What Would Daniel Ellsberg Say About Iran? His Son Michael on America’s Most Famous Whistleblower

00:00:01 [Speaker 1]
Hello, everybody.
00:00:02 [Speaker 1]
A few days ago, we had a show with the Arizona based journalist, Tom Wells.
00:00:09 [Speaker 1]
He has a new book out.
00:00:10 [Speaker 1]
It's called the Kissinger tapes inside his secretly recorded phone conversations, and I talked to Wells extensively about Henry Kissinger's life, his morality, or perhaps his lack of morality.
00:00:25 [Speaker 1]
Of course, Kissinger is a notorious figure, particularly on the left.

00:00:29 [Speaker 1]
We didn't talk about Kissinger's anger on the Pentagon Papers.
00:00:34 [Speaker 1]
We talked a little bit about Vietnam, but less about the politics of Vietnam protests.
00:00:39 [Speaker 1]
Of course, the Pentagon Papers, that came out in 1971, changed public opinion about the war.
00:00:49 [Speaker 1]
And one of the reasons, I think, eventually, the Americans withdrew from Vietnam.
00:00:55 [Speaker 1]
The Pentagon Papers, of course, are forever associated with Daniel Ellsberg.

00:01:02 [Speaker 1]
I don't know how we would describe him.
00:01:03 [Speaker 1]
A whistleblower, very influential figure, very, very famous in terms of his contribution to, criticism of the Vietnam War.
00:01:14 [Speaker 1]
And we have a new book out on, Daniel Ellsberg.
00:01:18 [Speaker 1]
He's no longer around, but his son, Michael, Ellsberg has edited a volume, a collection of work by Daniel.
00:01:28 [Speaker 1]
It's called truth and consequence.

00:01:31 [Speaker 1]
And, Daniel not Daniel, I'm afraid.
00:01:34 [Speaker 1]
Michael is joining us from Berkeley, from the family home.
00:01:38 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:01:39 [Speaker 1]
So congratulations, Michael, on this book.
00:01:44 [Speaker 1]
Must be odd editing the collected essays of your father.

00:01:50 [Speaker 1]
How strange was that?

00:01:52 [Speaker 2]
It it was interesting.
00:01:54 [Speaker 2]
It definitely It was interesting and definitely strange in in certain ways.
00:02:02 [Speaker 2]
Before I say more, I should definitely presence, I'm a co editor, with, with Jan Thomas, who was my dad's longtime assistant.
00:02:14 [Speaker 2]
And I've known Jan since I was four, and she played a really, crucial role in this as well.
00:02:20 [Speaker 2]
And in terms of, my side of it, yeah, there was an interesting sort of mixed emotion around this, in that, I'm I'm a writer, and I I got a lot of that from my dad, which I'm really grateful for.

00:02:37 [Speaker 2]
So I really value writing getting out.
00:02:40 [Speaker 2]
You know?
00:02:40 [Speaker 2]
I I'm not one of these people that's just writing for writing's sake.
00:02:43 [Speaker 2]
Like, I it it's not about let's say I happen to be famous or make a lot of money or whatever, but I feel like writing should be read.
00:02:51 [Speaker 2]
And and as I write in the introduction of this book, my dad didn't really feel that way.

00:02:55 [Speaker 2]
He just he really just liked writing for himself, thinking about things.
00:03:01 [Speaker 2]
It's kinda how he worked his ideas out.
00:03:03 [Speaker 2]
So, I have to say, and I I say this in the introduction, although he did authorize this book to come out, but I would say that the the motor, the engine of the idea of a book of his unpublished writing, was more from me and Jan because we are both fans of his writing, and he was a lot of it is just kinda like, what does it matter?
00:03:26 [Speaker 2]
You know?
00:03:27 [Speaker 2]
I'll be I'll be dead, and it was for his interest.

00:03:31 [Speaker 2]
Now we happen to think it's has a much wider interest, and that's our view, and that's why we put it out.

00:03:37 [Speaker 1]
So tell me why.
00:03:38 [Speaker 1]
Why why does Daniel Ellsberg I mean, he's a a very interesting figure in American history, forever associated with the Pentagon Papers, but that was many, many years ago.
00:03:50 [Speaker 1]
Why is Daniel Ellsberg, his work, his ideas, perhaps his life, why is it so important now?
00:03:57 [Speaker 1]
Why should we care about Daniel Ellsberg?

00:04:00 [Speaker 2]
You know, he has a strange knack for putting books out right at the time when when their message is very timely.
00:04:09 [Speaker 2]
His his first memoir, Secrets, came out in October, 2002 I believe it was 2002, right when the run up to the to the Iraq war was happening.
00:04:22 [Speaker 2]
I believe it started that March in 2003.
00:04:26 [Speaker 2]
And now his book, obviously, he's not here.
00:04:29 [Speaker 2]
He passed away in '93 at the age of, sorry, in 2023 at the age of 92.

00:04:36 [Speaker 2]
So he's not here, but his book, I find strangely relevant now to in, in Iran.
00:04:45 [Speaker 2]
And, you know, the message, one one message that he has that he has said his his whole life since the Pentagon Papers in in '71, is that you're being lied to by your government much more than you realize.
00:05:01 [Speaker 2]
Now that was especially true back then when people just didn't really realize that the government lied to them.
00:05:06 [Speaker 2]
It was kind of a new thought, and they had to come to terms with that in black and white with the Pentagon Papers.
00:05:12 [Speaker 2]
Now this is commonplace across the political spectrum that that that we get lied to by our our leaders in, into war.

00:05:22 [Speaker 2]
But I would say, you know, whatever rationale, that Trump has for this war, and it's very unclear exactly what it is.
00:05:31 [Speaker 2]
They've said a lot of different things.
00:05:34 [Speaker 2]
There's reasoning that we just don't even know about, that we probably should know about.
00:05:40 [Speaker 2]
I'm not talking about, like, top secret plans.
00:05:42 [Speaker 2]
I'm talking about rationales for why they're selling us this war.

00:05:47 [Speaker 2]
And, you know, if my dad was here now, I feel a 100% certain he would be saying that there's, you know, there's estimates, there's plans, there's rationales that are relevant to democratic control over the government and over our how our tax dollars and our military is and our, you know, citizens are put in harm's way that we just don't know about.

00:06:12 [Speaker 1]
I keep on calling you Daniel.
00:06:15 [Speaker 1]
You're not Daniel.
00:06:16 [Speaker 1]
You're Michael.
00:06:17 [Speaker 1]
Daniel is no longer around.
00:06:19 [Speaker 1]
As you said, he passed away in 2023.

00:06:21 [Speaker 1]
One of the striking things to me about the life of Daniel Ellsberg is that one always assumes that the anti war Vietnam lobby was a a counterculture, hippie hippies, drug smoking hippies.
00:06:36 [Speaker 1]
But your father was Harvard educated.
00:06:39 [Speaker 1]
He worked at Rand.
00:06:40 [Speaker 1]
So he was not had you been following the career of Daniel Ellsberg in the nineteen sixties, he's not the kind of guy one would necessarily have assumed would have become this historic whistleblower.
00:06:57 [Speaker 1]
Tell me a little bit about his earlier life and and and how he found himself in the situation where he authored the Pentagon Papers.

00:07:07 [Speaker 2]
Right.
00:07:07 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
00:07:08 [Speaker 2]
So he he was a little bit older than the hippie generation.
00:07:11 [Speaker 2]
He was born in '31.
00:07:13 [Speaker 2]
So he was, I think that's silent generation.

00:07:18 [Speaker 2]
And a lot of the hippies were like were like boomers, and the first round of boomers.
00:07:23 [Speaker 2]
So he was just he was maybe, you know, ten, fifteen years older than that hippie generation, and he was very much a part of the establishment, the kind of liberal Harvard educated kind of pipeline to, you know, to the establishment.
00:07:41 [Speaker 2]
And he, you know, went to Harvard undergrad.
00:07:45 [Speaker 2]
He, then got his PhD in economics at Harvard.
00:07:50 [Speaker 2]
He contributed a argument or result in economics that is is still discussed called the Ellsberg paradox, and it's very abstract.

00:07:59 [Speaker 2]
It has to do with decision theory, and it's still, you know, discussed in the economics world.
00:08:07 [Speaker 2]
And he was very much, you know, part of the establishment.
00:08:09 [Speaker 2]
He went to, work for the Rand Corporation, which is a quasi governmental think tank in Santa Monica, somewhat associated with the air force.
00:08:20 [Speaker 2]
And he was involved in, essentially, war games, war planning, decision theory analysis about different options.
00:08:31 [Speaker 2]
And this was, you know, at the height of the nuclear cold war, you know, deciding, you know, if they do this, we're gonna do that and these type of threats and bargaining.

00:08:42 [Speaker 2]
And, you know, he was, he was I mean, he wasn't conservative.
00:08:46 [Speaker 2]
He was, like, a kind of middle of the road democrat, I think, at that point.
00:08:52 [Speaker 2]
And he then, got involved in in '64, was brought in, to work for the Pentagon.
00:09:01 [Speaker 2]
He was, like, a kind of high level aid, but he was not a he didn't have any sort of elected power in any way.
00:09:09 [Speaker 2]
But he was a aid kind of a couple levels down from from McNamara, And he got involved with

00:09:16 [Speaker 1]
And just to jump in, we, we did a show, about McNamara last year, actually Yeah.
00:09:26 [Speaker 1]
And talked about his mental breakdown, his background, another example of a highly trained elite who was bound up or caught up in this catastrophe.

00:09:39 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:09:40 [Speaker 2]
Right.
00:09:40 [Speaker 2]
So he was working under McNamara.
00:09:42 [Speaker 2]
And, long story short, he he came to see that the the all the rationales for this that this war was hopeless.
00:09:54 [Speaker 2]
It was a stalemate.

00:09:55 [Speaker 2]
It was always gonna be a stalemate.
00:09:57 [Speaker 2]
There was essentially no way to win except to just level the place, which is kind of hard to call as a win.
00:10:05 [Speaker 2]
Although they kind of seem to be floating that option as well, kiss Kissinger and and Nixon.
00:10:11 [Speaker 2]
And he just came to see it as a as as a no win situation, as a as a crime if you're, you know, killing lots and lots of civilians or even enemy combatants when there's no reason for this war.
00:10:25 [Speaker 2]
He he came to view that as murder.

00:10:27 [Speaker 2]
And he was very moved by the fact that people inside just almost to a man just viewed this as a stinker, and he felt that the govern that the public should know about this.

00:10:39 [Speaker 1]
Right.
00:10:39 [Speaker 1]
So so, again, he wasn't alone here.
00:10:42 [Speaker 1]
He wasn't in in perhaps even unusual, Michael.
00:10:45 [Speaker 1]
But what distinguishes him seems to me I mean, obviously, he was brave enough to publish the Pentagon Papers.
00:10:53 [Speaker 1]
But what strikes me about your father is in contrast to McNamara, he was much more honest.

00:10:59 [Speaker 1]
He confronted this catastrophe head on.
00:11:02 [Speaker 1]
McNamara never really confronted it.
00:11:07 [Speaker 1]
And he he acted.
00:11:09 [Speaker 1]
It it challenged his worldview, didn't it?
00:11:11 [Speaker 1]
It changed obviously, it changed his life, shaped your life, your whole family's life.

00:11:16 [Speaker 1]
It's a remarkable story.

00:11:19 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:11:20 [Speaker 2]
Well, and he tells this story in in his first, memoir secrets, that what had a huge impact on him was meeting young war resisters and in particular, a young man, at that time called Randy Keeler, who later they were friends their whole lives.
00:11:38 [Speaker 2]
But at that time meeting this young man who was going to jail for war resistance, for not complying with the draft.
00:11:45 [Speaker 2]
And that was deeply moving to my father, the idea that, while, you know, young young men and boys essentially are getting shipped over to die for their country, that that these other young men were, going to jail, nonviolently and peacefully for their country.
00:12:03 [Speaker 2]
And he that was deeply moving to him and made him decide that he wanted to take courageous or risk risky action on his part, nonviolent action to to stop the murder, what he viewed as murder.

00:12:17 [Speaker 1]
The book comes with, an introduction from your stepbrother, who describes your father as, I wasn't quite sure how to, to read this.
00:12:29 [Speaker 1]
It describes your father as, parents as complicated when they're rather difficult, perhaps sometimes even unpleasant.
00:12:39 [Speaker 1]
What was he like to grow up with, Daniel Anderson?

00:12:44 [Speaker 2]
You know, he I I write about this in in my in in my introduction.
00:12:51 [Speaker 2]
There's there's a there's there's certain ironies about me putting this out, because, you know, he the the bulk of the book is, a 100 is selections, which Jan Thomas selected from a 100 boxes he had of literally handwritten notes, like yellow legal pads in this tiny, almost impossible to read handwriting.
00:13:11 [Speaker 2]
I still couldn't read his birthday cards.
00:13:13 [Speaker 2]
He had to read them for me.
00:13:15 [Speaker 2]
But Jan could read them.

00:13:16 [Speaker 2]
She made all these selections.
00:13:18 [Speaker 2]
They're great.
00:13:19 [Speaker 2]
But as I say in my introduction, this was kind of his main activity in life.
00:13:23 [Speaker 2]
Like, I love my dad.
00:13:24 [Speaker 2]
Like, we had many I have many great memories with him.

00:13:27 [Speaker 2]
He was really there for me at times when I needed him.
00:13:30 [Speaker 2]
And he was, like, one of those parents, one of those dads that just was kinda in his own world, spending so much time writing this stuff that I think I woulda preferred, you know, more more baseball and less, so to speak, and and less night, note writing when I was a kid.
00:13:49 [Speaker 2]
But, over time, and especially now, I've I've come to be really grateful for it because as a writer and as a thinker, I'm I think what's in this book is really phenomenal, and I'm I'm proud, to to get it out.

00:14:03 [Speaker 1]
How did he think of himself as was there a saintly quality, a a martyr quality?
00:14:09 [Speaker 1]
Did he think of himself as somehow, in his own way, sacrificing his life for the country, for justice, for the civilians of Vietnam?

00:14:23 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:14:23 [Speaker 2]
So he he writes about this, in in multiple notes on in the book.
00:14:28 [Speaker 2]
You know, peep people always called him a a hero, and he says in one of his notes, like, well, that's not for me to agree or disagree.
00:14:36 [Speaker 2]
Like, that's other people's business that they wanna call me or but he he he he did really feel that, that he was he he was trying to model a a certain kind of courage that is common to soldiers in the battlefield and common to, you know, firefighters in civilian terms, police officers sometimes often, but firefighters for sure, and certainly, soldiers where that's kind of civilian or military courage on the field.
00:15:11 [Speaker 2]
He he wanted to model that for what he called civic courage, which is taking risks, nonviolent risks when you think that your democracy is in danger.

00:15:22 [Speaker 2]
And and so he definitely viewed himself in as kind of taking risks that he hoped that other people would emulate in nonviolent ways.

00:15:32 [Speaker 1]
Do you think of him as a great American?
00:15:34 [Speaker 1]
People compare him to Edward Snowden.
00:15:37 [Speaker 1]
Of course, Edward Snowden is a very divisive figure these days.
00:15:40 [Speaker 1]
He's living still in Russia.
00:15:42 [Speaker 1]
Some people consider him a traitor.

00:15:44 [Speaker 1]
Some consider him a hero.
00:15:45 [Speaker 1]
Some see him as both.
00:15:47 [Speaker 1]
Do you think, what your father did was the right thing to do?

00:15:57 [Speaker 2]
I'm definitely biased by the way.
00:15:58 [Speaker 2]
I was just

00:15:59 [Speaker 1]
saying editor of of this volume.

00:16:02 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:16:02 [Speaker 2]
I've I've but I would say, you know, as a, 49 year old man who, you know, has thought about things, a lot now, putting my obvious bias aside, I I do think that when, you have information in an organization, whether it's a corporation or a government agency that shows that the public is being, you know, massively misled.
00:16:29 [Speaker 2]
I'm not talking about a little, you know, minor minor thing here, there, but there where there's just a a massive misleading of what the the government of the public thinks about what this organization is doing versus what it actually is in ways that impact, the market or their civilians, you know, in ways that are, you know, that relevant to the public.
00:16:52 [Speaker 2]
You know, you should consider taking personal risks to make that, known publicly.
00:16:58 [Speaker 2]
So that I would agree with, I think, independent of the fact.

00:17:02 [Speaker 2]
I heard that message a lot growing up.

00:17:04 [Speaker 1]
Your, what's your take, on Snowden?
00:17:07 [Speaker 1]
What did your father think about Snowden?

00:17:10 [Speaker 2]
Well, he he thought Snowden was a great American and totally supported, the the release.
00:17:18 [Speaker 2]
And Snowden actually has been public saying that he was interviewed, influenced by my father, in particular, this documentary, the most dangerous man in America, which, was about my dad and was, nominated for best documentary at the Oscars, I believe, in 2010.
00:17:37 [Speaker 2]
So Snowden saw that and was inspired.
00:17:39 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:17:39 [Speaker 2]
My father, supported him.

00:17:42 [Speaker 2]
They they had a kind of back channel communication on signal that they talked, you know, after the fact, obviously, talked about a lot.
00:17:50 [Speaker 2]
And, I think

00:17:53 [Speaker 1]
about Snowden?
00:17:54 [Speaker 1]
And I hope I'm putting it fairly, I mean, running away and and living in Russia, which is hardly a a paragon of of any moral virtue of any kind.
00:18:05 [Speaker 1]
And Putin

00:18:06 [Speaker 2]
Right.
00:18:06 [Speaker 2]
Well, I'm I'm far from expert on these details.
00:18:10 [Speaker 2]
I my understanding was that his intention was not to end up in Russia, that there was a you know, that he kind of got stuck there, trapped there with when The US revoked his passport.
00:18:20 [Speaker 2]
So I don't know exactly how he ended up there.
00:18:24 [Speaker 2]
I don't believe that was his intention.

00:18:26 [Speaker 2]
I think he was trying to get to to possibly Latin America.
00:18:29 [Speaker 2]
I'm I'm not quite sure.
00:18:32 [Speaker 2]
But I I would say that, you know, classic civil disobedience, which my father practiced, involves, breaking a law and then being, you know, open about, like, I'm going to accept the consequences.
00:18:46 [Speaker 2]
So from that standard, you might say that that Snowdin, you know, did not do it that way.
00:18:52 [Speaker 2]
The way my father, you know, talked about it was basically the laws that would give him any chance of a fair trial, had really changed with the Patriot Act.

00:19:04 [Speaker 1]
Mhmm.

00:19:04 [Speaker 2]
So, you know, it it's not illegal to tell the truth to your American, you know, citizens, fellow citizens about matters of grave public policy.
00:19:15 [Speaker 2]
It's different if you're, like, giving troop movements away or, like, giving away, you know, secrets about, you know, how what do they call them?
00:19:23 [Speaker 2]
Like, trade secrets or craft secrets about But if if you're just telling the public you're being surveilled on against the constitution, I mean, very strong argument that this is unconstitutional, that that, you know, the you can't get a fair trial at that anymore because of the Patriot Act.
00:19:42 [Speaker 2]
So he didn't really blame Snowden for not accepting himself to, you know, what would have been kind of a a a show trial essentially under the Patriot Act.

00:19:54 [Speaker 1]
In our conversation with Tom Wells, we talked about the nature of evil.
00:19:59 [Speaker 1]
We had a discussion, for example, about Hannah Arendt's banality of evil argument that she developed having attended the Eichmann trials, and we touched on a comparison perhaps even between Kissinger and his callousness and the callousness of a man like Eichmann.
00:20:20 [Speaker 1]
I mean, that's controversial.
00:20:21 [Speaker 1]
We I don't think there was any conclusion on that.
00:20:25 [Speaker 1]
What was your father's view of evil?

00:20:29 [Speaker 1]
I mean, clearly, there was a degree of evil here in the American not just the dishonesty, but the behavior of, American troops and American policymakers in Vietnam, the mass murder of civilians.
00:20:44 [Speaker 1]
What was his theory of evil?
00:20:46 [Speaker 1]
Why did people commit these sorts of things?

00:20:49 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:20:50 [Speaker 2]
Actually, I think one of the most important passages in the book is on this.
00:20:54 [Speaker 2]
Could I could I be depth

00:20:55 [Speaker 1]
in paragraph?
00:20:56 [Speaker 1]
You're the editor.
00:20:57 [Speaker 1]
Sure.
00:20:57 [Speaker 1]
Mike.

00:20:58 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
00:20:59 [Speaker 2]
I will, and I actually thought this was so important now.
00:21:02 [Speaker 2]
So put it in the introduction, basically.
00:21:06 [Speaker 2]
So he he has at the end of the book, there's several, essays, previously unpublished essays.
00:21:12 [Speaker 2]
And this one is called Against Terrorism, and it was written in October 2001.

00:21:18 [Speaker 2]
So you can imagine what the mood of the country and what his mood was like at that on that date.
00:21:25 [Speaker 2]
And he writes this.
00:21:27 [Speaker 2]
I'll read two paragraphs.
00:21:29 [Speaker 2]
All my life, I've absolutely opposed all terrorism by anyone under any circumstances.
00:21:35 [Speaker 2]
I define terrorism as the deliberate killing of noncombatants or war on civilians.

00:21:42 [Speaker 2]
That includes the bombing of populated areas and all nuclear threats and attacks and the support of death squads states or movements whether left or right.
00:21:52 [Speaker 2]
So, whether right or left, which that's an important point right there, we could talk about.
00:21:58 [Speaker 2]
I propose this as a moral political absolute to regard all such killing and threats of all such killing as forbidden to be absolutely and unconditionally condemned to be regarded as something that under no matter what circumstances, one must not participate in or conceal, to be exposed and denounced and obstructed and resisted individually and through all formal structures.
00:22:23 [Speaker 2]
So that's that's quite a oh, let's one more statement there.
00:22:29 [Speaker 2]
My proposal is to see all such killing as murder, mass murder, whether done by the aggressor or the defender, another important point, whether done by a revolutionary movement or state or counter revolutionary movement or state, first, second, or third world, it is to be not to be accepted as a lesser evil, whatever the alternatives.

00:22:48 [Speaker 2]
Just evil, not to be done.
00:22:51 [Speaker 2]
So that's a pretty Yeah.

00:22:52 [Speaker 1]
Although I'm not sure anyone would actually ever defend murder.
00:22:56 [Speaker 1]
So what would your father be saying today in, in the midst of another overseas American war, another very controversial one.
00:23:08 [Speaker 1]
The supporters of the war would argue, I think, some of them at least, that this most recent American invasion of another country is an attempt to save lives.
00:23:18 [Speaker 1]
The the the regime in Iran, I don't think there's any debate about this, is a murderous regime.
00:23:24 [Speaker 1]
They murdered tens of thousands of civilians, of protesters in the last few months.

00:23:29 [Speaker 1]
And, of course, the critics of this current American invasion of, of Iran would suggest that the Americans are murderers.
00:23:38 [Speaker 1]
What to make of it?
00:23:39 [Speaker 1]
What would your father say?

00:23:43 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:23:43 [Speaker 2]
Well, I wanna preface first that I'm very far from an expert on on this particular topic.
00:23:48 [Speaker 2]
So I think what I mean,

00:23:49 [Speaker 1]
it doesn't have to be an expert, Michael.
00:23:52 [Speaker 1]
I mean, I don't think there's any debate that the regime was murderous.
00:23:56 [Speaker 1]
There's no debate that Oh, okay.
00:23:57 [Speaker 1]
One of the consequences of this American invasion is the death of innocent civilians, although it's probably mostly unintended.
00:24:06 [Speaker 1]
So would he have just said, well, it's not our business.

00:24:10 [Speaker 1]
Let's just leave it alone, or would he would he say you have to peacefully fight against this murderous regime?
00:24:17 [Speaker 1]
That doesn't seem to be particularly effective either.

00:24:21 [Speaker 2]
I would say I mean, the points that I feel almost certain he would be saying right now, is that one, this is just clearly a a vile direct violation of the constitution that the the you know, we've we've gotten used to this now, unfortunately, for a long time since post Tonkin Gulf resolution that the president, you know, potent certainly post nine eleven.
00:24:45 [Speaker 2]
The president can basically, you know, bomb anybody, however he feels, Republican or Democrat, if he can somehow sort of vaguely tie it to terrorism.
00:24:56 [Speaker 2]
Now Iran is not vaguely tied to terrorism.
00:24:59 [Speaker 2]
It it does pose real threats, and I I'm certain that he would acknowledge that.
00:25:05 [Speaker 2]
But it's not the president's business to be just bombing and getting this isn't just like a, you know, a cruise missile, one off kind of thing.

00:25:13 [Speaker 2]
Like, like, Trump is bringing us into potentially a very major and prolonged war that might involve US troops that would probably, you know, make Iraq look like a cakewalk, compared to Iran.
00:25:27 [Speaker 2]
And, I think he'd be saying, like, whatever the merits or not of disarming this regime, which he would be very critical of the regime, this isn't for a president to decide.
00:25:42 [Speaker 2]
This is for the for congress and for the the public at large via congress.
00:25:48 [Speaker 2]
I think that's one clear point he would be making, and I I could probably share a couple more too, but I'll I'll share that one first.
00:25:55 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.

00:25:56 [Speaker 1]
Who were his political heroes?
00:25:57 [Speaker 1]
Clearly, wouldn't have been a great fan of Donald Trump, or certainly wasn't of Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger.
00:26:06 [Speaker 1]
Probably wouldn't have supported, certainly, the second Bush over 09/11.
00:26:11 [Speaker 1]
But are there models for, your father, Daniel Ellsberg, in terms of the way presidents behaved, FDR, Truman?
00:26:19 [Speaker 1]
I mean, what did he make, for example, of Truman's decision to drop an atomic weapon on Japan?

00:26:25 [Speaker 2]
Well, that's, yeah, that's another, you know, probably the core event that he thought about in his life and his magnum opus, I would say, it was his second memoir called, the doomsday machine confessions of a nuclear war planner.
00:26:41 [Speaker 2]
And he was involved at pretty high level strategic nuclear war planning, in the Rand Corporation in the early sixties under under Kennedy, Eisenhower and then Kennedy.
00:26:55 [Speaker 2]
And, yeah, he was horrified by the idea of, deliberately any anytime that you would deliberately target, civilians, and that was what the point he was making in that that, you know, that paragraph I read is that he viewed that as terrorism.
00:27:12 [Speaker 2]
That there's there's no definition of terrorism that would exclude, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, you know, are the largest single detonations on civilian populations in human history.
00:27:27 [Speaker 2]
And he, you know, strongly dedicated the rest of his life to make sure that that no one would pull that trigger again of, you know, directly targeting civilians at at that scale.

00:27:38 [Speaker 1]
So Truman, in his mind, at least, was a terrorist?

00:27:42 [Speaker 2]
Yes.
00:27:43 [Speaker 2]
And and when you say that, I mean, he he he's saying that not to single out, like, one president with with you know?
00:27:50 [Speaker 2]
But but anytime you deliberately target civilians, that that actually just is the definition of terrorism.
00:27:56 [Speaker 2]
It's not like a very controversial statement.
00:27:59 [Speaker 2]
Whoever does it, whether it's our side or another side, it that's just how that is the definition of terrorism.

00:28:06 [Speaker 1]
Was there any utilitarianism in his thinking?
00:28:09 [Speaker 1]
I mean, what about the argument that was made continues to be made?
00:28:13 [Speaker 1]
We've done shows on Truman's decision to drop the bomb or the two bombs, but, ultimately, it saved lives.
00:28:20 [Speaker 1]
Had the war gone on another six months or a year, hundreds of thousands of American troops would have died and perhaps hundreds of thousands, even millions of Japanese civilians.
00:28:31 [Speaker 1]
Did he accept utility, or was he a a sermon on the mount type that could only think about these things in moral terms?

00:28:41 [Speaker 2]
Well, so that and I'll say again, I'm I'm out of my depth historically about, you know, the details of all that.
00:28:48 [Speaker 2]
I but from hearing him talk about it, I believe he was of the opinion, which is not a uncommon opinion among historians.
00:28:57 [Speaker 2]
It's I don't know if it's a majority or not, but that that that whole the the the the whole thing about the invasion being inevitable was just not correct and that they that, you know, that they were on the path to getting the the emperor to step down.
00:29:13 [Speaker 2]
Now I I certainly am out of my depths debating that, but he was of that view.
00:29:19 [Speaker 2]
Now let's ask, though.

00:29:20 [Speaker 2]
Let's say that wasn't the case.
00:29:21 [Speaker 2]
This is the hypothetical that you're you're or that you know, let's take it as a hypothetical that, you know, this we we we're gonna have to, you know, lose a million men invading.
00:29:31 [Speaker 2]
I mean, I think the next question he would ask is, like, was this, like, real like, do you have to invade?
00:29:37 [Speaker 2]
Like, was this a matter of, you know, national, like, life or death to throw a million men at, you know, at a island and ocean away?
00:29:48 [Speaker 2]
That would be another question.

00:29:50 [Speaker 2]
Let's say the quest let's say the answer to that is yes.
00:29:54 [Speaker 2]
I think the third question is, you know, what happens to you as a nation when you decide that just, you know, slaughtering civilians is the way that you deal with, you know, threats rather than taking risks of your military, which is what they are there to do, to take risks of their lives, to protect us.
00:30:18 [Speaker 2]
I think as a marine, and he was a marine, you know, he very much believed in the view that the military is supposed to take risks not only to protect our nation, but that any actions they would be taking to harm civilians on the other side are, you know, are morally unjustifiable that that, that civilian life should not be sacrificed by our side in any major way in a in a war.

00:30:49 [Speaker 1]
Oh, is it like and I may have asked this question before.
00:30:51 [Speaker 1]
I'm particularly curious, Michael.
00:30:54 [Speaker 1]
Growing up as the son of Daniel Ellsberg, did he encourage you to rebel?
00:31:01 [Speaker 1]
I mean, you grew up in Berkeley.
00:31:03 [Speaker 1]
I know you're just still living in the the house you grew up with.

00:31:06 [Speaker 1]
So Berkeley is a quite a rebellious place.
00:31:09 [Speaker 1]
Did he recognize that sometimes he might have been wrong, or did he always consider himself to be correct and and not accept people who didn't agree with him even if they or particularly if they were his children, his sons or daughters?

00:31:25 [Speaker 2]
He was he was pretty hands off, to be honest.
00:31:29 [Speaker 2]
He as I as I write about, he was just so focused on all these notes he was writing that, he was very loving, and he was there when I needed him when, you know, things were challenging.
00:31:40 [Speaker 2]
But he was a a very, like, I would say, free range parent.
00:31:44 [Speaker 2]
I you know, I'm gen x, so we're sort of famous for having been raised that way.
00:31:50 [Speaker 2]
The so for better or worse, I you know, and I I think probably, I coulda used a little bit, more of that kind of classic structure, from a parent or from a father, but I didn't get that.

00:32:03 [Speaker 2]
So I kind of figured my own limits and way in life.
00:32:07 [Speaker 2]
But he was always very encouraging maybe to a fault.
00:32:11 [Speaker 2]
Maybe, you know, maybe he should've been a little more discouraging at times with some of the crazy things I got myself into.
00:32:19 [Speaker 2]
And, you know, he in terms of whether he viewed himself as wrong, you know, as he talks about in this book, a lot is, he, you know, he he'd spent tremendous amount of life energy and life force going over how he could have gotten a part of two different systems that he came to view as not just unwise, but morally wrong and and murderous.
00:32:47 [Speaker 2]
The nuclear planning, planning for, you know, all out nuclear war, and also the Vietnam War.

00:32:55 [Speaker 2]
And he viewed both of these as moral catastrophes.
00:32:58 [Speaker 2]
And so he spent, you know, lots and lots of time thinking about, like, how did I get involved doing that, and what should I have done?
00:33:05 [Speaker 2]
What should I have done earlier?
00:33:06 [Speaker 2]
But once he made the decision to release them, I I believed, you know, he he viewed that as the correct decision.
00:33:16 [Speaker 2]
And I I would say I I think on this one, you know, history has come around to him.

00:33:20 [Speaker 2]
It's he was, you know, viewed as a traitor, at the time by a large part of the country, and that that anguished him because he very much, viewed himself as a patriot of the US constitution.
00:33:34 [Speaker 2]
And I think people have come around, you know, now with our retrospective on the Vietnam War and now even Iraq and Afghanistan, these, you know, total quagmire wastes that we got into are in the rearview mirror.
00:33:48 [Speaker 2]
I think people see that that he made the right choice.

00:33:52 [Speaker 1]
You've as you've said to me before we went live, this book that you edited is a labor of love, his some of his essays, which haven't been published, truth and consequence.
00:34:02 [Speaker 1]
And, presumably, it's more than a labor of love.
00:34:04 [Speaker 1]
You want your father out there.
00:34:06 [Speaker 1]
You want younger people in particular to know who he was and read his work.
00:34:11 [Speaker 1]
You've said that history has been relatively kind to him in the sense that now we've come around to recognizing that he was mostly right.

00:34:19 [Speaker 1]
How do you want people to remember your father, though?
00:34:22 [Speaker 1]
What what what are still the the debates around Daniel Ellsberg that, this book might settle?

00:34:31 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:34:31 [Speaker 2]
I would say he is mostly known for this historic action that he took at which he viewed as a act of nonviolent civil disobedience, and that's probably what he will remain known for mostly.
00:34:46 [Speaker 2]
I think this book is a lovely way to have him remain known for his ideas as well.
00:34:53 [Speaker 2]
You know, his his two major books that are out, Secrets and the Doomsday Machine, are they do have ideas in them, of course, especially the latter one, but they're they're mainly narratives.
00:35:04 [Speaker 2]
They're mainly about his life, his experience in these different contexts.

00:35:08 [Speaker 2]
This is really a book of ideas, and he has, you know, very detailed, nuanced thoughts about, the nature of morality and particularly how morality operates in bureaucratic structures Mhmm.
00:35:24 [Speaker 2]
That I think deserve to be considered in their own right as as very important and and worthwhile idea ideas that are worth engaging with.
00:35:37 [Speaker 2]
And, I I hope that this book, you know, helps bring out the wider range of his legacy.
00:35:44 [Speaker 2]
He hated the word legacy, by the way, but I like it.
00:35:48 [Speaker 2]
The wider range that it wasn't just an action, important as that was, but also a a set of ideas.

00:35:54 [Speaker 1]
It was obviously a reader.
00:35:56 [Speaker 1]
Who who most influenced him?
00:35:57 [Speaker 1]
I mean, Orwell, of course, comes to mind, although he always comes to mind in these kinds of conversations, the transcendentalist tradition in America, the, I mean, obviously, Martin Luther King and non and peaceful resistance.
00:36:14 [Speaker 1]
Was there somebody intellectually or their life story who most inspired your father?

00:36:20 [Speaker 2]
Definitely.
00:36:20 [Speaker 2]
It's it's pretty easy to point to to several key figures there.
00:36:25 [Speaker 2]
First, Henry David Thoreau.
00:36:26 [Speaker 2]
My father was very influenced by his essay.
00:36:30 [Speaker 2]
I believe it's called On Civil Disobedience and how Thoreau spent some period or at least a night in jail, protesting the, the Mexican War, in the eighteen hundreds.

00:36:45 [Speaker 2]
And he was very influenced by that, and by by Thoreau's writing and example, and then Gandhi, and he was influenced by nonviolent resistors in the Gandhian tradition, including, of course, Martin Luther King who was also influenced by Gandhi.
00:37:03 [Speaker 2]
So I would say that lineage I mean, he wasn't you know, he's known as a leftist.
00:37:08 [Speaker 2]
He was he definitely wasn't a Marxist.
00:37:11 [Speaker 2]
He wasn't, you know, like a hardcore leftist in that kind of classic Marxist way.
00:37:18 [Speaker 2]
I would say his his intellectual lineage and moral lineage was more of this Gandhian nonviolent civil resistance tradition, of of Thoreau and Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

00:37:32 [Speaker 2]
I would say that was his, you know, his his stance and the people that he looked up to very much.

00:37:38 [Speaker 1]
Wow.
00:37:38 [Speaker 1]
He's a fascinating character.
00:37:40 [Speaker 1]
Labor of love from his son, Michael Ellsberg, the editor of Truth and Consequence, a major figure in American history.
00:37:48 [Speaker 1]
Daniel Ellsberg, a heroic man, an important man.
00:37:51 [Speaker 1]
Thank you so much, Michael, for your time this afternoon.

00:37:58 [Speaker 1]
And, also, thank you for for, for your generosity in in in investing in in editing your father's work.
00:38:06 [Speaker 1]
I think most people really appreciate it.
00:38:07 [Speaker 1]
Thank you so much.

00:38:08 [Speaker 2]
Thank you.
00:38:09 [Speaker 2]
Thanks so much for having me.