Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/13/22 Daniel Ellsberg: Humans Are Not to Be Entrusted With Nuclear Weapons

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Scott is joined by the heroic whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg to talk about a recent press release he helped put out calling for the abolition of land-based nuclear missiles in the United States. Before getting to that, Scott and Ellsberg discuss how his Pentagon Papers leak contributed to the end of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg then draws on his experience as a nuclear war planner to explain the crazy and perilous thinking behind post-WWII nuclear deterrence plans. They also discuss his most recent leak of classified documents that show how close the U.S. came to starting a nuclear war over Taiwan in the late 1950s.  Discussed on the show: “Organizations Call for Elimination of ‘Launch on Warning’ Land-Based Nuclear Missiles in the United States” (Common Deams) Uncommon Cause - Volume II by General George Lee Butler “Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known” (New York Times) “The Drone Papers” (The Intercept) The Spoils of War by Andrew Cockburn Daniel Ellsberg is a former Marine Corps company commander and nuclear expert for the Rand Corporation. He is the leaker behind the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the truth behind the Vietnam War. He is the author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers and The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, January 16th, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome to the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com and narrator of a new audiobook. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,600 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's

show. And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. All right, introducing the great American hero, Daniel Ellsberg, leaker, liberator of the Pentagon Papers, and Ender of the Vietnam War, and heroic champion of free speech. and free media and author of the book Secrets, A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. And his latest is called the Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. And he's got this brand new press release out calling for the elimination of ground-based strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles out. Now, welcome back to the show.

Dan, how are you, sir? Fine. Thanks a lot, Scott, for that introduction. Let me say right away, I'm happy to say to earn. your readers to read not only enough already, but your earlier books on Afghanistan, Iraq, and those wars, they are terrific. They remain terrific even after the horribly executed departure from Afghanistan, which I think you and I both wanted to see us out of there, but I'll speak for myself, not the way he did it, which showed absolutely, I think, no concern for our

Afghans, which I think has always been the case. Well, definitely agree with you about that. But thank you very much for saying that, sir, and I'm extremely proud to have your name at the top of both of my books there on Warsaw. Well, very, very enthusiastically given. And then one other thing, obviously, I didn't end the Vietnam War. But I was in a link of events of people who had to act in unusual ways that were unforeseeable.

I was one wink in that shame that finally led actually to the resignation of Richard Nixon, which was unforeseen a year earlier, which was essential. I mean, the Vietnam War, and the war ended nine months later. So we all played a part, and I'm glad, but certainly it was no one person. Okay, as you know, of course. Yeah, well, I mean, the truth of the matter is once the Pentagon Papers came out, the headline was they were lying and they knew they were lying all along. And now we all together resent that and want to see this thing end now.

And so that is the extremely important role in the history of that war that you played there in shifting the entire American population's sentiment toward the regretful take of that war rather than the willingness to just see it through to the end and all these kinds of things, which had been the sentiment that had previously prevailed. So you do get the credit for that, for sure. Scott, that's so welcome. What you're saying is very true as far as it goes, and I don't want to start this by arguing with you. But I think it is important in terms of our future and present to understand that even revealing that four presidents in a row had totally deceived us on this,

I didn't convince the people that the fifth president who was currently in office, Nixon, was deceiving them just as much. It was a year after the Pentagon Papers came out in 71. It was in 72 that Richard Nixon won one of the largest landslides in history after the Pentagon Papers. And the war went on. In 72, a year after the Pentagon Papers, heaviest bombing of the war, including the Christmas bombing. And it appeared that the public's mood, which had changed about the war, and the Pentagon Papers played a role in that had no effect on Nixon's policy. He was able to continue that bombing. You know, the war essentially went on for four more years, in 1975. The idea of Nixon was his secret plan, and he did have

one, was to get American troops out of Vietnam, American ground troops out. He hoped in his first year, and that fell through. He made nuclear threats in order to achieve that, a mutual withdrawal of northern troops in their country and American troops to go home. They didn't buy that and they weren't about to. So the war went on. His next goal was to get the troops out by his next election by 1972. And he didn't quite make that, but he almost did. But in January and February of 1973, but his secret plan was to keep the war going by American air support, which was not going to be withdrawn in support of the army we equipped, paid, you know, did everything, the essentially puppet army of under Saigon.

And they, we had rebuilt them. We built them up very much, given them their own Air Force, actually, though not enough against the North Vietnamese, but our Air Force was to make the difference there. So he planned to keep the bombing going indefinitely and what stopped after the Paris Accords of 73. There was, in effect, a moratorium then, as our troops were actually coming out, and his intention, and Kissinger's intention, was to send the bombers back as soon as the troops were out in February, and Kissinger actually recommended that. Nixon finally gave the order for the bombing to recommence in South Vietnam, and if necessary, he was ready to go into North Vietnam again, but on April 15th, he got the word that John Dean, had told prosecutors that Richard Nixon had ordered people to burglarize my former

psychiatrist's office. Now, that's hardly in the league of invading Cambodia for which he was not impeached. But this was a domestic crime against an American. And on that one, people set up. And he lied. What burglarized? And then it came out that people had been brought up on his orders to incapacitate me totally. And they had warrantless white. chaps against me. All these things that keep me from revealing the secret plan, including indefinite air support and nuclear weapons, if necessary. He was so anxious that I wouldn't put that out, which isn't in the Pentagon Papers, which ended in 68, before it came in, that he wanted to do everything to shut me up. And so, including incapacitate me if necessary,

like the drone attacks they talk of now. Hillary Clinton says of Julian Assange, couldn't we drone him? And others say, yeah, he should be executed very much. Okay, well, Nixon actually launched that. They didn't do it for reasons I won't go into here, but they were in place to incapacity on May 3rd, 1972. They were caught in the Watergate weeks later. And since those people could reveal domestic crimes against me and others, others that they'd done, Nixon had to pay them off, to keep them lying to a grand jury. And finally, when John Dean and some other, it was to help with some others, brought that out, Nixon was facing impeachment, and he couldn't renew the bombing.

He said he couldn't have a war with Congress on two fronts of the bombing and his own impeachment. So there was no more bombing, and the war became endable two years later it took. But had bombing continued, the question was, how long would the American people let a president, or several presidents, bomb another country so long as Americans weren't getting killed? And we have an answer, which you know better than anyone, Scott, at least 20 years. Afghanistan has given us that answer. The Americans public has allowed us to both planes and drones to bomb Afghanistan, as well, as having troops on the ground for over 20 years. And we're still in Iraq. After all that time,

although their parliament has demanded that we get out. Somalia, too. We ignore that. Supposedly this elected parliament that we fought a war to allow democracy in Iraq against stuff. And when the democracy says, we don't want foreign troops that are still fighting on our soil, the foreigner says, nothing, just keeps them there, doesn't even have to answer. So in short, Scott, you and I are in the business of revealing truths to the American public that have been denied them by the executive branch and also by the media, the mainstream media, and that's what your books do, and that's what the Pentagon Papers do, and so forth. But that's, unfortunately, it'll be wrong, that doesn't automatically, even if it does affect

the public opinion, it doesn't automatically get an executive to stop a war that they prefer to keep going. Right. All right. Well, anti-war radio talking with Daniel Ellsberg, of course. And now let's talk about H-bombs, strategic nuclear weapons. We have what they call, Dan, the triad of America's nuclear deterrent. And this is meant to be so much power essentially that no one will ever try it. And so, therefore, nukes, they've kept the peace among the major powers since the 1940s, and therefore that's going to work forever, and we have our subs, we have our land-based missiles, and of course we have our Air Force bombers, and these make up the triad that keep the peace on the planet earth, according to the American National Security State, but you're worried.

Okay, that number of weapons we have, Navy submarines, but submarines that are invulnerable can't be found by the other side, can't be targeted, and that's true essentially of Soviet or Russian submarines as well. Actually, we do have a much bigger anti-submarine warfare than the Russians are able to have for a lot of geographic reasons and others. Nevertheless, we have no reliable way to get rid of most of the Soviet submarines now. So within the framework of deterrence, without going into that question, with accepting the idea that you don't want to leave we with the Russians and the Chinese don't want to leave possible adversaries with a monopoly of nuclear weapons. So they want to have some ability to retaliate to a nuclear attack in the same means, whether they use it or not, a survivable capability. The question is, what do you need for that purpose?

And the fact is that the ICBMs in particular, and the huge number of submarine weapons we have, have no relation to that requirement. York, who was the first director of Livermore Labs making H-bombs, thermonuclear weapons back, and then director of Hartney Research and Engineering in the Pentagon, later a big arms negotiator, said to his hold Livermore Labs once he raised the question of meeting, how much does it take to deter an opponent rational enough to be deterred at all that excludes, let's say, It could have excluded Adolf Hitler, but there hasn't been an Adolfitter in that sense ever since. So if you can deter them at all, what does it take? He said, well, most people, if they think about it, will say, one terminate of women or animal.

He says, well, say 10 to make sure you don't get that one. You have some leftover. Or to take it from another point of view, what's the maximum killing death that one leader should be able to inflict? immediately in a week, a month, a year. Well, he said, no simple answer to that, but he says, suppose we say World War II, 60 million people, that's as many as he want an individual leader to be able to kill quickly. He said, well, that takes 100, 100 kiloton weapons,

which are the kind of normal for our missiles right now, 100. So he says, suppose you say then that the need for deterrence is something between 1 and 10 or 100, but closer, he said, to 1 than 100. That one gets you down, by the way, to the range about what the North Koreans have now. In other words, all the others have more than that. We have over 1,500 thermonuclear weapons ready to go

the ICBMs on 10-minute notice. Actually, I should say, on a couple minutes notice, The president would have, if under the missiles were coming at us, about 10 minutes to make the choice whether to use his missiles, get them off the ground, or lose them. And it's only the ICBMs that put that pressure on a president, not the sub-launched missiles, which can't be attacked. They can be underwater there for up to a year or more. Certainly no issue right now. So if it's deterrence, do you need 700 weapons that we have on Sea at Sea at Now? No, but some, one submarine, two like England or France, one submarine or something at sea would seem to do that.

That function of deterrence was obviously should have been given to the Navy, the submarines, exclusively, more than half a century ago. I was in the Pentagon, working for the Pentagon at that time. When the ICBMs became totally vulnerable to attack, so you had to launch them on warning to keep them from being destroyed on the ground, They should have been eliminated at that point, at our point. They added nothing except, you know, more nuclear winner, a little faster, killing most people on Earth. But they are this hair trigger on the doomsday machine. And what I've been saying here is no country should have a doomsday machine in the sense of an ability to kill, even on the actual targeting, to kill most people on Earth. Not everybody, most people on Earth.

That shouldn't exist. But it does exist. Certainly in the U.S. and Russia, Soviet Union then imitated us after the Cuban missile crisis. Their military said, oh, we had to back down because we don't have what the U.S. has. So we want what the U.S. has. So they acquired a domes thing machine. Neither should have that. But they're not going away anytime soon because it's very profitable in the military industrial complexes of both countries, actually. Remember, they're a capitalist country now. They have the same incentives to produce these things for profit and jobs and everything that we do. But just looking at us, ICBM program has been pork for more than half a century.

We call it jobs, and it is jobs, but you could have a lot more jobs than almost any other use that would serve human purposes. Profits, it's campaign donations, it works in every party, it works today, right now on Biden. yes, there are people in Biden's administration. There have been in every one, including George W. Bush and others that say, get rid of the ICBMs, the commander of ICBMs, General Cartwright, I said, get rid of the ICBMs, Perry, the Secretary of Defense, get rid of the ICBMs. But no, now it's Northrop Grumman making the profit. And with its lobbyists, more than one for every member of Congress, and these people, no, you're not going to get rid of them. But we should, and that's what we're saying, at least make people aware that we have maintained a risk of annihilation, of civilization all this time that should need not have existed, should not exist, should go away.

Maybe some people, you know, that we're talking to can bring some pressure on their representatives to counteract Northrop. That's pretty hard. We don't come with bags of money. But at least point out, at least give some consideration to the survival of humanity. All right. Now, it's important to note here, you know, we're listening to Daniel Ellsberg here. And, of course, you have a reputation now of being this left-leaning peace activist type. And yet, you're speaking as a real authority, as your book is subtitled, Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. The reason you had access to the Pentagon Papers is because you were at the Rand Corporation.

You had worked in the White House and the Pentagon, had the highest-level bureaucratic experience in dealing with these issues, particularly the, issue of nuclear war in the 1960s and so that is the position that you're speaking from here that people need to understand that's true it was uh in 1966 one so that's 60 years ago okay 61 years ago that i was drafting for the secretary of defense McNamara the top secret guidance to the joint chiefs of staff for the plan for general war trying to improve the drastically the Eisenhower plan, which we don't have time to go into now. Let me just say, as I looked at it then, working for the Secretary of Defense. In fact, I think every civilian who ever looked at it, and many military who didn't work for the Air Force, said, the most irresponsible,

reckless, evil plan in human history. And that sounds necessarily hyperbolic. How could that be? It isn't, but we don't have time. No, go ahead. We do have a couple minutes. Go ahead and explain what you mean by that because i already know what you mean i'll give you the long term Eisenhower's plan he didn't want to spend money on a conventional war with russia he thought we could do it but it would cause if the army was allowed to consider uh matching the soviets over there it would cause inflation over here and would destroy our economy and so forth his conservative banker friends like george humphrey is secretary the trevor told him that no the way you have to defend against the Soviets is not to plan on a conventional war in any circumstances,

even a conflict over West Berlin or Yugoslavia, if I went there, Iran. You have to threaten nuclear war. And moreover, you have to make it all credible that we would actually do what we say we would do, initiate nuclear war against the Russians, a nuclear arms fleet from 49 on, as we are today still committed to do in NATO, in Poland, in Lithuania, to initiate nuclear war, first use, you have to have at least some semblance that you believe you could limit the damage to the U.S. in that war by preempting, by going forth, by disarming them. Now, that's always been impossible since those days. You couldn't disarm them to the point that they would annihilate

Europe and U.S. society at least. That was even before we knew a nuclear winner. So it's been a hoax to think we can. Most of our weapons are not for deterring nuclear attack, therefore threatening first use of our nuclear weapons, tactical use if necessary in the Ukraine or over Taiwan. Those threats are being raised right now. In an issue, Trump actually put into the budget, small nuclear warheads for submarines that could be used, you know, in a small nuclear war, which is a fantasy. So the real threat has always been the threat to blow up most of the world. Or in Eisenhower's day, we didn't know nuclear winter, so the smoke in the stratosphere that would starve everyone by blocking the sunlight. We didn't know about it for another 20 years.

But what they did know was that our own, the re-anyaptivity from our own fallout, from our own attack on Soviet Union and its satellites and China, come back to that in one minute, would destroy a hundred million of our West European allies by us without the Soviets using any of the many mobile, medium range missiles they had and bombers, which we couldn't destroy. Now, Dan, do I remember it right that you said that if there had been, there was only one plan, and the plan was in event of a crisis, we would nuke every single city in the Soviet Union and China. Is that right? That's absolutely right. So to sum up this plan, you asked about my hyperbolic statement, you know, about this plan. Here was the plan. In the case of any armed conflict with the Soviet Union, not China, armed conflict, armed conflict like Berlin, which is 200 miles in. East Germany. So we had no chance. It had 22 Soviet armored division in East Germany in the vicinity. We could not get through that if they wanted to walk into West Berlin. So the plan was to not only initiate tactical nuclear war under Eisenhower, because he always said pretty reasonably, if there's a tactical war, if there's a limited war with Russia, it will not stay limited. True, that was good judgment. It will go all the way. Therefore,

better for us to go first and hit all of their military targets and, in General LeMay's form, this is what he'd done to Japan, we'll look to all of their cities. So the plan was, in the event of any armed conflict, and by the way, they raised the question, what is armed conflict? Is it a patrol, skirmish in the Berlin Corridor? No, no. Should be, what about a battalion? Nah, no. Might be some of some rogue or something. If it's a brigade, or division. They have 22 divisions there. If it's a division, it's general war. We then hit every city in Russia and China, the Sino-Soviet bloc, which didn't exist by that time. They had broken up already, and we were reluctant to think that because it did justify a bigger

defense budget on the Ushort. So we hit every city in China as well, as well as all the military targets, which included targets in cities, as it still does. Bottom line, how many people will be killed? 600 million. That's without this move. 600 million people by our own strike without considering anything Russia does. And that was in case of any armed conflict, as we're talking about right now over Ukraine or the Baltics or something.

I come back to my statement. I call that the most insane, evil, worthless plan in human history. And right now, we are maintaining a risk of launch on warning on a false warning of the kind that we have received a number of times. Fortunately, just not long enough for the false indications of attack not to be discovered, so we didn't launch our weapons. We've lived with that real risk for 50 years. 70 years, which could have been eliminated, 70 years goes beyond, before the ICBN school.

We had those for six years since 61, 62. So we could have eliminated that risk of a false luncheon warning, which is a real risk, which serves no purpose, whatever, except money for Lockhe, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northropon. It's never meant anything more than that, and that's been enough. profits have been enough to keep congressmen who get their campaign donations from these people

to keep that in the budget as of right now that kind of risk totally irresponsibly it could be ended at any time, should have been any time in the last 50 years

but it won't be because we've proven that that kind of risk is for the money, for the money it's worth it The public could change that. Yeah, I mean, it really is crazy. I mean, the most cynical or sophisticated political or economic type expert might somehow just believe that the nuclear weapons industry is strictly demand-based and that the Pentagon tells these companies exactly how many nukes they need,

and that would be the end of it. Don't tell me you've got H-bomb salesmen who push relentlessly for this policy. And then, of course, yes, that is how it works. just like with airplane sales, just like with combat boots, or with anything else. The nuclear weapons lobby, as my friend Adam says, it's the flea wagging the dog. And here the whole world is held hostage by the profits of just a few men who rule these companies connected to the U.S. federal government in this way. That's absolutely right. The rationale behind it, it's a madman theory.

You know, Nixon's man right there. That's what our nuclear and NATO policy has always been. If you make a move we don't like, it might be as serious and a bad move. We'll blow up the world. That's our policy. That should not be a human policy. So I wanted to give you a chance here to talk about this new movement that you're a part of that's pushing to let's start with getting rid of the Minutemen.

So how can people participate in that? Well, by telling, as I suggested just a little bit earlier, by telling Congressman, by the way, Rokane of the Progressive Caucus, by the way, which has voted against the new ICBMs, the only ones again to vote against the budget. But Rokane and Progressive just yesterday responded to that news item, that there were 60 groups, more than 60, 70 groups, calling for eliminating the ICBMs, which puts it on an agenda, which that just hasn't been discussed at all. It's the most they've discussed and failed to block the new ICBM,

which will cost $100 billion more in the next decade, a quarter of a trillion over the next the life of the thing. We tried to block that. And even that, that had serious opponents in Congress like Adam Smith, very good, head of the House Armed Services Committee. So that looked like me. Maybe this is something we can really get rid of. Then the arms control groups and all, we've been lobbying on that for quite a while.

And then the Northrop Grumman lobbyists got to work, and they managed to vote down even the idea of a study of whether to keep the Minuteman going. Okay, so the new ground base is on the way. Adam Smith had to change his tune. I'd like to know who exactly told him that had to be done. He changed and said, oh, all right, well, we do it. We need the new ground base, after all, having opposed them for a couple of years for the right reasons. So critical pressure works on that side very well. And as I say, however, some armed control groups, I think, got on a wrong foot, in my opinion,

because in their urgency of killing the, quote, GBSD, ground-based strategic deterrent. So instead of that, they sort of said, okay, keep the minute man, get rid of that. Well, that's a false position. the Minuteman is as dangerous, the current weapons, 400 of them, as dangerous as the new ICBM. So we just wanted to get on the record here. No, be clear that the existence of those ICBMs is the major cause of the positive, non-zero, real risk of all-out nuclear war. So it's a very long-term but very profitable delusion. Hang on just one second.

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their new novel techniques for in-line real-time winterization or leaving their competitors in the keith. That's greenmill supercritical.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level,

and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at scott horton dot org tom woods this liberty classroom real history real economics real education so you mentioned the doomsday machine there and now it has been two or three years since i read the book but the way i remember it is that that's really a reference in a more abstract sense to just the danger of the nations of the world holding these age bombs at each other's head but it's also a specific kind of a reference to, I believe, a Soviet plan or system that they had set up where it really was, like in Dr. Strangelove, where if the Americans in a first strike

had taken out their military leadership, the computers were set to go ahead and get revenge and finish killing the rest of us off anyway. Is that really right? Okay, not yes and no, Scott. Okay, go ahead. Not exactly, because I'm sure. my memory is worse than yours, but on this book, which I wrote, I think you have an understandable slate mismemory on that. Okay, good. Well, set me straight. First of all, I never thought of it in really an abstract sense, except when it was first proposed by my then colleague, Herman Kahn, of the book on Thermon Nuclear War, at Rand. he proposed the idea, concept, hypothetical, of a doomsday machine that on being triggered by some action we didn't, we wanted to deter, it would kill everybody on Earth.

Now, everybody. Now, why, he said, would you even consider such a thing? Because it might be much cheaper than what we had. You could actually make explosions in our country that would do this, you know, produce enough fallout, enough for you. activity, various things, wouldn't even have to lift them over to the Soviet Union. It would be a lot cheaper. Well, cheapness is not an objective for the Pentagon, and that's very significant right now. To say, don't do the new ICBM, ground-based strategic deterrent, so-called, because it's

cheaper to just upgrade the Minuteman, does the same thing, yeah, it has the same risks, it does do the same thing. So I said, just do it on cheaper. Well, that didn't prevail because saving money is not the function of the Pentagon or the U.S. government, saving money that is paid to American corporations and American laborers and unions and whatnot and media and everything. No, saving money is not, they just threw $25 billion more than Biden had asked for. And Truman and the Pentagon had asked for at them without specifying what it's for. No, here's a tip, $25 billion extra on top of about $1,000, $740 billion. They want $748, okay.

So, as he said, however, given the fact that it would be cheaper, nobody will build this because it's too automatic and it kills too many people. In fact, everybody. So he said, no one will produce such a machine, that's such a device. It existed right then in 1960. Now that we know about nuclear winter, that the cities we were targeted to attack in Russia and China, so we're in the satellites. Oh, let me correct that.

In satellites, we didn't target cities per se. We just target military targets that were in the cities. Communications, communications, air defense, a lot of air defense. It would get all their cities anyway, but we were targeting them directly. But in Russia and China, we were directly targeting the cities, not knowing, because they hadn't investigated it, not thinking of the possibly, that the smoke would take the form of fire. I'm sorry, there would be firestorms, as in Hiroshima, or as there was in Tokyo with conventional weapons on March 9, 1945. A firestorm that lofts the smoke up above the atmosphere, into the upper stratosphere and so forth, where it goes around the world, doesn't rain out, and it blocks the sunlight.

So given that, we then had an apparatus that if used as planned and rehearsed and trained and targeted would not kill everybody. It wasn't a doomsday machine in that quite sense, but nearly everything. Within a year of starvation, 90%, up to 98%. Now, or 99%. Now, that's not extinction. Even 1% is now 78 million people. Down in New Zealand and Australia, living on fish and mollusks and so forth,

a lot of people. But 90% go quickly from our own attack. So we did have a doomsday machine. machine. Now, coming back, there is another ideological bent of our Air Force and the military in general, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, very little known to the public, actually, even though they've announced it in various ways, of what they call decapitation, hit the command and control of the other side, the nervous system of the military, not just Moscow, where by the way, they've targeted at one point something like 158 warheads.

Insane. Even Cheney when he looked into it. My God, how do they have so many? But he didn't cut them down that much. But not only Moscow, but you know, every command of control, everywhere, political headquarters and everything. Now, I always thought that the reason for it is obvious enough it might paralyze the other side. It's the only way you could have a big nuclear war and not be destroyed by it, is if you paralyze them by the, so you can't get them off that targeting for the first highest priority targeting, as each side said, as Putin said and so forth, we announced that under Reagan before it had been more secret.

And under Reagan said, yes, decapitation is our goal and so forth. The Russians, especially at that point, said, okay, we've got to assure that that decapitation won't keep us from destroying the United States and the rest of the world. So they did devise a system, which they called perimeter system, or in vernacular, I called it a dead hand system, where if Moscow is destroyed automatic, they did have a variant of it, what she said, Scott. There was a design for the thing to be totally automated that a number of rockets would go off from way outside Moscow, if they got the word via various lines that Moscow had been destroyed, various indicators. It would automatically go up over the missile

fields with an execute order. And that design allegedly was never turned on. And they had the fact that Moscow had been destroyed would go out automatically to a bunch of lieutenant colonels who would decide whether with war going on and so forth there was one human element here they would send up the rockets that would do this almost surely they would that's what the Russian designers said there is a slight human element in it

but that's not different from the US as I said the doomsday aspect without being automated is there in the plan and the missiles, and it is there right now. The idea of it's going off on some kind of indication or something automatically, it's never been, by the way,

our military has talked about automating that whole thing, but they never did it. In fact, again, it was York, who spoke to one of the heads of the Air Command, I think it was Lawrence Cooter, who said, well, we've got to automate this thing. And York said, when I mentioned earlier,

the head of Livermore Labs earlier, said, oh, we'll never do that. We will never, will never automate this whole thing. And Kuder then said very coldly, we might as well surrender right now. They say, it's the kind of insanity in the high military

that's equivalent to taking bleach for COVID-19. Yeah. Sounds about right. Yeah. So, and that exists. It's just an ideology. It's a cult. It's always been true on our side,

as well as the Soviets. Yeah. earlier before the soviet probably that there was delegation in case washington is hit in case the head of sack is hit off at air force base in oha then others have the authority they have their finger on the button and the ability they have it even earlier but at that point the ability and the authorization to carry out their war plans so it's always been pretty well in fact dan don't you say in the book that never even mind in the event of a war having already broken out but that in fact, sort of the entire idea of the nuclear football and the control of the president is a myth

and that there are thousands of people inside the military who could launch nuclear weapons on their own say-so, not just sub-captains, but people all over the different armed services, right? It's just, yes. Just a slight footnote there, Scott, it's not probably thousands who can do it, but it's far more than dozens of scores who can do it, maybe hundreds. nobody knew at that time very hard to say just how many people could do it and in those days actually when even a single pilot could have gotten the thing started I go into that in the book yes you did have something approached thousands but that has been cut off the pilot level the missile silo level can't do it now there are only how many nobody I don't think anybody knows

but maybe a hinder who are certainly far more than one or two or three and that's true in both sides it's almost inevitable you don't want your system to be paralyzed by an attack or a single assassin or a terrorist attack or something but neither side has been responsible in limiting the number of people who can do that at all. So take India in Pakistan, I question whether their leader even knows how many people could actually start their weapons, launch them in a crisis. And that's true in the other. By the way, England, France with their submarines, they can't, they don't have an ability

to keep their captains of those submarines from launching those. didn't put any thing in that till in the 1990s to keep a submarine from being kind of the third largest nuclear power in the world. Well, so let's talk bad about George W. Bush for a little while. He got us out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. And then the idea was, oh, yeah, what are they going to do about it? Or something stupid like that. And then the answer was we found out in 2018 in Putin's State of the Union address, whatever they call it, when he debuted their new nuclear arsenal, he said that they had built a nuclear-powered cruise missile with essentially unlimited range to evade our defenses, that they built a new heavy rocket that can go around

the South Pole instead of the North Pole and hit Florida or Texas, and that one of these new heavy missiles would carry enough warheads that they could kill every city in Texas. They could kill Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Houston, San Antonio, and kill all of us with one rocket, Dan, and also then a nuclear torpedo, where they could, you know, drive a H-bomb, basically a drone submarine into San Francisco Bay and shut down the entire Bay area permanently with a radioactive tidal wave. How do you like that? I don't like it. That shouldn't exist. But it is, as you say, an explicit, conscious, and effective answer to our anti-ballistic missile program. I was just reading yesterday in a defense site that the Russians, somebody who's been over there, in fact, this is Lawrence Kerb, Corb, who was an assistant secretary under Reagan, a very knowledgeable

guy. He said the Russians, and this is in line with everything else I heard, the Russian. the Russian military really has and always has been very afraid of our anti-ballistic missiles possibility. Every scientist over here, everybody who's looked at this, says it can't possibly work. It's unworked. That's kept us from spending trillions on it instead of tens of billions. That's one thing that the arms control community did kind of put a ceiling on. It was a total hoax to think that the anti-ballistic missile could deal.

with decoys from their ICBMs. They deal with it. Nevertheless, the Russians are so impressed by American technology. They've always worried the Euros will come up with something that will nullify our ability to retaliate. And the Chinese now the same with a little more reason, that's why they're building a lot more missiles, unfortunately, a little more reason because we have, in their vicinity there,

there, we have possibly both from submarines and our bases there, the ability to send even very accurate conventional cruise missiles against their missile silos, and they have a very much smaller base there, a force to go after. So they're building up thanks to our anti-ballistic efforts there. Putin has said that he will not lower the number of missiles so long as we maintain anti-ballistic missile sites in Poland and Romania, which they like having there, the Poles and Romania, because it's an American commitment. It's a presence. It's a commitment to them against anything from Russia. However, they can easily, as the Russians point out, they can easily be converted into offensive missile launchers, which would get Moscow in a matter of minutes, maybe

15 minutes or something, and bring into play. This decapitation thing. that has them concerned. So these threats that we're making, and again, the ABM is nothing but a sales pitch. As I say, it's a pork, it's a hoax. Can we go back to that last point for just a second

point about the dual-use launchers here? It's the MK41 missile launcher that you would use for these anti-ballistic missile missiles, and yet they're the same ones that you can shoot a tomahawk missile with a hydrogen bomb tip from. And so if you're

Vladimir Putin, what are you supposed to think of that? Well, one way to think about it would be that any initiation in nuclear war by one of these superpowers against the other, it's the end of civilization.

And you can't, you actually can't change that. The idea of limiting damage is hoped. I must say he can't count on Let me back off. I think I've given her own impression here.

Can't count on our being crazy enough to think that we might get away reducing damage by going first. That is Air Force doctrine for Sinai. So he looks at it, and although the ABM won't work, and although the counterforce will not disarm the Russia, will not, can't disarm Russia, the U.S. might think it could. I can't say that's paranoid.

most of them do think it could. And crazily, how can they be that crazy? Well, that's what I've learned at 90. Anyone can be dumb enough to keep his job. And to have a good job at Northbrook-Garman Board of Directors when you get out. Our present, Austin, our present chairman of the term chiefs, came from the board of Raytheon. Before him, two of the acting secretaries since came from Boeing and the, et cetera. So, you know, that's part of their career plan.

So opposing, you know, not worrying about these missiles, particularly on either side, is not a good career move. And they don't do it. Right. And that's true on both sides. You made reference before, Dan, to Cheney's objection to the war plan back. in 91 or pardon me 89 when he first became secretary of defense and i had lost that footnote but to me is such an important anecdote there about when the general showed him i believe the simulation on the map of this is what it would look like when we start nuke in russia and that

cheney old iron ass as hw bush called them the meanest guy in north america the guy tortures people to death so you can get lies so you can start wars that guy looked at the war and said, oh, my God, this is insane. What are we doing? Can you remind me where I learned that from? General George Lee Butler's memoirs, Volume 2, which is quite extraordinary memoirs, says, I believe that story, certainly first he discovered,

see this immense number of, as they called it, overkill on one target in a redundancy. And he tried to reduce it very much, And I'm pretty sure that it's in that book, that same book. I have seen it several places, but I'm pretty sure that it is in that one. And that's probably where you've got it. You know, what it says about Cheney, I don't think there's been anybody who first looks at these plans who isn't, in Eisenhower's term, appalled by them.

But they don't change them. And why don't they change them? They're obviously insane. And let me tell about the plan I did. make that clear enough. My, I blame myself now, that I was one of several, it ran a number of people, whose objective was to do better, much better, than this insane Eisenhower plan. But that was the wrong objective, taking that as our target, that's so far off that the plan I came up with could be said to be better, but it would have had pretty much the same effect, the way the Air Force

interpreted it. For example, I gave an option. I drafted, and this was in that, a drafted for not here being Moscow, a drafted, I mean an option, this is by director of the Secretary of Defense McNam. An option not to hit cities. Well, as General Butler, the last commander of strategic air command and first commander of what they called strategic command, which we have now, which includes the Navy's Polaris and now Triton submarines. He was the man in charge of this, and he ended up when he retired, and he used to call this retirement syndrome, with the most outspoken attacks on these plans I've ever seen by anyone.

He called them evil and immoral, and he said, we have escaped all-out war, and he's a religious man. He said, by some combination of the grace of God, luck and i think he said some prudence and of that uh he said well he thought praise of god was the most important i i would i would emphasize the luck but he says i agree with him it's a miracle a secular miracle that we got through the last 70 years without a nuclear war i wouldn't have predicted it so couldn't we do it again yeah another miracle why not but uh happened once maybe could happen again, except when you look at the record, you see that time and time again,

far from being unthinkable, we were on the verge of nuclear war secretly. We were always edging toward it. It was thinkable every day of the year within the executive branch. So, as I say, I definitely do blame myself in the 60s for taking no stand and not seeing that the ICBMs should be rescinded, should be out. You shouldn't have them. The Navy started by saying that, and they were right. But it ran, I didn't, we didn't work, we all didn't work for the Navy. We were on contract to the Air Force, and that may, quote, have influenced our thinking here.

But I think if we'd work for the Navy, I actually think, again being conscientious and not consciously corrupt, or just giving them, what they wanted, we would have seen the logic that you shouldn't have these launch on warning, dangerous hair triggers. The subs are not on a hair trigger, and they're not hair triggers. And even if you accept the idea of deterrence, and then we say, I do, to some extent, that separates me from a lot of my colleagues in the arms control community. But I do think you don't have, you don't allow another superpower somebody to have a monopoly of nuclear weapons. And I think that goes for Russia or China as well as for the U.S.

Mutual disarmament with verification, yes, that's what we should aim at. But, you know, lateral no, having said that, to have, as I put it, a near-dumstay machine, a near-extinction machine has always been insane, and it is. know what though if you put unilateral disarmament in its proper context if america was led by exceptionally responsible men who said we are disarming and we are insisting that our friends and allies and pseudo adversaries including russian china follow our lead to and they knew everything they can to pressure their friends the british the french the israelis to begin to disarm and do everything they can to shake hands with the russian

and come to eye to eye and figure out how we can do it together. If America would just take the lead on that. And, you know, it's funny because, as we were talking about, I mean, the mutually assured destruction thing, it just seems so permanent. So many people take it as it works so well, and this is just how it's got to be forever. But they're, you know, for a direct comparison,

I saw someone make the other day, the world outlawed chemical weapons. It's not that they don't exist anywhere, but they are essentially banned. And there's, in fact, a new treaty, the nonproliferation treaty really obligates us to disarm. But there's a new nuclear weapons abolition treaty that almost every non-nuclear state in the world has signed in the last year now that the nuclear weapons states, of course, are resistant to. But people should really be thinking hard about this. There's got to be a way to keep Germany and France and Russia and Britain and America and Japan from all killing each other other, other than holding 80s.

bombs to each other's head for the indefinite future. And, you know, every time I talk to you, I get the idea that actually these things are going to start going off here at some point in either my lifetime or the next generation or two or three. We're not going to make it when we have thousands of these machines ready to be detonated on a moment's notice like this. Well, I have to agree with that dark picture, Scott. I don't think. think it's exaggerated at all the yes you've described what reasonable people should do and we've had leaders who could see that except that when they're in office a lot of people see it before they're in office and after they're in office I could name names but I'm going to that but that's

that is the case well you can name you can name Kissinger and Schultz and Perry and some of the most prominent leaders of the American national security state over the last two generations who now confess that, oops, it shouldn't be this way. That's right. Okay, that's true. But when they're in office, then they say, oh, wait a minute,

there's enough people influenced by the combined lobbyists, which are thousands, actually, from, I'll name these names, General Dynamics, Reithion, Lockheed, Boeing, let's see,

what I left out. And Northrop Grumman, there you go. General Dynamics, Honeywell. Yeah, yeah. So they, you know, we need the votes. Certainly senators are in their pocket, essentially. And we need their votes for this other legislative program. We're not getting big pressure from the U public to do this.

It's not an election winner. And moreover, if we move in this direction, we assure that right-wing people including some Democrats, but certainly Republicans will say you are disarming or endangering us, which is not true for most of these cases, absolutely not true, but a very potent political charge, and they don't want to do it. I don't think it will happen. As you say, we have these 69 groups who say eliminate nuclear weapons. Very reasonable. It's the right thing to do, unilaterally on that one. we'd be safer. There's the interlaterals that we could take and make us all safer. But it's very unlikely to happen, almost unlikely, very unlikely. And that's true. Let me make a point that

very important that I realize I haven't been making enough in last years. We have reduced the number weapons on both sides. He was in Soviet Union, Russia, 80%, very impressive. 80% of the weapons. There was a time when there were 67,000 nuclear weapons in the world between us. Compare that, remember, York's point for deterrence, one to 100, closer to one than 100. 67,000. Okay, we've reduced that by 80%. And here's a point. people don't know and doesn't get me, and I haven't made it now. It hasn't reduced the risk of all-out nuclear war at all. As long as those ICBMs remain, and the Russians depend on theirs much more than we do,

because their submarine force, while enough to destroy the U.S., they don't rely on it, it is nearly as much command and control and against our anti-submarine warfare and so on. They will be much more reluctant to get rid of, though they could reduce their ICBMs. Our submarine force makes, as I see, has made the, even from a Cold War armaments point of view, which I shared in 1961 at that time, before Vietnam and before the Pentagon papers, before a lot of reading I've done, including reading like your own books got really. But even from that point of view, you could say, we're safer if we get rid of that, but without getting rid of it, reducing the weapons now to 3,000 on each side, 1,500 or 1,500 or so 2,000 reserve on each side. So about 3,000 on each side. Doesn't change the situation at all. You still have 400 missiles. You used to have 1,000. Now we have 400 missiles. that have to be used or lost if there's warning, and the false warning continues to happen.

And if it happens during a crisis, for example, we did get false warnings during the Cuban missile crisis. And the Russians got him during what they thought of was a crisis in 1983. And if one man had not lied to his superiors, Petrov, and told him, he really thought there was a 50% chance they were under attack. And he knew that Andropov and the others were in an alert mood, fearing a surprise attack from Reagan, who they thought was crazy, and who was talking about eliminating the Soviet Union all the time. If he told them there's a 50% chance that they're on the way, they would have launched their weapons. So he told them, no, it's a false alarm, which he didn't know. His subordinates all said, tell him go. We're under attack. We're under attack. he wasn't sure.

If he'd acted differently, you and I would not be having this conversation. Scott, go on. So the point is that risk is as great now as it has ever been. And that's very impossible to people. They think, well, we're going

in the right direction. We've gone down by 80%. No. The insane number of weapons in the world by a thousand or so times ensured that you could get rid

of 80% and still have more than enough to blow the world up right hang on just one second hey y'all the audio book of my book enough already timed and the war on terrorism is finally done yes of course read by me it's available

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The audiobook. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the institute, and they keep them running well. suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you.

Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. As you may know, the audiobook of my new book, enough already. Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally out. It's co-produced by our longtime friends at Listen, Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. For many years now, Derek Sheriff over there at Listen and Think has offered lifetime

subscriptions to anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton.org slash donate or to the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. And they've got a bunch of great titles, including Inside Syria by the late great Reese Erlich. That's listen and think.com. Well, and look, just three weeks ago on Christmas Day, It was the 30th anniversary of the Soviet unions ceasing to exist entirely. The fact that we're having this conversation in the year 2022, I mean, it's great to see that you are so healthy and doing so well, Dan. But this is insane that it's even possible that this is the discussion.

You know, Eric Margulies, the great journalist back a few years ago during the height of tensions in 2014 and 15 in Ukraine and in Syria. He said that he had some contacts, old friends, among the very highest levels of the foreign ministry in France, spies and diplomats and so forth that he's known for many years. And they told him, this is as bad as it's been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were terrified that we were going to get into a real war with Russia over things where we shouldn't be messing around at all. Supporting terrorists in Syria, supporting Nazis in their coup and Ukraine and this kind of thing, where we're totally picking the fight unnecessarily. That's right. And you didn't mention Taiwan, but I know you know that one.

Oh, and that's in my notes. I'm so sorry. Thank you for bringing that up, because I wanted to ask you, I didn't get a chance to interview you when the New York Times put this out. The cursed Charlie Savage wrote up this great piece that you had given him about some documents about war plans for China in, was it, 1958? 58. And when I said there was a time when Eisenhower on the one hand restrained his generals, including the one I've been mentioning, Cooter and the Pacific Command, but he restrained them from the immediate attacks they wanted, nuclear attacks, to defend Komoi and Matsu. Islands, one of them is a mile and a half from the Chinese mainland, very visible on a clear day.

to maintain our control of those, they wanted to go to nuclear weapons. Now, Eisenhower restrained that as the first action, but he said, if it's necessary, if their artillery attacks are so effective, or if they add air power to them to keep us from resupplying those little islands, then, yes, then we'll go to nuclear war. And he said that in these documents that are revealed, in a way that would say, still top secret, this part of it, of Eisenhower making clear that he was authorizing the use of the, he would authorize, I should say, retained the, I could come, there's somebody to teach him, okay, he retained control, I'll say for a moment, for argument here, he would

go to it, but he said in the expectation that the Russians, the Chinese didn't have nuclear weapons in, that the Russians, their ally then, 58, will hit Okinawa or in Taiwan, they'll destroy Taiwan, they'll hit our bases in Guam and Okinawa. Well, that by his definition would be armed conflict with the Soviet Union general war in which, as I say at that time, they were figuring on killing 600 million people. Now this is Eisenhower. We haven't had a more mature responsible president since then. And this was the crazy stuff he was talking then.

And I thought, it's time for us to know that you don't, we haven't had the chance to elect people who put such a high priority on avoiding nuclear war that they will refute. They will reject craziness like this. been there all along. And that isn't to say that it couldn't, it doesn't occur on the other side either. But Putin talks about, I don't know whether he really believes this or not, but he talks about initiating nuclear war if necessary first use for some reason. That's crazy talk, but it serves a purpose at the risk of eventually blowing up the world. And that's what I wanted to reveal in 58. I haven't seen any.

effect of that, I want to say. Some of the scholars were very interested in it. They didn't know some of this stuff that had never been declassified, top secret. I haven't even been indicted. That would draw some attention to it. And I thought it would give me a case here that in my old age, I always thought a prison is my retirement plan. And it would give me the chance in court to argue that information like this, 50, let's see, it actually, we're talking about 58, but it was from a, what I put out was a top secret study from 64. So what is that? Over half a century, I can't do the arithmetic at 90. So you figure it up. From 64 till now, should this have been top secret as it is, to know what planning we were making about Taiwan? I think not. Anyway, I'd be happy to argue,

that in court, even if I was expecting to lose. Well, and that's such an important point that in that story, and everyone should go look at it, I'm sorry I don't have the headline in front of me, but just search Charlie Savage, Daniel Ellsberg, Taiwan, nuclear, something like that, it'll come up. And the challenge

in there is one, hey everybody, look at what the American military is prepared to do to prevent violent reunification here, take note of how dangerous that could be, but secondly, you really did throw down the gauntlet in the newspaper of record and dare and defy the Department of Justice

to indict you and prosecute you under the espionage act that's not fooling around man that wasn't just a PR stunt dan there's no question that what i did and what i'm doing when i put this stuff out uh is absolutely as indictable as anything they've done this century uh any of the uh eight or nine people that Obama prosecuted Julian Assange, Snowden. Actually, Snowden's is a higher classification, it so happens. But fully indictable on this, why haven't they paid any attention? I couldn't have waved a red flag more obviously. I have to think, I don't think it's just because of me, I don't think this is not a best

case for them to argue which is their interpretation that's something that is still top secret but 50 years old is a basis for putting somebody in prison. That's not their best case. But they don't need a best case. I talked this morning

for the second time to my hero, one of my heroes, Daniel Hale called me from Marion Prison, Illinois, this morning. I'm flattered that he used his weeks calls. He gets two calls a week. Yeah, I called me yesterday and today we talked.

He revealed the criminality of our drone program, our drone assassination program, which puts people for assassinating on the president's decision, including American

citizens, like Amr al-Olaqi, and his son both born in the United States, assassinated by drones, okay, what Daniel Hale revealed and talked about and did everything he could to publicize it, he was raving the red flag in effect, so he's in Mary in prison. And one of the things he revealed on the intercept, I think it was, that for every person targeted by this thing, by drone program, an average of 17 other people get killed. who were nearby, they have the wrong location, the wrong name, whatever, mostly just

by children, other people, every kind of person. And by the way, the targets are also innocent in the first place, too, but yeah. Yeah, anyway, and that includes, of course, countries who are not at war with, like Sudan and various other places where we're using drones, you know, the legality of which is ridiculous, whether you want an assassination program at all. You know, that's going to be imitated very much so. You talked about automated war plan. Well, our whole war plan is fortunately not automated, nor is Russia's.

But automated drones, I think they're on the way. And they, you know, they will pick the targets. The drones will, and they will fire the missiles. And we'll get that in domestic systems eventually. I mean, that sounds as all, I'm off the wall here. No, I'm sorry. I don't think so. Yeah, that's the virtual wall that the Democrats support at the southern border, Dan, is to have drones going around arresting people, identifying people and arresting people out in the middle of the desert somewhere. Just saw a new thing about that.

They're called the virtual fence instead of Donald Trump's wall. They haven't yet armed them, is that right? But they could easily. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if they have weapons on. Well, actually, no, I think they do. Well, I'd have to go back and look. But I think the promo that I saw. I'm pretty sure they don't get, they don't have automated weapons. I don't think we use. Oh, I don't think they pull the triggers themselves, but they're remote control by men.

But I think they may have, you know, shotguns on them to say, freeze right there until the humans get there and arrest people and stuff like that. Look, people in Google revolted against the idea of providing software for automated systems like that. And they said, no, we shouldn't be doing that. Remember, their motto used to be at first. in Google though they changed it don't be evil yeah then they signed right up with the CIA and it's been pure evil ever since so a lot of people at Google said no we don't want to be part of this is it always well good that was good so when Google came off the contract but that didn't mean others didn't pick it up it didn't stop

the program yeah so the program of course is just going ahead full bless it's part of this 25 billion that they added we want more on cyber war Well, and of course, you can't think of taking out anything from the budget, which is mostly pork. I say the ICBM part is toxic pork. Actually, as long as we're at it, one more thing, Dan. What about hypersonics? The story is that Russia and China are ahead of us. We blew all our Wad patrol and posh tunes down in the Helmand province, and they got a leg up on us on the hypersonics.

So we got to give Lockheed a whole new trillion here. Now, I couldn't know less about that, but I have read the book by Andrew Coburn, spelled C-O-C-L-C-K, B-U-R-N, what are called, spoils of war. Have you read that? No, I have it here, but I have not had a chance to look at it yet. Let me recommend that to you, very much so. And it's articles of his that mostly came out earlier. Oh, then in that case, I've interviewed him about them all along. But they're extremely good chapters.

And one of his chapters is precisely on this. Well, I mean, one of his chapters that's very good is in detail how we got extended to the border of Russia in East Europe, what Kennan called the greatest mistake of the century. Right. And Perry had opposed this and so forth. Okay, we got there for one reason to sell them weapons, to bring them up to standards of NATO standards. with American weapons, or in some cases, European weapons. And by the way, I suspect that that's one of many reasons

that Putin couldn't probably stay in office if he lets Ukraine going to NATO. But it's probably a minor reason, but the reeners, we want to sell them weapons, not the U.S. selling the weapons. They have a lot of other reasons. Okay, coming back, Coburn has a chapter in hypersonic stuff. I actually interviewed him about that piece on the... And his claim is that it's just, again, a technical hoax like ABM, that for a lot of technical

reasons, which he gets into, that it will never amount to anything. This one isn't even going to work particularly. That doesn't matter. You can preparing to do it and developing it and looking at it, why, you can spend any number of billions doing that. So what's bad about it? So it's one more sales pitch for the weapon. Well, here's the thing, though, I mean, I think it's within my imagination to figure that a Russian boat in the Atlantic Ocean could fire a straight shot hypersonic missile and hit D.C. with it or hit Newport News, New Jersey, or whatever was their targeting.

He can do that with a cruise missile right now. I mean, but I guess the idea is that they go so much faster. I don't really know what the advantage is compared to. So what? Our Arabia, we don't have anything that could stop a cruise missile coming at us from a submarine or a ship. Well, and I guess, well, I mean, to me, the worry is just reaction time and errors, right? Is what is that? And if we're afraid it's a hypersonic missile, then that gives us two or three minutes to figure it out instead of 12 or whatever it is. You know, that kind of thing. As far as strategically, I don't see what makes them so much better than a regular cruise missile. I guess harder to shoot down.

But we can't shoot, well, in theory you can't shoot a cruise missile, but if it's, you know, it can follow an irregular path and it can go very low, very low. It's not really practical as far as I know. Maybe some of me will contradict me on this. But, you know, when you mention that ship, you can't, you can't, it's not that we're the only unreasonable, insanely unreasonable people in the world.

it reminds me of something we only learned a few years ago actually far half a century after the event that christroff had a submarine off hawaii i'll bet even you haven't heard this guy no i don't think i had heard that okay during the cuban missile crisis christroff insanely against the advice of some of his top advisors he sent submarines into the caribbean with nuclear warheads which could have started World War III, blowing up the world, you know, against the U.S. Navy in the Caribbean, not a good idea. And that almost did blow up the world. But meanwhile, we didn't learn that for like 30 years after the crisis. But even later we learned at the same time, he had a submarine with a nuclear torpedo off Hawaii. And with the orders that if the war started,

you know, hit Hawaii he couldn't hit Hawaii otherwise, but from a submarine he could, this torpedo itself, you know, nuclear could go into the harbor you know, blow the harbor up there. Was that a good idea? Was that really good thinking?

Now, Christchoff is not only not the dumbest, he's one of the smartest people that they've had over there, a comparative version of for example, but in some of the other. But he was capable of that kind of thinking. And that's why humans are not the species to be entrusted with nuclear weapons.

And what you were saying earlier, Scott, about the prospects for humanity are very dark. It's not certain that any of this will have happened. And you can play the games in Ukraine and Taiwan and Baltics and everywhere else, and it may not blow the world up. That's a possibility and they're ready to gamble on that and play these games for a variety of reasons, diplomatic reasons, staying in office, keeping alliances where we're the leader. Look, we're putting nuclear, we're outfitting the F-35, which you know, Scott, is the biggest pork program in history.

It's a trillion and a half dollars for a weapon that, for any of its very, you know, it's very, various functions there are better weapons. It may or may not ever be used. But anyway, even Bernie Sanders can't oppose, in fact, he supported an F-35 base, or F-35's being based, in his state. And, you know, he just doesn't pay to oppose these things. So now they're putting, they're outfitting them for nuclear weapons for our F-35s that we want to give, put in Germany. Now, nuclear weapons in Germany, Hmm, you know, under what circumstances would they drop those nuclear weapons? Well, circumstances in which all Germans die, and nearly everybody else in the world dies. And without the F-35s. So the F-35s are just, you know, one more trigger, you might say, on these things. Right. This is, I mean, this is our species.

Yeah, see, that's kind of the same point about the hypersonics, right? Is they don't really give you any better strategic advantage, but they do. do increase all the risks. They do, and there's money. There's money. There's good. Nobody wants nobody. But preparing for World War III, very profitable,

very important to our society. And also there's certain political advantages in threatening World War III. And for that, you prepare for it, which is very profitable. That's what we've been doing for 70 years. And it's a miracle. We've

we've gotten through this far. We've come very close. The miracle we need is for the public to become aware, to let this into their awareness and make it part of the pressure they bring to bear on our representatives and our presidents, which it currently isn't. It isn't in campaigns. It's not an issue. Maybe that's like this, while we have these 69 or so groups coming right now conceivably we could get into the discussion with this kind of thing and maybe that can make a difference and otherwise humanity will go on one percent two percent there's quite a few maybe maybe 10 percent that would be 700 million well that's big civilizations with that and you can do it all again uh all again but i must say uh that's where we're hitting

Omniside. Are you the one who coined the term omniside in your new book there? No, it's from a philosopher named Somerville who invented it years ago. And, of course, as I say, amnicide can be, you know, sounds as though it's defined as everybody dying or even all life dying. Well, that's not in the cards, even with nuclear winter or climate. The climate, we don't even know what happens on the population I've never heard. You know, civilization is totally disorganized, but what happens exactly the population? I don't know.

But in nuclear winter, we do know pretty well. Cut off the sunlight, freeze all the harvests for a year, and actually for most of a decade. We know what that'll do. So it doesn't kill everybody. But for purposes of discussion, I've been calling that on. aside, Somerville's terms. And we shouldn't be no alliance like NATO or Japan should be based on a threat of blowing up the world to protect that ally. That's, well, I don't know, it sounds, you know, I've been using the word insane, but how can you say that? Very sane, reasonable,

respected, highly informed, highly educated, people have been doing this for 70 years. So is it insane? Well, is it insane to destroy the species? To risk it? To risk it is what they're doing? Evidently not, clinically. It all comes down to social psychology, right?

It's the diffusion of responsibility. There's nobody really whose fault it is. And so it's only many people's fault a little bit. And so it's sort of like a lynching or something where it's rationalized away in that sense. Very late. I was speaking just the other day, Dan with Dan McAdams, who's foreign policy advisor for the great Ron Paul all those years in his congressional office. And he was talking about, we were discussing the Ukraine and the Kazakhstan crisis. And he was talking about, he wouldn't name names, but he was saying someone that he knows,

personally in Washington, D.C., within the halls of power. Of course, he spent many years living there, working with Ron, and he wanted to emphasize. It was really important to note. You talk about this a bit in your book Secrets, and I guess in Dooms Day Machine, too, but he was saying, it's so important to note that these people actually are not criminally insane, psychopathic, sociopathic, monster, blood-soaked madmen, like you might think of them if you live in Austin. and just think of D.C. as just Mordor, you know, over there where these people are just maniacs. And yet he says, no, it's really not like that.

It's just, you know, it's, you can call it a simple-mindedness or being, you know, stuck in echo chamber or a bubble or something, where look, man, everybody knows we're the good guys, they're the bad guys, we're the red, white, and blue. We always do the right thing. If it wasn't the right thing, we wouldn't be doing it. And so that's why we're doing it. And it's just like that.

And how then, in all other aspects, these are normal humans. It's just, that's the way they look at it. And of course, Dan and I'm not sure about your position on Ukraine, sir, but Dan McAdams and I both look at that thing and ask the question first, why is this all W. Bush and Barack Obama's fault and see, you know, history didn't begin when Vladimir Putin did something rash. let's try to figure out what led to it but of course in dc they don't have any incentive whatsoever boy especially in the biden administration for example to say yeah we personally screwed this up back when we were the obama administration uh in uh 2014 and 15 when we started the when we did the coup and started the war so you know they don't have any any incentive to be honest about their role in it so they then they see everything that the other side does in reaction to their actions

as aggression and horror and terror and now they are the heroes who get to dress up in armor and defend Europe from the Russian hordes and and they convince themselves this in a way again back to the real point that they're they're not like um you know a serial killer or something. They could kill every last human, or as you said, not every last human, but only nine-tenths of humanity in an afternoon or, you know, over the course of, you know, a year or two after they engage in a general war over some ridiculous so-called interest. But then, you know, if you sat down with them at lunch, they're fine. And that's, it's the incentive structure and the social psychology of the system itself that makes it that way.

again just the same thing is taking a check from a lobbyist and saying okay thank you i'll make sure to buy more h bombs this year thanks for helping me get reelected and not thinking that that's completely crazy that that's how you would you know base your legislative decisions and your appropriations and things on those kinds of deals but it's difficult to understand for me being from austin and never having been part of that machine i remember in i'll get the number wrong and you'll correct me But I think in secrets, you say that 40,000 different men and women inside the government knew that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie. And they all kept the secret until you finally leaked the Pentagon Papers almost 10 years later, or seven years later. Isn't that right?

Do you say that? Well, since you asked, I didn't give a figure in the book for the number. If you said 30,000, that would be like everybody in the Pentagon. No, everybody in the Pentagon didn't know that. hundreds, tens, hundreds, I would say hundreds. I didn't give a figure that I think, but a great many. I got a sport was in the thousands or something. Anyway, I'm old and decrepit here.

Yeah, but you're 90 years old and a lot sharper than me. That's like me. But listen, Scott, I have to unhappily agree with everything you just said. You made a number of separate points, but I agree with each of them. When you say, for instance, they don't say we did this wrong. So, let's change it. And why don't they say it? Fat chance.

They just don't. Virtually no one. It's just unknown. It doesn't seem to be human. And the other point is not because these people are unusually corrupt or bad or anything like that. No. There is, I once said to Gravel, Senator Graville, when he was in, no, no, it was after he was in, in 2006. I don't go into all the context.

but I said, do you think that this Congress is exceptionally cowardly, Democrats in 2006, for not, by the way, moving towards impeaching Bush? He said, no, usually cowardly, you know, usually, same way as before, 30 years before. Well, the exception, there are exceptions, extremely small number of people. So that's why I keep saying it is a species problem here. And I think it comes down to, you know, people want to say, by the way, it's capitalists only, well, yes, capitalists, certainly. Capitalism of all kinds certainly contributes to this. It doesn't block it. It contributes. But what do you, the Soviet Union can be defined various ways in their system. Some people don't like to call it socialist, but whatever, it did call itself social, but whatever it was, it wasn't capitalist. And they built a dooms thing machine. So, you know, you don't, it isn't, the whole problem isn't defined just by capitalism. I think in our genes there is a very tremendous impulse to divide other humans into us and them, us and others.

And the small and in the large, you know, back when we were a hundred gathered and had to avoid others. and then with civilization and war and sex and a lot of other things that came with irrigation, irrigated field agriculture and whatnot. The population exploded. Okay. So all that time, I think the, it's very easy to get people to regard certain others as a source of fear, distrust, and contempt and their enemies. And then even the ones who aren't enemies are still others

you don't care about. Something that comes up right now on climate, it just happens to the discussion the other day, somebody was saying, don't these rich people, the CEOs of Exxon, who Tom Englehart made the point that there should be a crime of

terror side, T-E-R-A-C-I-D, well, again, seems a little exaggerated. They're not destroying the planet. They're just destroying the ecology of humans, or of civilization. Humans will survive for a while. I just came up with the perfect compromise, Dan. We'll take all the nuclear

weapons and we'll make electricity out of them. Whatever, but okay, so they said on the climate, Exxon, which I expect, I was talking to a couple of friends the other day twins who are 21. And I said, you know,

and their father's about nine years younger than I am. And I said, when you get to be my age, when your father gets to be my age, 2030, supposedly, according to the Paris Accords, we will have cut fossil fuel emissions in half on the way to eliminating them on balance by 2050. By 2030, they're supposed to be cut in half. That's not going to happen. In fact, I said, I'm pretty sure, pretty sure, not certain. They will still be rising as they are every year since Paris, and they'll be rising in 2030.

So anyway, somebody said, well, don't these rich people care, like CEO of Exxon, about their grandchildren? And here's my speculative answer. Yes, they do care about their grandchildren. They don't care about your grandchildren. That's why they're building lifeboats and buying property in Argentina. They think their grandchildren will do fine, and they're probably right, unless they're at ground zero for a nuclear winter. But if they're not at ground zeros, they'll be in New Zealand or there'll be somewhere else. And if it's the climate change, there will still be luxury resorts for the rich.

They just won't be in the same places they are now. They won't be in orbit. They won't Dubai, I think, will. with all the air conditioning they have. I don't think Dubai will be a place that kind of be there. But there'll be other places, Antarctica, you know, or Siberia or somewhere. They'll gather in their bubbles, domes, and they'll be all right. You know what?

I think the rest of us, regardless of the temperature outside, will be a lot better off without them on the outside of the dome. I'll take it. Anyway, listen, we better stop here, Dan, but I love you. Thank you so much for doing the show again. I love talking with you so much. And I recommend so highly your great books to people. Both of them are just incredible. I love it, too, Scott.

Okay, keep at it. Bye. All right. Take care. All right, you guys. Of course, the heroic Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, author of Secrets, a memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,

and the incredible book, The Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. And that has been Anti-War Radio for this morning. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director at anti-war.com, and author of enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. Find my full interview archive at Scott Horton.org.

Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton show. And I'm here every Sunday morning from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.