50 Years After Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg Reveals US Weighed 1958 Nuclear Strike on China over Taiwan

As President Biden meets with leaders of NATO countries, where he is expected to continue stepping up rhetoric against China and Russia ahead of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this Wednesday in Geneva, we speak with famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about why he recently released another classified document showing that U.S. military planners in 1958 pushed for nuclear strikes on China to protect Taiwan from an invasion by communist forces. The top-secret study revealed the U.S. military pressed then-President Dwight Eisenhower to prepare a nuclear first strike against mainland China during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958. Taiwan "could really only be defended, if at all, by the U.S. initiating nuclear war against China," says Ellsberg. The document also shows that U.S. military planners were ready to accept the risk that the Soviet Union would launch its own nuclear retaliation, including against Japan. Although Ellsberg's online release of the document was publicized in May, he reveals that he shared the same information with Japan decades earlier. "I had given the entire study to the Japanese Diet," Ellsberg says.

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