag in front of him. So I took some care A lot of stuff has been declassified Has been declassified since in fact I could even say most of what I knew at that time not all of it But most not my notes and this and that but but the various nature of the plans and so forth has mostly been declassified in succeeding 40 years But not all of it And it just occurred to me Today amazingly enough I was being interviewed and it occurred to me We moved back now to the beginning of this talk So far as I know this diagram With its 325 million to be killed by our first strike in the ussr and china alone And then my statement later that 300 million more people I didn't mention the hundred million in neutrals Like austria or finland that were next to the sylvia union A total of 600 million That's never been declassified actually Bloomsbury got a little excited about that in the end they said about this chart And so I finally told them what I had not been anxious to tell them earlier I published that chart in robert shears Digital columns several years ago So they can't get you for that But They should get me for that It just occurred to me today If jeffrey sessions Yeah, if jeffrey sessions Wants to indict me For this revelation. I believe there has not in 70 years The nuclear era Been an official statement released declassified or formal cause or whatever Of the actual casualties caused by any of our options Never In fact to my best knowledge Congress has never been told that Robert carry not my favorite guy for other reasons not john carry, but robert carry Medal of honor winners several times presidential candidate Member of the armed services committee and the house Homeland security committee asked For what i've been telling you about the targeting of our syah our our strategic plans No need to know And the senate so he got his chairman to ask of the committee No As far as I know chairman no congress has never been told what i'm telling here right here And as I say boomsbury isn't in trouble because I put it out before The pentagon papers Were finally declassified In 2011 40 years after I released them 2011 they they did it on the day, you know, it was an anniversary And uh on june 13th they're declassified a year before that Obama could have prosecuted me the same way he prosecuted nine other people For putting out the pentagon papers if I if I distribute it again, okay I'm saying right now my wife is not real excited to hear this. I see this But it is a fact I would have to say on the basis of obama's criteria and certainly jeff sessions I could be prosecuted for that and I would be convicted Now we'll see if he wants to do it And at 86 now I'm ready to see that one go up to the supreme court and give him a little chance to have a whack At that question. They have never addressed it And I would say should I go to prison? Remember, it's not a secret now. I put it in the book Should I go to prison for putting out something that is classified as far as I know Top secret right now what I told you by the way If you tell anybody else what I've told you and I've told you it's classified You could be prosecuted On the same way. Thanks everybody. Keep it to yourselves if you don't want that to happen. Thank you Much thanks to daniel elsberg and robert rosenthal and now we will Sell books with city lights bookstore with teeter and cassie. So please come up have your books signed And thank you for joining us at mechanics institute