[background noise] the university of massachusetts amherst announced the acquisition of papers of Daniel Ellsberg, which will be available to the public. In an event marking the acquisition, pentagon papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg talks about the proper problem with Nuclear Weapons. His recent book the doomsday machine, confessions of a Nuclear War Planner details his three pentagon papers work as a teacher analyst for the Rand Corporation strategic analyst for the Rand Corporation. He talks about the role of whistleblowers in the 21st century. All right, good evening, good afternoon, good evening. Thetings and welcome to 21st annual friends of the Umass Librarys fall recession. I am the dean of libraries here. Today i have the honor of welcoming you to a special program, planning to celebrate the acquisition of daniel bysbergs personal archive the university. This represents an important addition to the Umass Library archives and the university. The Library Special collections are nationally recognized for our strength in documenting the protest,f unrest, advocacy and ultimately change in our society with an emphasis on the individuals and groups who are champions of change and social justice. Ank our many friends and donors. With their continued support and our commitment to preservation and public access, Daniel Ellsbergs archives will be available for teaching, learning and research locally and regionally through digitization and for generations to come. I would like to take this opportunity to thank daniel and Patricia Ellsberg for sharing this resource with the human Umass Amherst library. Goodl archives are in Company Alongside the papers of bond, dubois, horace mann kenneth feinberg, the new england yearly meeting archives and many other agents of social change. We feel the archives of Daniel Ellsberg is exactly where it belongs. Collection, a collection like this involves the work of many. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge a few individuals. Ahead of special collections rob here atthe entire staff Umass Amherst. Thank you. [applause] i would also like to thank the chancellor and our other leaders on this campus including bob forful been bob feldman recognizing umass as a rifle home for this and working with us to make it so. Thank you. [applause] so to tell us a little bit more about how umass came to acquire this amazing collection, i would like to introduce our chancellor. As he is known to most of us here, swami. [applause] good evening and thank you, simon. Welcome, everyone for what promises to be a thoughtprovoking evening. I would like to acknowledge my good friend, retired states representative alan story who has joined us today. Please ignore it. Please acknowledge. [applause] it is always a pleasure to have alan on campus. I would like to take a minute to share how we arrived at this evening. As the Washington Post once observed, Umass Amherst has developed a reputation as perhaps the single most department in the country. You can read however you want to read that. That is our economics faculty have earned this prominence reflects unwillingness to accept conventional thinking. This attitude has evidence when the distinguished professor and codirector of the Political Economic institution heard through the economist grapevine there is 1 that Daniel Ellsbergs papers were in his basement. Discoveryzing this has crazy sorry, dr. Ellsberg resourcefulness of a distinguished professor of economics. In a short time helped foster a relationship between the ellsbergs and umass. Bob feldman, my senior advisor, became an invaluable intermediary working with ellsberg and the anonymous donor who stepped up to support acquisition of the papers. This evening on behalf of the university community, i would like to thank bob feldman, our anonymous donor and for [applause] everyone in this room is affected by the life and work of Daniel Ellsberg. Some through living through the 70s and other such as our students currently experiencing his historical imprint in a National Moment of deja vu. I belong to the former camp. That is how old i am. In 1971i boarded a plane for the first time traveling from bangalore in india to Indiana University to pursue a doctorate in physics. The campus and the nation were in the throes of unrest. The vietnam war was ending and watergate was about to break. I was immersed in conversations that ordinarily as a physicist i would not be a part of. Those Tumultuous Times taught me about the u. S. Constitution, transparency, politics and the rule of law. This unexpected part of my education was invaluable in advancing my administrative career. As i stand here leading the celebration, almost 50 years since the pentagon papers were leaked, after Steven Spielberg turned this into a movie starring meryl streep and tom hanks, it is tempting to view the life through the diffused light of a hollywood lens. It could have ended differently. He leaked the pentagon papers in 1971 exposing decades of deceit by american policymakers during the vietnam war. He knew it was very possible his actions could lead to a lifetime in jail. Enviablefamily and an career. Hes chosen the truth. His commitment to protecting the sanctity of the truth for the good of his country outweighed his personal wellbeing. It was a tremendous act of courage and convention convicted. Mission as aal stronghold of freedom of expression. It is our privilege to receive the papers. Collection, of this university is committed to making the work of his life broadly accessible, ensuring it remains in the public sphere, informing our discourse for decades to come. I warmly welcome daniel and patricia into the universe Umass Amherst community. [applause] [applause] thank you very much. Can you hear me . Can you hear me in the back . Problems, wave your arms. This is a wonderful occasion. I was thinking i have not really been part of an institution as i am now since i left rand. That was quite a while ago, 1970. It is wonderful to be here. Chancellor, i appreciate the fact that my archive will be here. I in particular appreciate the appreciation i have gotten , it isfrom robert talks really warmed the others. We were very impressed when the vice chancellor bob feldman, representing you, flew across the country almost immediately after hearing the possibility of getting my archive here. We were impressed sitting around the table while with these people, robert cox, we had to rob, bob, robert, to distinguish in conversation somehow. I feel wonderful. I have been reviewing as a result of course some of the 500 we have sent about 250 so far , from my hands. Way. Ng and screaming in a i look at the boxes and the files. I reread this, it looks fascinating. Realized is this is pretty much covers my life realizeand something i is that life is almost exactly extensive with the nuclear era. Thinking about that, i am very surprised that i am still here at 88 and even more surprised that you are all still here. You will see why i feel that may be at the end of the evening although there is bad news. Andgood news is we are here i think you may appreciate how lucky we have been. To have come through this so far. Dohaps what we may need to to assure some of you will live as long as i have, 88, and your grandchildren and their children will have at chance to be lucky like us. Whatt it without saying by any means. I am thinking of the fact i was born in 1931. What32 chadwick discovered ernest had conceived earlier of the neutron. And when i was two years old, fdr had become president. Hitler had come to power. Herehysicist dont friends conceived at a particular moment to the possibility of a Chain Reaction which he patented. To keep it secret, patented with the admiralty hoping it would not be ideal, would not come to the country he had just left, germany, in 1933. Hitler had become chancellor but have been named chancellor in january as i recall. Are hisemoirs which virtue of the facts, and he refers to the fact he had told someone, one of his friends from hungary, he was writing some notes for a memoir just forgot. He said, dont you think god knows the facts . He said he doesnt know my version of the facts. [laughter] packedells he had a bag since 1932 in his apartment in berlin ready to leave if hitler ine to power, which he did january. Two days after the reichstag fire, which we dont know for sure whether it was set by the nazis as it was said, but any rate it was used by the nazis immediately as a reason to cancel civil liberties, going to emergency state, a state of emergency. They got hindenburg to sign this. The first was to end the privacy of the Postal Service and to listen to all telephone calls. As almost the first thing that had to be done in this state. And they say he picked up his bags which required he left the room and left germany. He said it was not because i thought the people approved of what hitler would proceed to do but because of their nature as obedient rule followers, there would be no real resistance to it. Many people thought, when i grew in germans we saw them newsreels, a peculiar culture unlike us. I have to tell you like at 88, no joke, that is wrong. What clear to me now happened in germany was not because of any peculiarity of the germans. There was not organized resistance in the way, a lot of things going on i want to go into that history wont go into that history. He went to london, where he wrote a newspaper where rutherford talked of the discovery. A very interesting science. The idea it would be possible and in fact bombard adams with neutrons. They had to split a lithium atom at that point. They said it will have interesting effects, but it is moonshine to believe it will get power from the nutrient. And they were irritated. He took it as a challenge. That very day of reading that, as he tells the story, he was waiting for a red light to change across from the British Museum on a london street corner. As it changed to green, he stepped into the street. In the middle of the street the thought occurred that if a Nuclear Reaction occurred by bombardments of neutrons in the atoms, if additional neutrons were released, it could affect a Chain Reaction. That is how you would get more power out. He patented thats. His friend later said the only thing wrong with that story was the idea he had never known a man to wait for a light to change. Said he paid no attention to red lights. Something wrong with that story. But he did tell it often, patented that. Some years went by. Had a8 german scientists reaction which other german splitists realized had the uranium atom. He wondered could this be the atom i have been thinking about for five years . He borrowed money and got laboratory stuff to test whether other neutrons were released in the course of this. Moment,reak here for a why i am telling this story. I first heard of the possibility bomb when i was 13, in 1944. How many people here are 75 and older . Let me get a good luck. Good look. How many of you with your hands up, keep your hand up if it is , were aware of the possibility of the atom bomb before august 6, 1945 . Anybody . I had a peculiar experience. , the bomb was being made and i was indeed he was in fact a Structural Engineer building factories for the production of bombing planes. He was the chief Structural Engineer in one plant which produced bombers on an Assembly Line. He took me out there once when i was 12. ,he Assembly Line had planes moving along. Cars, car bodies. Liked thesay he carcasses. It was a mile and a quarter long. At the end they dropped off, flew off to make more. That is what my father was doing. He did not know anything about the atom bomb then. Student in ahip private school in the hills, where most of my friends were sons of car manufacturers, quite welltodo. I was a scholarship student. I did not suffer for that at all. In a class in october. Tember, i had a teacher teaching social studies. He was teaching us a concept lag. D Cultural Technology had ,dvanced faster than culture but specifically more than institutions for controlling the technology. Morality, laws, institutions lagged behind. Looking back on that, a question whether they rather they really caught up. It kept getting rediscovered in the course of the nuclear era. It is amazing how often i discovered people were reinventing the idea as they looked at Nuclear Weapons. When the atom bomb was supersecret, no mention, harry truman as Vice President knew nothing of it. Teacher. Rson had a turns out he told me after seeing his name in my book, he looked me up. He is retired now. He had later became secretary of the National Security council under eisenhower. When he was a teacher in his high school, looking at us and he said there is an element, an isotope of uranium. Which is capable of a Chain Reaction that would produce a powerful times more than a blockbuster. Those of you who raise your hands i am sure will remember what a blockbuster was. 15, some of them were 20. The british had quite a few 20 ton bombs. They were called blockbusters because they would destroy a block of city buildings. One block. And they were by that time, although i didnt know it, big news used to killng civilians. A bomb that would be 1000 times more powerful than that. You have a week to write an essay, short essay on how this would affect civilization or society. There was no emphasis who would get this. Actually i think it was taken for granted the germans would get it first. They discovered the process in 1938, 1939. But that wasnt the issue. How would that affect would it be for good or bad . Would it be peaceful or dangerous . Think for a minute. I was 13 as were my other classmates. We came to the same conclusion. Ask yourself, at your age now, you never heard of such a bomb. Is it a good thing or a bad thing to have a bomb 1000 times more powerful than a blockbuster . Think about it. I remember very well our reaction was the same as well of my fares my friends. News forbe bad humanity. Blockbusters had that were being used even by us. 1000 times more, dont need that. Humanity isnt up to that. I will jump ahead for a moment. Nine months go by. None of you who raise your hands earlier were in the same state of mind. We werent thinking about it until that summer august 6. Perhaps it was august 7 in detroit. I can remember the moment when i saw the headline. I remember the trolley cart we used to have before gm bought them up and destroyed them. Electric clattering on the street. As i looked at the headline which said a city had been destroyed why a single bomb. By a single bomb. The announcement by truman was we have destroyed hiroshima, a military base. That was false. That was to reassure people, in order to minimize civilian casualties. Base was an outskirts highly affected by the bomb. The bomb had been picked to maximize death of civilians, and 80,000 peopleaps right away. Year00, by the end of the with burns and radiation. But i looked at that. I will put it to you and ask for hands. How many of you remember that day . You are 75 . Torrent there people who remember that arent there people here who remember that . 75, not 88. Maybe you were born about that time. I was now 14. I looked at that headline and say i know what that is. That is the bomb that we studied in bradley pattersons class last fall. It on at and we dropped city. Feelingd a very ominous. I remember feeling uneasy at Harry Trumans midwestern accent, very flat unemotional, saying this was the greatest development, wonderful that we got it. I am thinking, there should have been more anguish in his voice, more concerned because i thought i have already concluded after all our class outside the Manhattan Project was almost the only group of people who had thought about the possible implications of a bomb like that before it was dropped. When it was dropped, it was in the best possible context, in terms of receiving it. It was a u. S. Bomb, developed by the sainted fdr. So. Lassmates did not think if he had ended the war supposedly it could not have been ended without an invasion killing one Million People, the savior of american lives. Americans ever since have thought, too bad to kill those people but is saved a lot of americans and even japanese from invasion. The premises claimed by secretary of war stimson, later other authors, by everybody since then our false. I will not spend time on that. That it savedises lives even though it did not the 100,000 people was lesser evil, necessary evil, it was not an evil. It was legitimized in a way that could not have happened any other way. Nogine if the nazis, who had bomb program at that time they had stopped and given up so they could not get it in time for the war. Hitler wanted a short war. They had given up the same month we embarked on this, because one person in 1939 have been driven by Edward Taylor to visit einstein and get his signature in 1939, in august, a month before the war started in 1939. Convincing fdr he should start a program on this which did not start right away but got rolling. Fdr said you are telling me the germans might did this, and we have to get it first . He signed it. Saying is myi am unease about that at the time people said you could not really have thought that at 13, but he had not been in that class. He had not thought about what the future might hold. It was not just 13yearold ominousnts who saw an thing in