The Daniel Ellsberg Story You Won’t See In THE POST

Somebody asked me recently if I thought that this time that we are living through will be as significant and as profoundly influential as the ‘60’s. I don't’ know the answer to that. What I do know is that there are recurring themes from that period that we seem to be relitigating and reliving.

Race is certainly one. Renewed discussion about Vietnam, press freedom and the threat of nuclear war, are some of the others.

Daniel Ellsberg, was once at the center of these issues and he is still here to provide his wisdom and insights into the way that history maybe repeating itself.

The Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam, which conspicuously did not include a conversation with Ellsberg, and the Steven Spielberg film, The Post, have once again catapulted Ellsberg to the front of our national dialogue.

Most of us know Daniel Ellsberg for the Pentagon Paper which he copied and leaked in 1971. What we don’t know is that Ellsberg was a war planner and nuclear strategist at RAND, and one of the leading thinkers about the role and actual use of nuclear weapons.

Now, after all of these years, he’s written about it in The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Daniel Ellsberg: