Letter from Dan Ellsberg, Vietnamese Response

A message from Daniel Ellsberg

Dear friends and supporters, 

I have difficult news to impart. On February 17, without much warning, I was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer on the basis of a CT scan and an MRI. (As is usual with pancreatic cancer--which has no early symptoms--it was found while looking for something else, relatively minor). I’m sorry to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six months to live. Of course, they emphasize that everyone's case is individual; it might be more, or less. 

I have chosen not to do chemotherapy (which offers no promise) and I have assurance of great hospice care when needed. Please know: right now, I am not in any physical pain, and in fact, after my hip replacement surgery in late 2021, I feel better physically than I have in years! Moreover, my cardiologist has given me license to abandon my salt-free diet of the last six years. This has improved my quality of life dramatically: the pleasure of eating my former favorite foods! And my energy level is high. Since my diagnosis, I've done several interviews and webinars on Ukraine, nuclear weapons, and first amendment issues, and I have two more scheduled this week.

As I just told my son Robert: he's long known (as my editor) that I work better under a deadline. It turns out that I live better under a deadline!

I feel lucky and grateful that I've had a wonderful life far beyond the proverbial three-score years and ten. (I’ll be ninety-two on April 7th.) I feel the very same way about having a few months more to enjoy life with my wife and family, and in which to continue to pursue the urgent goal of working with others to avert nuclear war in Ukraine or Taiwan (or anywhere else).  

When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969, I had every reason to think I would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War, unlikely as that seemed (and was). Yet in the end, that action—in ways I coulld not have foreseen, due to Nixon’s illegal responses—did hhave an impact on shortening the war. In addition, thanks to Nixon's crimes, I was spared the imprisonment I expected, and I was able to spend the last fifty years with Patricia and my family, and with you, my friends.

What's more, I was able to devote those years to doing everything I could think of to alert the world to the perils of nuclear war and wrongful interventions: lobbying, lecturing, writing and joining with others in  acts of protest and non-violent resistance.  

I wish I could report greater success for our efforts. As I write, "modernization" of nuclear weapons is ongoing in all nine states that possess them (the US most of all). Russia is making monstrous threats to initiate nuclear war to maintain its control over Crimea and the Donbas--like the dozens of equally illegitimate first-use threats that the US government has made in the past to maintain its military presence in South Korea, Taiwan, South Vietnam, and (with the complicity of every member state then in NATO ) West Berlin. The current risk of nuclear war, over Ukraine, is as great as the world has ever seen.  

China and India are alone in declaring no-first-use policies. Leadership in the US, Russia, other nuclear weapons states, NATO and other US allies have yet to recognize that such threats of initiating nuclear war--let alone the plans, deployments and exercises meant to make them credible and more ready to be carried out--are and always have been immoral and insane: under any circumstances, for any reasons, by anyone or anywhere. 

It is long past time--but not too late!--for the world's publics at last to challenge and resist the willed moral blindness of their past and current leaders. I will continue, as long as I'm able, to help these efforts. There's tons more to say about Ukraine and nuclear policy, of course, and you'll be hearing from me as long as I'm here. 

As I look back on the last sixty years of my life, I think there is no greater cause to which I could have dedicated my efforts. For the last forty years we have known that nuclear war between the US and Russia would mean nuclear winter: more than a hundred million tons of smoke and soot from firestorms in cities set ablaze by either side, striking either first or second, would be lofted into the stratosphere where it would not rain out and would envelope the globe within days. That pall would  block up to 70% of sunlight for years, destroying all harvests worldwide and causing death by starvation for most of the humans and other vertebrates on earth. 

So far as I can find out, this scientific near-consensus has had virtually no effect on the Pentagon's nuclear war plans or US/NATO (or Russian) nuclear threats. (In a like case of disastrous willful denial by many officials, corporations and other Americans, scientists have known for over three decades that the catastrophic climate change now underway--mainly but not only from burning fossil fuels--is fully comparable to US-Russian nuclear war as another existential risk.)  

I'm happy to know that millions of people--including all those friends and comrades to whom I address this message!--have the wisdom, the dedication and the moral courage to carry on with these causes, and to work unceasingly for the survival of our planet and its creatures.

I'm enormously grateful to have had the privilege of knowing and working with such people, past and present. That's among the most treasured aspects of my very privileged and very lucky life. I want to thank you all for the love and support you have given me in so many ways. Your dedication, courage, and determination to act have inspired and sustained my own efforts. 

My wish for you is that at the end of your days you will feel as much joy and gratitude as I do now. 

Love, Dan

Response from the Viet Nam - USA Society

We are sorry to hear the sad news that Dan EllsbergI was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer on the basis of a CT scan and an MRI. 

We highly appreciate Dan's good will, friendship and love to Viet Nam and his support of the struggle for national independence and reunification of the country by the Viet Namese people and with his courage to reveal of the truth and machination about the American Viet Nam War by the US Government that waging the waves of peace, anti-war movements, campaigns to call for early ending of the American War in Viet Nam that helped save hundred of thousands of lives on both sides. We also highly value his support for and contribution to the process of fostering  mutual understanding, reconciliation, normalization of diplomatic relations and hancement of relations and cooperation between Viet Nam and the United States.

We wish Dan have much more courage and energy to overcome the health problem and renew a normal life.

Plese stay well and let's keep in touch.

With best wishes and regards,

Yours in peace and friendship,

Bui Van Nghi

Secretary General, Viet Nam-USA Society

Director General, VUFO Americas Department

******************************

https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/dan-ellsberg-a-personal-reflection

 Dan Ellsberg: A Personal Reflection

W. D. EHRHART

We welcome additional links and brief tributes in the comment box below, as well as suggestions for the best ways to honor Dan.

Movement and "Madman" Resources for Educators and Students

 Page under development

Response from Steve Talbot to review in The Guardian by Charles Kaiser

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/27/vietnam-war-documentary-nixon-nuclear-weapons-pbs

Hi, Charles,

Thank you for writing about my film. 

I am not sure if Tom Powers actually watched the film, but I think his argument is with Daniel

Ellsberg, not with me or the film. Ellsberg is the one person in the film who categorically states:

"The demonstrations in October and November of 1969 did not have the appearance of changing anything because the war went on as before. And none of the people who participated knew that the war had been within days or weeks of erupting enormously and becoming much bigger.  

The bottom line is I believe we would have had the first nuclear attacks since Nagasaki in 1969 had it not been for the October 15th demonstrations and the demonstrations in November."

As I said -- and you quoted me accurately -- no one knows for certain whether Nixon would have resorted to the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam in 1969.  

But we do know for certain that he and Kissinger used the nuclear threat repeatedly with the Russians and the North Vietnamese in 1969 and  that the option of using tactical nuclear weapons was part of his Operation Duck Hook planning for a major escalation of the war.

The overall point of the film is that the October 15, 1969 Moratorium and the prospect of the Nov. 15 Mobilization pressured Nixon to cancel

his plans for a massive escalation of the war starting in November -- including extensive bombing of North Vietnam, bombing the dikes, and the threatened option of using tactical nuclear weapons.  

Another point, which you and I discussed and we show in the film but Powers does not address, is Nixon's decision to order a worldwide nuclear alert of US forces in October 1969 to send in his words -- "a special reminder" -- to the Soviets that backing down from his escalation plans and nuclear threats in Vietnam that fall should not be misinterpreted as "weakness" on Nixon's part. And that nuclear alert carried the risk of provoking the Russians into a response. It was a dangerous, some would say, reckless move.

So, did the protests in the fall of 1969 stop Nixon from using nuclear weapons in Vietnam? I don't think anyone knows for certain. It certainly could have

been a bluff, as others in the film say -- I wanted to include a multiplicity of views in the film -- much as Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine may also be a bluff. Which is disturbing enough! Because sometimes a bluff -- saber rattling -- can trigger a response. 

What we can say with a high degree of certainty is that the peace protests in the fall of 1969 forced Nixon to cancel his planned offensive. And that's the key point of my film.

Preventing that escalation was no small achievement, even if it fell short of the ultimate goal of forcing an end to the war. 

Best,

Steve

P.S. A small thing, but I was a senior in college in 1969, not high school. My student film was my college project.

****************************

Background and context for questions and discussions

The Movement and the "Madman" is a documentary about a tumultuous period in history for the US and Indochina.  It is also about the relationship between protestors and their government which can apply at other moments of history or to the present.

At the beginning of 1969, a new administration led by Republican Richard Nixon was inaugurated on Jan. 20, after a close election in 1968.  Nixon had claimed in his campaign that he had a “plan” to bring the war in Vietnam to an “honorable” conclusion, but now he and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, faced huge difficulties in implementing any plan.

            --Over 500 American soldiers were being killed in Vietnam every month; 31,000 had already died. Morale among soldiers on the ground in Vietnam was rapidly declining, with drug use common and “fragging” of officers increasing.  Dissent was also rapidly spreading among active-duty GIs and vets.  Could they reduce American casualties?  Or even maintain a coherent fighting force on the ground?

            --Disillusion with the war was spreading throughout the country; indeed, it was clear that anti-war activity had undermined the previous administration of Lyndon Johnson.  Could the new administration mobilize what they called the “silent majority” to support their policies? 

            -- The draft, necessary to maintain the huge American military presence in Vietnam (over 500,000), was increasingly viewed with suspicion as unfair.  A small but visible number of men were becoming conscientious objectors, others were burning their draft cards, refusing induction, showing their willingness to face prison or flee to Canada. Could the administration achieve its manpower goals, for example by using a lottery system?

            --The South Vietnamese government, propped up by American funds, and by its military presence, was widely seen as corrupt, ineffective, and disliked by most Vietnamese.  Was there a way to stabilize the government in the South?

             Initially, the Nixon administration seemed to think that escalating the war, or at least threatening to do so, would force North Vietnam to accept American terms.  Would they increase bombing, even use nuclear weapons?  Nixon, widely known as a ferocious anti-communist, was determined not to be responsible for “losing” Vietnam; could presenting himself as something of a “madman,” willing to do whatever, help him to achieve his goals? 

             Meanwhile, the anti-war Movement was faced with its own dilemmas: after four years of concerted activity the same war continued.  1968 had seen the murders of Martin Luther King, who had spoken against the war, and of Bobby Kennedy, who had begun mounting a peace candidacy for President.  Demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago had led to what was later described as a police riot, the beating and jailing of hundreds of protestors, but not to peace.  One of the leading anti-war organizations, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), had become increasingly divided: some factions committed themselves to violent forms of action to “bring the war home”; other activists were tired and uncertain about meaningful steps toward peace.  How to contest continuation of the war?  

           What activities, locally or nationally, might lead toward peace, or at least to American withdrawal?  How could—could?—the threatening Nixon administration be constrained?  What forms of protest, if any, would work to engage ordinary Americans as distinct from activists?  How might women be involved when so many issues focused on male draftees and GIs?  Were there ways to seriously influence the new administration, which made a point of ignoring American “peaceniks”? 

 **********************************

Possible questions for students

for distribution before watching the premier at home, for classroom discussion the day after the premier, or to accompany an in-class viewing via streaming.

1)  The film shows four kinds of protest activities: 

--The nationwide “Moratorium” in October

--The symbolic March Against Death

--Public readings of the names of American war dead

--The massive “Mobilization” demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco in November. 

 Which seemed to you most effective?  Why? 

Which, if any, would you have been more likely to join?  Why?

What was the influence of the civil rights movement on the anti-war movement?

 

2)  The film shows that the Nixon administration’s policies changed as protests widened? 

 --How did they change the draft?  How did that affect opposition to the war?

--How did they change the way they spoke about protestors and the Americans who supported the administration? 

--In what ways did they actually alter military plans or the deployment of American military forces?

3)  If you are interested in changing US society and/or government policy, did you learn anything from the Vietnam antiwar protests that could be useful in advancing your goa

4)  Considering the currently warm and robust US diplomatic, economic, political, tourism and educational exchange relationships with Vietnam and shared concerns about China, in retrospect was the war necessary, worth the cost or even useful?

5)  Are their ways in which the US war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia or the US invasion of Iraq can be compared with the Russian war in Ukraine?  How do you compare Nixon's threatened use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam with Putin's threatened use of them in Ukraine? What was and is the impact of large scale self-exile by Americans and Russians to Canada and Europe to evade the draft?  

********************************

Youtube video of pre-premier zoom with the director, producer and two historians is here    https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2023/02/zoom-for-educators-and-organizers-re.html 

Educators and organizers guide is here

*************************************

Preliminary outline of resource list

(should be available with other materials by mid April on the film website here)  

Nixon/ Kissinger Plans for Vietnam as of October

 

October Moratorium

Response of Nixon Administration to October Moratorium (Silent Majority Speech)

 

March Against Death, Local readings of names of war dead

November Mobilization

Draft  (the lottery, Dec. 1, 1969)

 

 Please use the comment box below to suggest or modify questions for students and to recommend specific resources for classroom use or individual research.  

Also please share ideas in the box about how you and others can use the film to open discussions with students, people in the community and new generations of activists.