PBS
The Movement and the ‘Madman’
PBS ON “AMERICAN EXPERIENCE”
A US nuclear war planner in the 1960s and members of the National Security Council (NSC) Policy staff recall how close the US came to using nuclear weapons in Vietnam in 1969
The Documentary premiered on March 23, 2023
Watch a selection of scenes from the PBS presentation — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfhHcq-IUQo
* https://www.movementandthemadman.com/home
* https://www.movementandthemadman.com/history
* https://www.movementandthemadman.com/preview
* https://www.movementandthemadman.com/interviewees
* https://www.movementandthemadman.com/filmmakers
StratDem Editor: In conversations/interviews with the production development team of this documentary and pushed for the telling of the inside story of one of the results of the ‘peace movement’. I spoke of the National Security Council and those who knew, close-up, what Kissinger-Nixon, apart from public statements, were ‘really’ planning for Vietnam. The filmmakers pursued the inside story and and spoke with Daniel Ellsberg, Roger Morris, Mort Halperin, and Tony Lake.
In the resulting documentary, Dan Ellsberg speaks of the Vietnam Moratorium and peace movement and, in an inscription he added to his “Doomsday Machine” book, he told me we needed to have a Moratorium again.
As readers of Strategic Demands may not know, Dan Ellsberg, famed for the Pentagon Papers, was a nuclear war planner. The planned use of nuclear weapons, and consequences, is revealed in “Doomsday Machine”.
From Dan to Steven (StratDem editor): ‘We need the Moratorium again !’
Excerpts from Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg
Published 2017
Daniel Ellsberg: Nixon Almost Took Vietnam War Nuclear In November 1969
Revelations: the Vietnam Moratorium prevented use of nuclear weapons
1969 – “Nuclear targets were picked.”
Ellsberg speculated that the plans would have gone ahead in November 1969.
Instead, a huge demonstration on Oct. 15, 1969, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, combined a general strike with nationwide protests and teach-ins.
About 2 million people came out to protest across the country, even “little towns that had never protested before,” Ellsberg recalled. “Without the Moratorium, there would have been an escalation, possibly the use of nuclear weapons in November 1969.”
The Vietnam Moratorium mobilization of October-November 1969 revealed to have stopped Nixon from using nuclear weapons
References: via the National Security Archive
Among US documents retrieved in Freedom of Information request
A report from September 1969 on prospective military operations against North Vietnam (referred to unofficially within the White House as DUCK HOOK) included two options to use tactical nuclear weapons: one for “the clean nuclear interdiction of three NVN-Laos passes”-the use of small yield, low fall-out weapons to disrupt traffic on the Ho Chi Minh trail. The other was for the “nuclear interdiction of two NVN-CPR [Chinese People’s Republic] railroads”—presumably using nuclear weapons to destroy railroad tracks linking North Vietnam and China.
A Kissinger telephone conversation transcript, in which Nixon worried that with the 1 November deadline approaching and major anti-Vietnam war demonstrations scheduled for 15 October and 15 November, escalating the war might produce “horrible results” by the buildup of “a massive adverse reaction” among demonstrators.
The Movement and Madman documentary film
“The little-known story of a dramatic showdown between a protest movement and a president”
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:PBS_Documentary_-_Movement_and_the_Madman_6.png
More background at GreenPolicy360 and Strategic Demands
Roger Morris
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Roger_Morris_Bio
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Surviving_Victory.png
Dan Ellsberg
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Dan_Ellsberg_-_2017.png
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Doomsday_Machine.jpg
* https://strategicdemands.com/doomsday-machine/
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Dan_Ellsberg_-_March_2023.png
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Moratorium_memory,_Dan-Steve,_Doomsday_Machine_inscription.jpg
Nuclear Weapons
* https://strategicdemands.com/icbms-hair-trigger-launch-on-warning-era-must-end/
* https://strategicdemands.com/nuclear-issues-cold-war-2-0/
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Nuclear_Weapons
Vietnam Moratorium Peace Movement
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Moratorium_October_15_1969.jpg
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Oct_15,_1969,_Vietnam_Moratorium_Day_in_memory.jpg