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Ellsberg's recent book The Doomsday Machine says the Pentagon Papers were his less-important material. His job at the Pentagon was nuclear policy, and he also h

Ellsberg's recent book The Doomsday Machine says the Pentagon Papers were his less-important material. His job at the Pentagon was nuclear policy, and he also had thousands of pages detailing that policy, which at the time was horrific. (The book goes into detail on just how horrific; much of it has been declassified now so he can source his claims.) He decided to release the Vietnam papers first because he felt that if he released the nuclear papers, nobody would care about the Vietnam stuff. He gave the nuclear documents to his brother, who first hid them in a compost bin. Then his brother decided that wasn't secure enough, and hid them in black plastic bags on the outskirts of the town dump. That turned out to be smart, since men in suits were seen poking rods into the compost pile the next day, but a freak storm washed that entire portion of the dump down a hill and the nuclear documents were lost. They spent a year sifting through trash looking for them. Ellsberg's wife called that storm a miracle from God, because in Ellsberg's opinion he certainly would have spent the rest of his life in prison for making the nuclear papers public.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
So, is anything from the nuclear documents in the book you mentioned? Or is it really all lost forever?
- DennisP 6y ago
  The documents themselves are lost, but Ellsberg was deeply involved in nuclear strategy and in the past few years has been able to get public declassified sources for much of what he remembered. The previously-classified history of US nuclear strategy is mostly what the book is about. (See my cousin comment for a short outline.)
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    Thanks a lot!
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      You can just watch the movie "Dr. Strangelove." People thought it was SciFi, but it was actually a documentary. The nuclear silo launch code for decades was "000000" to save time to launch. Also, Reagan and Russia didn't care about some goofy MAD doctrine - they wanted actual ABM defenses. That's why there's an ABM ring allowed by treaty around Moscow, and why Reagan funded SDI (lasers weren't implemented, but anti-missile missiles were.) Reagan thought MAD was immoral if you could build a real defense, and he was right. Something most people don't know is that Russia seriously planned to nuke Beijing durng their 1969 border dispute, but the US found out and told them not to. The CCP did their "wolf warrior" b.s. on Russia, and after the Russians had enough they decided to root out the problem once and for all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict Ironically, the CCP asked Russia to declare a joint war on the US in the 50's and 60's twice for communist ideological reasons, but Russia laughed them off since there was no practical advantage for Russia. Although Russia's weapons worked just fine, the US over-estimated Russian belligerence and grossly under-estimated the CCP. The US Democrats are obsessed with the Russians, but it's the CCP that is completely unhinged. Xi wants to be god on earth over all other countries.
      - mhh__ 6y ago
        That was only one step in many many codes - you couldn't just get a job in a launch silo and press boom
      - lr1970 6y ago
        IIRC, during the Korea war there were people at Pentagon proposing to nuke China over their support for the North.
        redis_mlc 6y ago
        It went far beyond merely proposing. Nuclear-armed B-29's were flown to Guam and Japan. I think Truman even delegated the decision to drop them to Ridgeway, meaning Truman pre-authorized their use based on a common understanding it was a last resort. Truman's public statements were that all weapons were on the table, including nuclear.
- nabla9 6y ago
  The US nuclear strategy at time was called massive retaliation. 'massive retaliation' was strategy where the US committed itself to response in much greater nuclear strike in the event of an attack, even conventional attack by Soviets. Kennedy abandoned that strategy during Cuban crisis when he saw that it didn't really work and was insane. It was simply not credible that US would commit losing 80-100 million people after single event. The US and NATO nuclear deterrence moved to what is now known as flexible response. The response to attack will be proportional.
- coolgeek 6y ago
  There seems to be a bit of confusion here. I surmise that what was "lost forever" was only a copy of the documents. I base that on common sense, as well as this from the linked article (about the Pentagon Papers): > So Mr. Sheehan smuggled the papers out of the apartment in Cambridge, Mass., where Mr. Ellsberg had stashed them; then he copied them illicitly, just as Mr. Ellsberg had done, and took them to The Times. (Of course, I could be the one that is confused here, misreading this discussion. But I don't think that is the case)
  - DennisP 6y ago
    Yes, it was Ellsberg's copies of the nuclear strategy documents that were lost. The original documents were still in a classified safe in the Pentagon. Some were later declassified, long after they were obsolete, and probably some have never seen the light of day.
jjoonathan 6y ago
Nuclear conflict is inherently horrific, but I would hope we were (and are) willing to do appalling things to deter a nuclear attack on the US.
- willis936 6y ago
  This is assuming the content of the papers is standard MAD. We don’t know what was in them.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    The book is mostly about that content, which has been largely declassified now. It goes into quite a bit of detail. It was not just MAD. It included massive retaliation against every city in both the USSR and China in response to minor conventional battles, which they calculated would also kill most people in Europe from fallout. It gave independent launch authority to regional military commanders. First strike was part of the strategy, and was threatened on multiple occasions. The US has still not disavowed first strike.
    - gen220 6y ago
      In response to your last statement, I found this Amazon review [1] (of all sources!) of Ellsberg's book fascinating. It's written by an older gentleman who was apparently involved in Nuclear policy in the late 70s and early 80s. Here is the relevant snippet: > To a degree, my time on nuclear weapons was a decade later than Ellsberg, ironically my first day after my PhD was the day Ellsberg's material hit the NY Times. Coming from MIT, and Ellsberg then being at MIT, I was looked at a bit askance. Yet over the next decade as I became involved in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, especially during the Carter period, it was clear that the only way to use a nuclear weapon was not to use a nuclear weapon. > The RISOP [Red Integrated Strategic Offensive Plan, or the US Government's best counterplan, i.e. how the Soviets would retaliate] scenarios showed the annihilation of life on the planet. There was no way to win, first strike or otherwise. A Russian and US nuclear war was the destruction of all. Ironically in my later discussions with my Russian partners after the fall it was clear that they too understood this, positioning or not. So, it seems like NPT [2] states understand that first strike (against one another) is a bankrupt strategy, since it results in MAD [3], if not a global extinction event. A state might not ever externally disavow the first strike strategy for posturing reasons, but it is almost certainly not viewed as an effective winning strategy, internally. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2SL7WCQW1R6KN/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1608196704 https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2SL7WCQW1R6KN/re... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio... Notable non-signatories of the NPT include India, Israel, Pakistan, and DPRK. [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
wombatmobile 6y ago
What a masterstroke, hiding the documents in black plastic bags on the outskirts of the town dump.
- godmode2019 6y ago
  The dumps in my country are not static, they have bulldosers and diggers constantly moving things around and burying them deep underground. Interesting cultural difference
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    No, that's likely true wherever he buried them. Outskirts probably means a fair distance from where the actual dumping happened, so if someone stumbled upon it they'd think it fell out of a truck or something and ignore it.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

So, is anything from the nuclear documents in the book you mentioned? Or is it really all lost forever?

DennisP 6y ago
The documents themselves are lost, but Ellsberg was deeply involved in nuclear strategy and in the past few years has been able to get public declassified sources for much of what he remembered. The previously-classified history of US nuclear strategy is mostly what the book is about. (See my cousin comment for a short outline.)
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Thanks a lot!
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    You can just watch the movie "Dr. Strangelove." People thought it was SciFi, but it was actually a documentary. The nuclear silo launch code for decades was "000000" to save time to launch. Also, Reagan and Russia didn't care about some goofy MAD doctrine - they wanted actual ABM defenses. That's why there's an ABM ring allowed by treaty around Moscow, and why Reagan funded SDI (lasers weren't implemented, but anti-missile missiles were.) Reagan thought MAD was immoral if you could build a real defense, and he was right. Something most people don't know is that Russia seriously planned to nuke Beijing durng their 1969 border dispute, but the US found out and told them not to. The CCP did their "wolf warrior" b.s. on Russia, and after the Russians had enough they decided to root out the problem once and for all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict Ironically, the CCP asked Russia to declare a joint war on the US in the 50's and 60's twice for communist ideological reasons, but Russia laughed them off since there was no practical advantage for Russia. Although Russia's weapons worked just fine, the US over-estimated Russian belligerence and grossly under-estimated the CCP. The US Democrats are obsessed with the Russians, but it's the CCP that is completely unhinged. Xi wants to be god on earth over all other countries.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      That was only one step in many many codes - you couldn't just get a job in a launch silo and press boom
    - lr1970 6y ago
      IIRC, during the Korea war there were people at Pentagon proposing to nuke China over their support for the North.
      - redis_mlc 6y ago
        It went far beyond merely proposing. Nuclear-armed B-29's were flown to Guam and Japan. I think Truman even delegated the decision to drop them to Ridgeway, meaning Truman pre-authorized their use based on a common understanding it was a last resort. Truman's public statements were that all weapons were on the table, including nuclear.
nabla9 6y ago
The US nuclear strategy at time was called massive retaliation. 'massive retaliation' was strategy where the US committed itself to response in much greater nuclear strike in the event of an attack, even conventional attack by Soviets. Kennedy abandoned that strategy during Cuban crisis when he saw that it didn't really work and was insane. It was simply not credible that US would commit losing 80-100 million people after single event. The US and NATO nuclear deterrence moved to what is now known as flexible response. The response to attack will be proportional.
coolgeek 6y ago
There seems to be a bit of confusion here. I surmise that what was "lost forever" was only a copy of the documents. I base that on common sense, as well as this from the linked article (about the Pentagon Papers): > So Mr. Sheehan smuggled the papers out of the apartment in Cambridge, Mass., where Mr. Ellsberg had stashed them; then he copied them illicitly, just as Mr. Ellsberg had done, and took them to The Times. (Of course, I could be the one that is confused here, misreading this discussion. But I don't think that is the case)
- DennisP 6y ago
  Yes, it was Ellsberg's copies of the nuclear strategy documents that were lost. The original documents were still in a classified safe in the Pentagon. Some were later declassified, long after they were obsolete, and probably some have never seen the light of day.

jjoonathan 6y ago

Nuclear conflict is inherently horrific, but I would hope we were (and are) willing to do appalling things to deter a nuclear attack on the US.

willis936 6y ago
This is assuming the content of the papers is standard MAD. We don’t know what was in them.
- DennisP 6y ago
  The book is mostly about that content, which has been largely declassified now. It goes into quite a bit of detail. It was not just MAD. It included massive retaliation against every city in both the USSR and China in response to minor conventional battles, which they calculated would also kill most people in Europe from fallout. It gave independent launch authority to regional military commanders. First strike was part of the strategy, and was threatened on multiple occasions. The US has still not disavowed first strike.
  - gen220 6y ago
    In response to your last statement, I found this Amazon review [1] (of all sources!) of Ellsberg's book fascinating. It's written by an older gentleman who was apparently involved in Nuclear policy in the late 70s and early 80s. Here is the relevant snippet: > To a degree, my time on nuclear weapons was a decade later than Ellsberg, ironically my first day after my PhD was the day Ellsberg's material hit the NY Times. Coming from MIT, and Ellsberg then being at MIT, I was looked at a bit askance. Yet over the next decade as I became involved in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, especially during the Carter period, it was clear that the only way to use a nuclear weapon was not to use a nuclear weapon. > The RISOP [Red Integrated Strategic Offensive Plan, or the US Government's best counterplan, i.e. how the Soviets would retaliate] scenarios showed the annihilation of life on the planet. There was no way to win, first strike or otherwise. A Russian and US nuclear war was the destruction of all. Ironically in my later discussions with my Russian partners after the fall it was clear that they too understood this, positioning or not. So, it seems like NPT [2] states understand that first strike (against one another) is a bankrupt strategy, since it results in MAD [3], if not a global extinction event. A state might not ever externally disavow the first strike strategy for posturing reasons, but it is almost certainly not viewed as an effective winning strategy, internally. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2SL7WCQW1R6KN/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1608196704 https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2SL7WCQW1R6KN/re... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio... Notable non-signatories of the NPT include India, Israel, Pakistan, and DPRK. [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

wombatmobile 6y ago

What a masterstroke, hiding the documents in black plastic bags on the outskirts of the town dump.

godmode2019 6y ago
The dumps in my country are not static, they have bulldosers and diggers constantly moving things around and burying them deep underground. Interesting cultural difference
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  No, that's likely true wherever he buried them. Outskirts probably means a fair distance from where the actual dumping happened, so if someone stumbled upon it they'd think it fell out of a truck or something and ignore it.