The Doomsday Machine

Starred review from October 9, 2017
Ellsberg (Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers) mixes autobiography and history as he details the horrifying realities of America’s nuclear-weapons apparatus, with an aim to inspire future “courageous whistleblowers.” As a Harvard postgraduate fellow, Ellsberg’s work on decision theory attracted the RAND Corp.’s attention. In 1959 he joined a study of the communication of the “execute” message to launch nuclear strikes, coming to focus on how to ensure that no subordinate decided to attack without clear authorization. To Ellsberg’s amazement, the military’s vaunted “fail-safe” system didn’t work. He also learned that America’s pledge never to attack first is fiction; the U.S. would have struck if convinced that the U.S.S.R. was about to attack. He describes how a single, exquisitely detailed plan would have directed thousands of bombs onto Eastern Bloc targets, as well as China, even if China was not involved in a planned attack. America’s sole deterrence of the Soviet Union was to threaten Armageddon. Ellsberg recounts with precision both public and top secret arguments over American nuclear-war policy during the three decades after WWII. Despite modest improvements since, little has fundamentally changed. Ellsberg’s brilliant and unnerving account makes a convincing case for disarmament and shows that the mere existence of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to humanity. Agent: Andy Ross, Andy Ross Literary.

Starred review from October 15, 2017
Ellsberg titled his first memoir, an account of his legendary leak of the Pentagon Papers, Secrets (2002), but he has been harboring many more disclosures of far greater impact for the last 47 years. In this gripping and unnerving book of confessions, Ellsberg reveals that along with the top-secret materials about the Vietnam War he copied as a high-clearance strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and the Defense Department, he also amassed a large cache of classified papers documenting the appalling truth about the perilously inadequate control of nuclear weapons. Ellsberg would have brought these records forward decades ago, but after his trial, which led not to his conviction but to Nixon's resignation, they were lost in a hurricane. Now, thanks to government declassification and online archives, he is finally able to recount with searing specificity such hidden horrors as the delegation of the authority to initiate nuclear attacks, the erroneous assumptions behind the arms race, his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the facts about other near-disasters. Entwining affecting personal revelations with jolting governmental disclosures, declaring that Stanley Kubrick's infamous nuclear-weapons satire, Dr. Strangelove (1964), was, essentially, a documentary, and citing our tense standoff with North Korea, Ellsberg concludes his dramatic elucidation of how the nuclear arsenal endangers all of life on Earth with steps for dismantling this Doomsday Machine. A must-read of the highest order, Ellsberg's profoundly awakening chronicle is essential to our future.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Ellsberg's concussive nuclear confessions will generate heated media coverage, which will be further escalated by Steven Spielberg's forthcoming Pentagon Papers movie, The Post, starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from December 1, 2017

Before he researched the background of the Vietnam conflict, ex-marine Ellsberg (Secrets) analyzed nuclear warfare decision-making for the RAND Corporation and the Pentagon. He would go on to leak the Pentagon Papers. This book's title, with the phrase popularized in the iconic 1964 Stanley Kubrick movie Dr. Strangelove (many in the know considered it a documentary), refers to how nuclear weapons might be employed almost automatically, as events can spiral out of control. The author terms it as "self-assured destruction" and urges more time be built into the process to allow for more communication among state actors and for evaluation of a confusing situation. Ellsberg utilizes declassified documents along with his own notes, interviews, and memories to examine the loose delegation of nuclear launch authority and dangerous international incidents (e.g., the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis). The book is a critique of American weapons policies, as well as a call for rationally rethinking U.S. policy on using nuclear weapons. VERDICT Ellsberg's book is essential for facilitating a national discussion about a vital topic.--Daniel Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2017
Noted gadfly Ellsberg (Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 2002) returns with a sobering look at our nuclear capabilities and the likelihood that they'll one day end in tears.When the author hurriedly copied the contents of his RAND Corporation safe to reveal, in time, what would become known as the Pentagon Papers, that was just the start of it. He had other documents, even more jarring. The good news is that the world didn't come to an end during the Cuban missile crisis or a dozen other nuclear flashpoints before and since. The bad news, much in abundance, is that it's rather amazing that we didn't all go up in cinders. As fans of Dr. Strangelove knew all along, there really was a doomsday machine, still operational, by which a president could order nuclear Armageddon. The worse news is that this power is much more broadly distributed than the president, so that even more or less minor area commanders can send the missiles flying. What is more, writes the author, American policy is not really premised on retaliation in the event that a foreign power attacks first, but instead on our striking first. That would make us the bad guy in any future history of the world--and it's something that Ellsberg worries about given Donald Trump's blustery musing aloud about why we don't use all those beautiful weapons we have, "in the delusion," as Ellsberg writes, "that such an attack will limit damage to the homeland, compared with the consequences of waiting for actual explosions to occur." Striking first would also mean abandoning the much-vaunted principle of "just war." True deterrence is possible, Ellsberg urges, while at the same time reducing the nuclear arsenal--especially that doomsday machine--and imposing tighter limits on its potential use here and elsewhere.Especially timely given the recent saber-rattling not from Russia but North Korea and given the apparent proliferation of nuclear abilities among other small powers.

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