The doomsday machine confessions of a nuclear war planner

The former defense analyst who revealed the Pentagon Papers offers an eyewitness account of America's nuclear program in the 1960s and reveals the dangers in the country's seventy-year-long nuclear policy.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ellsberg, Daniel (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: New York : Bloomsbury, 2017.
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Summary:The former defense analyst who revealed the Pentagon Papers offers an eyewitness account of America's nuclear program in the 1960s and reveals the dangers in the country's seventy-year-long nuclear policy.
"From the legendary whistleblower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, an eyewitness expose of the dangers of America's Top Secret, seventy-year-long nuclear policy that--chillingly--continues to this day. Here, for the first time, former high-level defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg reveals his shocking firsthand account of America's nuclear program in the 1960s. From the remotest air bases in the Pacific Command, where he discovered that the authority to initiate use of nuclear weapons was widely delegated, to the secret plans for general nuclear war under Eisenhower, which, if executed, would cause the near-extinction of humanity, Ellsberg shows that the legacy of this most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization--and its proposed renewal under the Trump administration--threatens our very survival. No other insider with high-level access has written so candidly of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, and nothing has fundamentally changed since that era. Framed as a memoir--a chronicle of madness in which Ellsberg acknowledges participating--this gripping expose reads like a thriller and offers feasible steps we can take to dismantle the existing "doomsday machine" and avoid nuclear catastrophe, returning Ellsberg to his role as whistleblower. The Doomsday Machine is thus a real-life Dr. Strangelove story and an ultimately hopeful--and powerfully important--book about not just our country, but the future of the world."--Dust jacket flap.
Physical Description:420 pages ; 25 cm
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages [353]-387) and index.
ISBN:9781608196708
1608196704
Author Notes:Daniel Ellsberg, a Harvard graduate, ex-Marine, and Rand Corporation analyst, was recruited to serve in the Pentagon during the Johnson administration. Now a prominent speaker, writer, and activist, Ellsberg lives in California and Washington, D.C.