The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

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Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec 7, 2017 - Political Science - 432 pages
From the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, the first insider exposé of the dangers of America's hidden, seventy-year-long nuclear policy.

When former presidential advisor Daniel Ellsberg famously took the Pentagon Papers, he also took with him a cache of top-secret documents related to the United States' nuclear program in the 1960s. Here, for the first time, he reveals the contents of those now-declassified documents and makes clear their shocking relevance for today.

The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's account of the most dangerous arms build-up in the history of civilisation, the legacy of which threatens the very survival of humanity.

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About the author (2017)

In 1961, Daniel Ellsberg, a consultant to the Department of Defense and the White House, drafted Secretary Robert McNamara's plans for nuclear war. Later he leaked the Pentagon Papers. He lectures and writes on the dangers of the nuclear era and the need for whistle-blowing. A Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Ellsberg is the author of Secrets and the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America. He is also a key figure in Steven Spielberg's upcoming film about the Pentagon Papers, The Post, scheduled to be released in December 2017. He lives in Kensington, California, with his wife, Patricia.

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