Ray McGovern wrote this short piece to say how much Consortium News meant to him and to America’s greatest whistleblower.
It is sobering to think that the now late Dan Ellsberg, and other serious thinkers, look to Consortium News for professional journalism and analysis, he wrote.
McGovern and Ellsberg protesting outside the White House in 2010.
From the desk of Ray McGovern:
October 2018
Dan Ellsberg met me at the entrance to the Berkeley theater a half-hour before the Berkeley premier of The Most Dangerous Man in America in 2009. As we compared notes on a couple of the main issues of the day, he made a point of asking me, twice, to pass along to Bob Parry, the late founder and editor of this site, his thanks for Consortium News. When Dan turned to go up on stage to introduce the documentary, he dropped a manila folder crammed full of papers. Bending down to pick them up, he whispered, “Ray, these are recent Consortium News articles. I print out the ones I want to go back and read again; these are from the last couple of weeks.”
I was reminded of this last week when I spent several hours with Dan on the West Coast. He was as sharp and inquiring as ever; this time, though, there was a lightness in his step missing in previous years. No longer hanging around his neck is the albatross of an unfinished life’s work – Dan’s crie de coeur. The albatross flew off last December when Bloomsbury published The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Consortium News published an excerpt earlier this year.
With unparalleled experience and insight, Dan warns of the danger of “near-term extinction” resulting from our own “inventions and proclivities.” It is sobering to think that Dan, and other serious thinkers, look to Consortium News for professional journalism and analysis on how acute that danger is today. I see in this a solemn charge for us to keep on keeping’ on.
So please make a donation today to help Consortium News during its Summer Fund Drive.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army officer and a C.I.A. presidential briefer, and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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“The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Consortium News published an excerpt earlier this year.”
Yes, and let us not forget that the scientists of the Manhattan Project went ahead with the Trinity test despite the fact that Germany was already defeated and despite their belief that it could set the atmosphere on fire and kill us all!
It would be very naïve to think that thoughts of equally reckless behaviour have gone away and so we must all do whatever we can to eliminate nuclear weapons.
The danger is too great to tolerate their continued existence.
“The Doomsday Machine” certainly is an extraordinary and sobering document. Not least because it makes unmistakably clear how little all the touted precautions against nuclear war mean. Target maps showing that, in the event of war against the USSR, China would automatically be subjected to nuclear bombardment too. Launch codes routinely set to all zeroes to ensure that no launch would ever be prevented or delayed. The fighter squadron commander who supposed that, should radio contact with HQ ever be lost, some of his men would go off and drop their nuclear bombs on the pre-assigned targets in the USSR and China. The universal belief in Washington that there was a “nuclear missile gap” in favour of the USSR when Ellsberg knew that the USA had scores and the USSR only a handful.
It’s understandable and very much to his credit that Mr Ellsberg wanted to see it published.
Question: How is it that the honorable Judge Emeritus, Andrew Napolitano does not have Ralph Nader, one of America’s foremost, living, great whistle blowers. to speak on his program?
hxxps://www.counterpunch.org/2026/09/01/open-letter-to-representative-hakeem-jeffries/
Look at the date on the photo. From when many of us still had a faint glimmer of hope the Ds could return to being the party of the New Deal domestically and sanity internationally. That these guys are on the outside is a big tell.
Thanks for re-running this reminder of what it takes just to tell the truth. And specifically thank you Dan Ellsberg, Bob Parry, and Ray McGovern.
Thanks Ray McGovern for a great tribute to Dan Ellsberg and Consortium News.