Your microphone is right on you. You have two of them. But they are not on . [inaudible] ladies and gentlemen, how are we tonight . So welcome to the American Writers Museum. Id like to get everybodys attention as we have a very special us tonight. The American Writers Museum is where we celebrate the impact that writers have had on American History and our culture and our daily life. Now, on our walls and in the exhibits at the hwm, our writers in fiction, fantasy, science, spirituality and politics and is not hyperbole to say that many of them wrote the words the change the course of history. From Thomas Jefferson declaring independence to i to be wells demanding accountability, americas writers have forever challenged the status quo, and advocated fearlessly for the rights of all to be heard. A wm surprise bookshelf series tonight features a man whose works in words have failed government accountable and his new book tonight is the latest chapter in a lifetime of confronting power, mr. Daniel ellsberg. [applause] tonight he is in conversation with rick perlstein, journalist and author who politico called the chronicler of the American Conservative Movement because of his books, before the storm, nixon land, and under the bridge. Please welcome tonight Daniel Ellsberg and rick perlstein. Thank you all. [applause] thank you, carey. Its truly an honor to be at this glorious new ornament, chicagos literary culture. And americas literary culture. Of course its an honor to be here with one of my heroes, Daniel Ellsberg. Its an honor to have him here because win the events that he writes about in this book began, when he basically squirreled away thousands and thousands of pages of documents about Americas Nuclear command and control system in tandem with releasing thousands of pages of documents about the lies that america told in order to create and sustain the vietnam war, he expected to spend the rest of his life in jail. He knew this and he proceeded, nonetheless, in our interests and in the worlds interest. So before we do anything else i think we should acknowledge the courage, the vision and the sacrifices of this man, Daniel Ellsberg. [applause] he is not in jail. He is here on michigan avenue. [laughing] and hes writing books. The book he has written is exquisite. Its extraordinarily well constructed and well put together, and it takes subjects that are highly technical and highly obscure, in which the powers that be rely on us believing to be highly technical and highly obscure, and renders them an exquisitely crystalline prose. When i embarked on the project in the viewing dan for the latest issue of esquire magazine, what are the first people i turn to was an author named fred kaplan the way back in the 1980s wrote a book called wizards of armageddon, which told a portion of the story were going to hear tonight. And i said, fred, have you read this book . He said, yes, i have. Its outstanding. These refuted in slate magazine. I said what is new about this book . What does he tell us about the Nuclear System works in america that we didnt know before . And what he told me was that this is really the first book that has put the whole system together, explained how it works from beginning to end. And it demonstrates very existence of a Nuclear Arsenal of necessity sets in motion a logic that creates a doomsday machine. Everything about it that is worth criticizing is an inherent feature of the logic of the whole system. This is what it is. This is what it leads to. Thats fred kaplan, the expert on nuclear wars. Yes, and to quote the book, he gives an absolutely astonishing account of cuban missile crisis and how they came exquisitely close to ending most of life on earth. That estimate the wee one or 2 left, so its not really, its an extinction hes an engineer. You say this. He says well, not quite. He says it wouldnt quite bring us extension and what it would probably, probably 40 to 59 people left their bidding wycombe after he narrates this, he says this. The existential danger to humanity of Nuclear Weapons does not rest solely or even mainly on the possibility of further proliferation of such weapon to quoteunquote rogue or unstable nations. Who would handle and threatened them less quoteunquote responsibly and the permanent members of the security council, nor does it rest merely on the boundaries of a small army recent Nuclear Weapon state, israel, pakistan, north korea. What the true history of the cuban missile crisis feels is the existence of massive Nuclear Weapons in hands of leaders of the superpowers, the United States and russia, even those leaders are about as responsible, he may and cautious as england weve seen postevent and still do in tolerable dangers to the survival of civilization. I would like to begin our discussion in the summer of 1958. You have just taken a job at the Rand Corporation, research and development, and air force think tank. And a very arresting image you talk about what happened on a certain moonless night. Well, the reason to be significant that it was a moonless night was that i was reading in, trying to read my weight in an topsecret and secret, mostly secret documens at that time at rand, in the sense of at last being an insider and seeing the way this thing looked from outside. So i was spending really 70 hours week pretty much seven days a week reading this stuff late at night and reading into it. And hypothetical soviet surprise attacks in great detail, to which the people at rand who i found were as smart a group as ive ever encountered as a group of people, were convinced that the soviets on the basis of estimates from air force in particular but then National Intelligence as well were racing to produce the capability to destroy the u. S. Specifically, to destroy our ability to retaliate our deterrent capabilities. They had been the first to put up an icbm effectively by speeding Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, a missile that could reach swedish yes, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile of the kind that North Vietnam is striving for. North korea. What did i say . [laughing] wrong adventure. I am still living in [laughing] right, thank you. North vietnam did not acquire such capabilities. But north korea is trying to get an icbm and we might come back to that because we will come back to that. Of similarity between the reasons i think for wanting to do that, and for as charles reason for wanting to put mediumrange missiles the range of the United States. Still in 1958. Coming back to 1958 without it icbms and were going towards hundreds of them at the time when we did not really have any. It wasnt thought they had that in 58, but in 1959 they might have a couple hundred which would be enough to destroy, i seem different figures on that but the figure always use at the time was 26, depends on what you count as major basis, indeed what was called the zone of the interior. The american continent, not including i think alaska or youre reading all this stuff and suddenly you and existential threat. Right. What i was reading was report saying they would want to coordinate the attack with the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, which by the way when initially called Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ibms. [laughing] a corporation objected that and, of course, so they became icbms. Just as, by the way, the center for International Affairs at harvard that i spent a lot of time was run by kissinger was at that point, they decide to change it from cia to the center for International Affairs, see foia, they preferred. Same idea. So the idea was though that would be hitting with the icbms into the interior, deep into the interior and are aces, but they would correlate that attack with short range of mediumrange missiles, cruise missiles from submarines cost basis at our command and control. The submarines would be very close in a very short flight types. They can essentially no warning time. That phenomenon is still a factor in our analysis of both sides. So okay, its going to be a coordinated attack, and the best time for such an attack would be in august for various weather conditions and so forth on a moonless night about midnight, coordinating this. I look out my window at rand which is right above muscle beach in santa monica, looking out at the ocean. It was a moonless night and it was about midnight. I looked at my watch and this brutal expression of hairs on the back of my head rising i remember it from the time that shell actually, this could be the night basically, or a night like this in any case pics i looked out expecting almost to see submarines at a secret i could see that in my minds eye because it was christmas at that time. They didnt have Ballistic Missile submarines. The sounds within the service. I looked, was looking for stops. That was a time, also probably saw this in the book, where the youngest members of the department, alan from mit and i, were offered like all rand people actually a mixture, tiaacref insurance where rand paid most of the premium actually, ive recoup retirement insurance. Neither of us signed up because they didnt seem there was a chance that it would pay off, you know, on that. [laughing] most we could hope to do was to postpone this attack, to make it unpromising for the soviets by promising retaliation, if we could convince them that we would be capable under such an attack for a heavy heavy retaliation that would deter them. And we were trying to save us and save the world from a soviet nuclear surprise attack from war begun in that fashion. The scene but the greatest danger in the world and we were privileged to work long hours obsessed with the subject of how to avert that. But the highest level of devotion and the highest level of energy, and a certain kind of trust which you narrate over the course of the book becoming kind of a little more complicated. What im thinking about is one of the reasons why it seemed credible to you that the soviet union might launch this first strike against the United States and had the capacity to do so, us that having the capacity to retaliate in kind was that there was a very strong belief in the air force and other Intelligence Services that there was something known as a missile gap. Why dont you tell what that was and why it is so important . And by 60 at the latest, 1960 that they would have perhaps 300s general thomas head of Strategic Air command send in 1960 that he thought they had 300. And herman con, my colleague rand wrote a book on thermonuclear war and the primary concept doomsday machine, the hypothetical concept, he was estimating about 300. With the notion that would suffice to prevent a retaliation, possibly nothing else would come but a premise of that was why do we believe that so much . All the intelligence agencies within the army, navy, for different intelligence agencies. Army, navy, air force and cia shared a premise with my mentors at grand, all anticommunist as i was in the cold war years but the premise was that not only in stalin but in his successors we were facing essentially hitler with Nuclear Weapons. And very much the promise that just as hitler had been bent on World Domination and first domination of eurasia, that through all the bolsheviks, you mentioned the operational code of the communist and the notion that they were totally obsessed with the idea of taking over either by threat like hitler in the 30s or by attack, my actual attack and thats what we were facings taking over the world the essentially the world. The next bit in that logic was what was in their way . The United States was in their way. So even though we were threatening them, the idea was they had to dispose of us. They want us out of the way and then the field would be clear and even wood as bolsheviks, coldblooded, calculated communists would be willing to sacrifice very considerable numbers of their own people. Let me say right away i think looking back on it, that was an extreme qualification of the mentality of russians from top to bottom had lived through world war ii but the idea was well, they lost 20 Million People in world war ii. Look at them now . They came through that very well. When i say that im saying when i said anything like that to a russian leader they would almost vibrate. We suffered this going in, the germans coming in and then coming out fighting both ways. The idea of repeating world war ii this entire logic is based on the entire idea that they had the capability of doing so. And the well as well, im just saying but what happened to the missile gap . The corona satellites. Are actual reconnaissance capabilities were known only to a couple people, a halfdozen or so. They didnt know except for this halfdozen about the u2 flying phase, very high flying airplane that flew above what the russian capabilities at that time until 1960 were able to shoot down. Then that was replaced by reconnaissance settling which are still operating of course. We used not over russia and various places. People didnt know the existence except for this handful, maybe as many as a dozen most. And its not that we knew anything about what was going on in the ground. In 61, actually, i was out in Strategic Air command headquarters in omaha and i spoke to a kernel i known back in the pentagonwas now chief of war plans in effect. He said you knowwhat the old man thomas power , know whats that. What was dramatic about that was that the cia and the others were estimating at that time about hundred 60. This is a lot more. And that was in august of 1961. In september, the west cayman based on total overall from the reconnaissance settling. And very few people have. Almost no one at grand. And i was told about it and its in the book but i wont go into it now in detail. It was kind of only. I wasnt supposed to be told that i was told about this new estimate at the basis which i was not able to communicate, it was not something i was supposed to know and the fact that i knew it would expose like a journalist to sources. And what the soviets had was more icbms, not 1000 and not 160, not 120. And actually, the army and navy had been estimating for two years that they had only a handful. And the air force, the people that i was talking to regarded them as traders. They were so determined not to give the air force a basis for asking for a lot of missiles of our own. They were prepared to underestimate what the soviets had to this extreme degree and putting our country in danger. It was almost inconceivable amount of treason. But it turned out they were right. They hadnt seen any. The u2 had not seen them. The reconnaissance settlements had not seen them but there was an Overall Coverage until september. And then they sent for, thats what they had. That was what you asked. That means the soviet union it was a Stunning Development for me. I went back to rand and we mostly operated at a secret level in rand on most of the documents. It was topsecret reports but not so often and we took it very seriously unlike the pentagon. Topsecret was an everyday thing, everyday thing was topsecret. I call for a topsecret briefing and at the time, my colleagues had said. Anything youve seen, by the way, its a funny scene. Its funny in a way. I was not someone who operated and said you always had to have a chart. Powerpoint. But then you had powerpoint so charts with bullets. Equations, complicated stuff. Very simple, that was the point. I made very simple charts and we call atopsecret briefing which was unusual at grand. And it was unlike the pentagon, that meant everybody had to be checked in by a guard, check your name off, make sure they knew who was there. Like herman says, you should always have a chart and i didnt use charts like tonight , and but tonight i have somecharts. So i had a table here and id letter these myself. Topsecret from the top and the first chart was yes virginia, there is a missile debt. The second chart, is currently running 10 to 1. Third chart, i saved it because we had about 40 icbms. 40 was not a large number but it was 10 times more than they had. We had 2000 bombers in range of russia. We had polaris missiles in submarines, some launch missiles, cruise missiles, tactical bombers, about 1000 tactical bombers in range of russia and it was an immense and no one believed me. How would you know that . How would they know that . I couldnt tell them, actually. That was higher than topsecret and i didnt have the clearance at that time, i did later for this higher than topsecret so i did get it later but they didnt have it. They just didnt believe it. Thats ridiculous. More than that, it raised potentially questions that we are not raised at grand at all, it took them a long time and in a way never recovered because it totally turned around this obsession in our head but once you had come to movementand they did in washington , it questioned the entire axiom of the cold war. Kristof had not tried to have a first strike capability. He could have, his early missiles were bulky and unreliable. He couldnt have aimed, he was aiming to have first strike capability which we assumed he was passionately obsessed with having and could have. And the question was he could have what he didnt. And that implied, should have implied an entire recalculation of who it was our adversaries were and what were their names, what were the after . And what was possible. For example, another axiom then which by the way applies to north korea right now is you cant negotiate with these people. Hitler with nukes, it was true. Youcouldnt negotiate with. He would violate everything, he would just observe it as long as it was worthwhile for him which might be months or weeks or whatever but it was useless. The soviet union had not built these weapons without an agreement. So the idea that you could perhaps negotiate to agree with them, to keep them down at this low level just simply never occurred to anybody as far as i know and there were even reports that it was striking but its striking that nobody ever thought of the point that maybe you could get an agreement with these people. Words bent on taking over the world which they couldnt do with us in our way. That was simply not that recalculation. And what follows from this reality are many profound things. That basically the book goes in all kinds of other different interesting ways and when you talk about the psychology of individuals who are trained to believe and think in superintendent organizations in the psychology and sociology of organization and bureaucracy is that they do what they were designed to do, so you have the Rand Corporation wants to go on doing Nuclear Strategy and the generals want to win wars and we are all part of organizations in our lives and we see how they fail and we see how misunderstandings and tragic misconceptions our eyes, the art these are just human organizations. The book is full of tragic misconceptions. It starts with the reason we decided we had to press ahead with designing Nuclear Weapons and we had to build this enormous infrastructure was because of the belief that hitler was working on Nuclear Weapons. It was exactly like the wmds in iraq essentially. The idea was that it was more plausible that the germans had this other decision of uranium. They were ahead of us physically. It really was hitler then and there was reason to fear that we would be facing hitler with Nuclear Weapons. Even people who felt like talking 75 years ago, this last month in chicago under stanfield in chicago, the university, they were putting together the first pile which was then called the reactor. Call the pile because it involved piles of graphite to control the fishing neutrons. Keep it from exploding. And the night they first got the reactor, the pile to get a Chain Reaction going and they put control on them fast enough to keep it from going too far and in rico ferry and leo got the indicator showed that neutrons were being emitted and you are going to get an exponential reaction so that Nuclear Fission was possible. Theyput the control rods in. They drank key on tea, saying they did this again to celebrate the anniversary and at last, people have left and fermi and so lard will left in the room and fermi said this day will go down as a black day in history. It said earlier when you first realized that neutrons were admittedwith the fission of uranium , he said i knew mankind was in for a lot of grief but actually, the world hasnt blown up since then. But as you saw, when i came to realize was it, much closer to it. Weve had a lot of very close calls. The cuban missile crisis was only one of those. And a major one, a major one in 1983 that no one knew about here including president reagan until afterwards where andrew poff believedthat the us was on the verge of a first strike. And abel archer. We were conducting an exercise the kgb there and enter pop who had been the premier had been the head of the kgb. He and the current head believed that abel archer was a nato exercise of Nuclear Weapons was a cover for a first strike and by the way, we are conducting exercises right now in korea and we know that kim is obsessed with the idea of an attack on north korea. We are flying b1 bombers where originally nuclear bombers. Now, not so much. But in korea, essentially. We had this human beings coexisting with the ability to destroy life on earth raises serious questions when it comes to the fallibility of human beings. Theres one scene in the book, so many fascinating besides where Charles Percy who later becomes the senator from illinois, hes basically , i think it was a Corporation Executive then and he goes to norad cause they are showing around all these ips and he sitting in the chair which they give people a chance to do to show how wonderful it is to sit in the big chair where they command the control system and this was 1960 or so and it shows up on the screen that there might be a Nuclear Attack coming from thesoviets. The alarm bells are going off and they rush the civilians into a side room. The alarm tells and everything, a few icbms from russia. Or, more and the funny thing about this was there were more common than we believe they had that point. It turned out theres sort of a connection here. It turned out that the Ballistic MissileEarly Warning system ive gone into operation and thats in effect bill and howell had been involved in billing that along with ibm. The views turned on. And these attacks were coming right away. The radar signals were bouncing off the wall and were coming back and they knew the radar signals would reach the moon but they didnt think they would be reflected to such an extent that theywould appear like incoming missiles. By the way, it didnt detect that soon enough, our bombers would have taken off. We didnt have any missiles at that point but they all would have taken off. They might have been told to execute and in those days, once in that film doctor strangelove, if an execute message went out, there was no stop message. Why dont you tell the story about visiting the control officer way out there . When i became aware they were in the pacific doing research for commanderinchief pacific terry phelps on command control, i was looking in particular at the possibility that there would be a false alarm. With this in mind of course, so but the possibility that people might believe they were under attack and i had become aware that president eisenhower had delegated authority to his field commanders including phelps in the pacific but also Strategic Air command in omaha and all the other major field countries in Case Communications were out. With washington. Andcommunications were out part of every day. So spell was on his own, for example during parts of the avoid crisis a year earlierin 1958 , and moreover, he had delegated this and i found that phil had dedicated further for the same reason. The communications might be out, this was true elsewhere or eisenhower was concerned that he had had a heart attack. He had a stroke at that point and in case of president ial incapacitation, you let them have their own authority. To this day, weve been hearing discussions over the last month, does the president have the authority, can anybody stop him, by the way. Our current president for some reason this question has arisen. People are worried. Can he do this . The answer is no, they cant stop him. Nobody can with authority or constitutional or legal, it cant be stopped if he says to go, they may hesitate under the circumstances they may say not now or we dont think its a good idea but if he insists , theres no question it will be done, it can be done. That is the case now but what people have asked is how many other people can launch . The president has said over over in the last few weeks has Sole Authority with the implication he has the sole ability to launch. As if for example there was a combination or locks that only the president had. Now, there are lots on the weapons on a lowlevel but its not held in the white house and its not held in the pentagon. Its way below and worldwide spread but after all, if there were such code, when people talk about the codes in the briefcase, these are codes that identify him as a president. Im the president , whether you like it or not, ive got the majority of thevotes. And it identifies him as that. But hes not the only one who can give those ordersby any means. If you was, a single bomb on washington could paralyze our forces. That has never been the case, couldnt be the case and its not the case for other Nuclear Powers either, including a Nuclear Weapons state like north korea almost certainly , i would say just from the reasoning in russia and elsewhere, kim jong i feel pretty sure has allowed the possibility that he could be assassinated and russias and north koreas Nuclear Weapons which they have would be paralyzed. Almost surely hes made provisions like everybody else that if hes assassinated or there is an attack that takesout the Central Command control, there will be nuclear retaliation. Ihavent seen that mentioned in any of the current discussion. We mentioned it in xfiles. You grant this, does anybody Pay Attention to that . Did anyone read our review in esquire . Now the world knows. Theres so many directions we could go there. Theres so many unbelievably fascinating highways and absolute contempt that some of these military officers appear to have for individual life. I think where i want to take the discussion, weve done the device and the idea that if we have an Assassination Team take out kim jong un, that might lead to a nuclear exchange. Lets go back to the three atomic era. We had some discussions about what its like riding a detailed book as most of us have done in dealing with editors and how hard you fought to keep a section of the book that discusses the idea of Strategic Bombing and why it is in the first place that the idea that you can win a war by killing houses and thousands of people through bombing from above evolve and what it means. I didnt have to fight my publisher on this issue unfortunately but i wouldhave. Because although it seems like history, prehistory as you say , ive felt for over half a century from studies in grand and elsewhere that you couldnt really understand how we could have come to do this doomsday machine. We couldnt understand the willingness to kill people unless you knew the history of our Strategic Bombing program in world war ii. And how that for operational reasons involved from american theory of bonding which was precise bombing of military bases, individual factories, that was the idea. Is there a site that we can use, that bombing with newfound precision. The secret site. That we could do this very precisely and found that in those days until really quite recently, in fact the new drones which are sort of in the last few years, a key kind of thing the air force thought theyhad at the beginning of world war ii. Its still the case that theres a lot of Collateral Damage and that you dont know who to aim. You can hit what you aim but who should be . Thats the current situation. Then took them a while to realize that when they were flying these highaltitude daylight bombing against antiaircraft fire and so forth, heavy winds , they took great courage and many crews were killed. They were hitting what they were aiming at. There was nothing much you can hit except whole sections of cities. You could hit a corner of the factory if they were flying in arizona with no winds and no antiaircraft. You didnt have that kind of accuracy at all. And you were dying, you are losing your crew without hitting. They had to do it during the day when there was light. More and more we did what the british had done for the same reason early on which was to fly at night or in clouds using radar which was not precise at all and pretty much the same as what the british were doing. And using incendiary basically, what the british have started in 42 which is aiming at the built up areas, mostly workers housing not because they were workers but because their houses were closer together and then firewood spread better, or if you drop by explosive bombs, it would hit something down there, whatever. People. And at first are air force called the british navy killers. Civilian killers. This these world war crimes. We came more and more to do that, to aim and in japan when we discovered the jet stream, socalled the air wins made it impossible to hit anything accurately, they decided to adopt fully the ability to cause a firestorm as demonstrated in hamburg and dresden by the british which is, im getting to this is a widespread fire that simultaneously, not just sequentially but all at the same time bydropping a lot of incendiaries , a column of air would rise very fast creating low pressure in that area or any in wins from all around, changing the wind patterns, basically. Like a bellows in a fireplace or a furnace. And the temperatures would rise to extremely high temperatures, 1200 degrees fahrenheit. People being explicated in shelters or as part bonding it put it when he came out of slaughterhouse five, his body in the shelters like gingerbread people. Basically, but in tokyo for example, in dresden and hamburg, in tokyo where this was put into effect on the night of march 9 and 10th 1945 and how many people here , in what im sure is a wellinformed audience and not school kids here, how many know what im talking about the night of march 9 and 10th . Thats more than often. How many do not, honestly. They cause a firestorm, or i say this when you come up, enormous temperatures. Ice on the streets would be melting and burning so that people who came out of the shelters would be caught and it would burn like torches and the winds would cost hurricane winds, basically. Pardon me, im sorry to tell the details but i put it in the book because i felt it had to be understood. Many people reported babies being snatched out of the arms of mothers into this infernal fire by the winds. Tokyo is crisscrossed with canals so people who out of the asphalt, and out of the shelters entered with their families and into canals to escape from the fire. And the canals were boiling and tens of thousands well to death in the canals. The winds, these updrafts were bouncing the aircraft almost tripping them over in some cases, b52s. But at low altitude, thousands of feet still above the city, the aircraft , the crews had to put on their oxygen masks to escape the stench of burning flesh which was making them sick and throwing up. So as to remain who was in charge of that, later had a Strategic Air command tells it in his book, he was the greatest manmade killer. Death. In the history of the world, he said in many of his books he said greater than the london fire, greater than the San Francisco earthquake or the tokyo firestorm caused by an earthquake which overturned a lot of fuel. 80 to 120,000 people were killed in one night, at least 80,000, maybe 120,000. More than hiroshima five months later or nagasaki put together in one night. Event with this success turned to doing the same to the next 67 cities in japan in order of population. The weather had to be just right for incendiaries to get this firestorm. Only the three major firestorms but they tried for example on every raid to cause a firestorm, they could never do it. Too much masonry, the houses were close enough together and one night they killed 25,000 people in the spring of 45 but they couldnt get in this whole firestorm. Until hiroshima. A Nuclear Weapon gives you a firestorm nearly every time. And big difference here. So that was very good from mays point of view when he became head of strategicair command. But by 1950, and between 50 and 52, we had about 1000 new nagasaki weapons which were several times larger in yield in nagasaki which was 20,000 tons of tnt equivalent. Thats 1000 times more than the yield, the explosive yield of the largest blockbuster of world war ii. So 20,000 tons. Or 10 times. And we had 1000 of those which would have burned, this is targeted all on russian ussr cities. It wasnt until 1983, next 20 years after i was working that scientists discovered including carl sagan and turco and seven or eight people could have come together at the same time , but the firestorms would cause there to be smoke and soot from the burning cities to be lofted into the stratosphere and asked must have happened in tokyo. That was one city at a time. But if you have several hundred cities burning at the same time, the firestorms, the smoke wafted into the stratosphere will not rain out. It will go around the globe fast within days and absorb 70 percent of the sunlight. At first in 1983 a thought that would be about a year. The year was on their computer programs could go to. But that would be enough to start nearly everyone. And sagan at that time said extinction was possible. But its turned out now in the last 10 years and other people cast doubt on this, the same people. Climate change. I hand full of people compared to other scientists but they say its not Nuclear Winter, its just Nuclear Autumn and it wont be that bad, there were real uncertainties. The uncertainties have been dispelled in the last 10 years, 83 was 35 years ago. And in the last 10 years, now with computers they showed they are far more powerful and Climate Change models that are very much more accurate, we have a Scientific Consensus now. The smoke stays up therefor 10 years or more. The harvest goal in the first months, we have a food supply on earth 60 days for the world. And a lot of it is in the us so hours would last longer, we stop exporting and we would last most of theyear, maybe two years. But not everybody, extinction is very unlikely. There extinction is almost certain. 98 percent, 99 percent of the people will starve to death from our own first strike for the russians first strike. As a matter of fact. There is no differencebetween striking first or striking second. Everybody goes to the idea of launching on warning is absolutely, its makes no difference whether you go first orsecond. Thats what i think you were talking earlier, the title of the book the doomsday machine , humankind cant see through this machine of a doomsday as a very good deterrent, kill everybody, that was the idea and the thought of doing it with radioactivity primarily like on the beach in cold war prophecy, that can be done. The idea i would say looking at it as a deterrent in the way you think of doing all that, it would be relatively cheap. You could put it in your owncountry or put it in the ocean. Now we could bomb our own city. We dont have to truck the warheads or fly over to another country. You have them wherever they go off and its very cheap herman said that you know, it obviously kills many people. Everybody, in fact. And John Sommerville coined the term homicide. Not genocide, its not multi generational, its killing nearly everybody. As i said with smoke, you dont kill everybody but close enough to it. Herman said there is no doomsday machine, this is in 59 and 60. And i dont believe anyone will ever build one. And he was wrong. We had then. In 59 and 56. And in 58 when i was looking, the russians did not have. They didnt have it until after the cuban missile strike when they had to back down. And christoph is forced out by president who tells the generals to support me and you can have whatever you want. But they wanted was what they asked christoph for and he had refused it. Youwant what the americans have. And what the americans, so they dont a doomsday machine but ive gone on about this cause on the question of the title, before 1983, really nobody knew that a doomsday machine did exist. For some years and we had retained ever since and we were about to spend 1. 2 trillion on both sides actually, over three years. But we do live fight buying new models of everything, icbms, cruise missiles , bombers. We build the capability of what we now know destroy nearly all humans. Not all life, most biomass , thats microbes. Microorganisms. They will survive. And do you see a path. Using a path. Yes, actually it would be easy to dismantle the doomsday machine. In principle and in physically, it wouldnt take very long. Because nobody ever intended deliberately to have a doomsday machine. Its just we just acquired one without realizing what we had. Nobody would build one now i think, starting with the reason, you could start with, get rid of the icbms on our side for example which are lightning rods for attack and which, you know, cartwright was head of Strategic Command , has four years now and saying rid of the icbms, general lee butler, first commander of the street command center. Weve been an anachronistic since we had self launching missiles which are invulnerable. And they had tools which we cant target. Those are more than enough to cause millions like the russians in world war ii but much higher numbers, if you want deterrence, you dont need 1500 warheads on alert, the way both sides have now. You do not need the capability for that. You have no military rationale for it. But there are jobs involved in obtaining these missiles. There is an icbm caucus in washington, in congress with which consists of 10 senators , six from the three states that house minuteman missiles, icbms. One from nevada where they are refurbished and maintained and one in louisiana where strategic bombers are based. And by coincidence, these are the 10 editors who say we have to have these. Nobody else can make a case for this but if they want on hot alert 24 hours a day, seven days aweek every year , not cold alert, why . More restaurants, more jobs, more real estate. It doesnt seem like strong reasons but its a reason and building these, its 1. 2 billion involved here. It involves profits and by the way, russia has profits now. They use to have bureaucratic reasons for wanting what the us had. Now you got that and the same reasons we do they have profits, its capitalism. Okay, so these are overpowering. Hardly any americans realize what it is we are talking about rebuilding. Its something to deter attack. Herb your new is the first head of Livermore LaboratoryDesign Laboratory which was a rival to los alamos, he later said to livermore in a talk in the 80s, it was about 82 or 83, he said when Nuclear Winter was to start that he could have that in his talk and he said how many weapons does it actually take to deter Nuclear Attack . He said well, one. Or 10. If you want to have extra. He said then he went at it from another point of view. He said how many deaths should a single human leader be able to inflict as a capability . He said supposedly, it will take the number of deaths in world war ii about 60 million. And you could do that now with a Nuclear Weapon in one day. He said okay, how many would that take . 100. It might take 100. You could say 200 but its closer to 100. Lets say, start auditory Nuclear Attack of 110 to 100. But i believe it would be closer to one then it is 200. In 1952 we had 1000 fusion warheads. When he left office eight years later , we had 23,000 weapons, most of them thermoNuclear Weapons, many of them 1000 times more powerful. 23,000. At the height in the 60s for the us, that was under johnson, 37,000 Nuclear Weapons. And the russians didnt have as many then but they came to half about another 34, 35,000. Together, 70,000. Now what do you say . And what would the effects be . In 1961, i dont know whats goingon here but you have to you are talking , the question i drafted that was sent to the joint chiefs of staff under president kennedys name was this question. If your plans were first strike plans essentially, we would go first, how many people would die . In the soviet union from our attacks . And i go into this in more detail but the bottom line is the questions came back very fast. No apology, noembarrassment. Heres the answer. 600 million. 350, 325 million in effect, figuring in the us and china alone. But another 325 million. 120 million in Eastern Europe , the satellite nations. Another hundred million in west europe which are our allies from fallout, radioactive fallout from our strikes in Eastern Europe, depending on the wind. With no warheads of hours falling there at all. Another hundred million in areas contiguous to the ussr and china, neutrals like austria, finland. And afghanistan, actually. From fault, not from warheads. India, and so forth. A total of 600. Over 100 holocausts. And i looked at that and thought this machine, this system that we have did not exist. This piece of paper, im asking what would happen hypothetically and what the consequences would be of their carrying out their operational plan, this here in the berlin crisis. The next year in cuba. The most evil and insane plan. And put together by people that i knew were not insane, they were not monsters, they were ordinary, intelligent americans, the kernels andthe staff. And they hadcreated this. But as i said earlier, i think they could not have come about without the experience in world war ii where general mae who became head of the Strategic Air command had commanded the killing deliberately of 100,000 people in one night, as much as you couldve done, it was the largest act of terror of civilians in our history. And in human history, not in American History and his successors head of Strategic Command was thomas power who had led the raid and had served over tokyo. Larae was not allowed to lead as he wanted to rape, he was a very brave man. He had lived in germany through antiaircraft fire they wouldnt let him go because he knew of what he called the firecracker that was coming in some months, the atom bomb. He might have been captured given that he wasnt allowed to send but they sent power who by the way i never thought of his implication. He had not told power which would have kept power from going and the other, he was the one who knew that point. So these people come in and live amy had you learned if he told my friend sam who was known as the fatherof the neutron bomb, he liked that. He said sam, the war is killing people. He later said there are no innocent civilians. No civilians in war, its globalized, its the enemy. They all contribute to the war effort. There were no innocent civilians but anyway, war is killing people and the way you win the war is you kill enough until the other guy quits. So when we put atom bombs in hishand , the war was necessary. When he became h bonds or Nuclear Weapons, the number expected to be killed rose from 10 or 15 million in a day with the atom bombs to several hundred million. With h bonds, they put them in secretly, hardly anybody looks at these plans but you would have a bigger bomb here, put it in, same target. Those were cities, essentially so you have this plan in which in the first strike over berlin where possibly iran, consideration at that time or yugoslavia if they wanted to recapture yugoslavia, then the eisenhower plan was to hit every city in russia or i should say out of the soviet bloc and china. The concept was a sino soviet bloc although as we were saying earlier already by 60, 61 the intelligence people knew there was a growing split between the soviet union and china but anyway, you werent going to everything, every city continuously. Questions . Hes 86 years old. We will take a few questions. I was going to ask if you did have a couple questions you come up along the side and speak into the microphone. He wants to know if, he didnt say no one was going to get their hair must. He asked if you had any jokes. Yes. [laughter] you mentioned the title here earlier, how we were talking about and how we came to the title. I was going to repeatit again but my editor is here. My son revealed to me that blooms very, very good, the british part of it which is their main base of harry potter. And that sounded very good and i said that gives me my title. Harry potter and the doomsday machine. By jk rowling. I dont even have to have my name on the cover. And they informed me their Legal Department found out. If all of you can get your friends to buy a copy, maybe we will have the impact jk rowling has had. Who would like to ask a question . Please wait forthe microphone. Why now . Why didnt you write this book 20 years ago. Ive got a lot of theories on that but id like to hear why now . Rick mentioned earlier that when i started copying the pentagon papers in 1969 with the example of draft resisters very much in my mind, some were on their way to prison and it made me think what can i do to help this war in vietnam . Now that im ready to go to prison. And so i thought of putting out something in the pentagon papers and i started the 47 volumes of topsecret documents, 27,000 pages on decisionmaking in vietnam and i realized now that im going to prison for that, something thats more important is Nuclear Material that ive been working on for years but i copied everything in my topsecret safety and a lot of self from the secret safe. I was one of the few people who had a topsecret safe in my own office, most people had to go to the topsecret office and sign for it. I copied all the with the intention of putting it out after my trials on the vietnam and when the pentagon papers that had their attempt to awaken people to the problems of vietnam i would then put out the nuclear and a friend of mine was going to prison, when i told him this on his way to prison that he had inspired me and i wanted him to know that the effect that he had on my life he said he dont dont bother with vietnam, we know enough about vietnam. The stuff is out there and so forth. He said do the nuclear right now. And i said i agree with you, nuclear is more important but vietnam is where the bombs, i explicit bombs are falling now. I want to try to show that and then ill do the nuclear. And he didnt mention what happened to all that but its in the book here for the first time. It was a bigsecret. Weve got to leave something for the book and the story of what happened to those papersis astonishing , but. I will go through it but ill give you the bottom line. They were being separately stored in a trash heap near tarrytown by my brother and Hurricane Harvey scattered us all around and i couldnt recover it. Now ill tell you Something Else that was the basis and the correct answer for your question. As soon as the war was over i found to myanguish ever since i lost all those documents. I have a lot of notes but what i meant to put out, i guess i do, how shall i say this in the book . Not because it was a secret, i just didnt getaround to it. My lawyer , charlie messing, when i began my trial which i was facing 115 years for the pentagon, he said you know, leonard modine, my mainlawyer , we know very little about this secrecy, can you tell us what you knew about the secrecy system and so forth. So for more than five days, all day i dictated. I transcribed at that point and about 500 pages of transcripts of what ive been telling you. This sort of thing, the cuban missile crisis. So i had that transcript for them. Johnny did not know that i have copied and lost all those documents. Only my main lawyer leonard, my wife didnt know, i didnt want to implicate her but i did have that. And it was actually, when the war ended, i took a large part of that 500 pages, entered a transcript and showed it to a top editor in new york. And she said very interesting, wed sell 1400 copies. This is in 75. Nuclear war was not the top of peoples minds. And i said well, thats all right. Thats a number for every member of congress. And you know, of others, media people and he said you dont understand. That means we dont publish it. So i gave up on a book because she said that. I think her head had been turned a little bit, this might identify her but she had published 2 million copy hardbacks of blind addition and the president s men. So 1400 didnt grab her. But take it up and say you had trouble finding it. I spent most of the next four years, well, all of the next four years trying to help build an antinuclear movements. Like the one that held them in the vietnam war. With some success, bilateral Nuclear Weapons freeze. And one of the cofounders of that was andy keeler, now out of prison who told me with the nuclear program. Once you decided to write this book, you didnt have an easy time finding a publisher. Harry potter was turned down by 12 publishers so i take that as a very good sign. You got turned down by more than that for commercial reasons, before sperry spotted and once again, they had a winner. I trust their judgment. Nancy miller, yes. Lets get her and around of applause. [applause] i want to thank greg for being here tonight. This was an amazing opportunity for everybody and the American Writers Museum is thrilled to host this event and as i mentioned earlier, if you are interested in getting a copy of the doomsday machine, they are on sale in the meyer gallery which you can go to the back entrance of the left and he will be out there signing books. Thank you for coming tonight. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] cspan, where history unfolded daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas cabletelevision companies and is brought you today by your cable or satellite provider. Next on booktvs after words, judge jon newman details his career in the judicial system serving first as a prosecutor and now as as a fedl appellate judge for 38 years on the u. S. Court of appeals for the second circuit. He is interviewed by connecticut senator richard blumenthal. Senator blumenthal serves on the Judiciary Committee and served five terms as connecticuts attorney general. After words is a weekly Interview Program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. Host judge newman, thank you for joining me. I am really honored and excited about having this conversation regarding your book which is remarkable and fascinating because you lead a remarkable and