Scott interviews Gareth Porter about his coverage of a recently-released document liberated by Daniel Ellsberg when he originally leaked the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s. This document, Porter explains, shows how in 1958 the military wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons against China over the offshore islands crisis. It was only Eisenhower’s intervention that stopped the Joint Chiefs from going ahead with the plan, though ironically, it was Eisenhower’s own efforts to combat the military-industrial complex by reducing conventional military forces that helped lead to an increased focus on nuclear weapons as a primary military tool in the first place. Ellsberg has released this document because the idea that the U.S. might go to war with China over Taiwan has thrust this issue to the fore once again. Nuclear brinksmanship, he says, remains one of the greatest threats not just to American national security, but to the very survival of the human race. The idea of an all-out war with China as in any way a legitimate possibility must be vehemently opposed before we ever come to the point of using nuclear weapons again.

Discussed on the show:

• “Eisenhower rejected military chiefs’ demand for nuclear war on China, classified account of ’58 Taiwan Strait crisis reveals” (The Grayzone)
• The Doomsday Machine
• “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says” (The New York Times)
• “Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known” (The New York Times)
• “US military considered using nuclear weapons against China in 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis, leaked documents show” (CNN)
• National Security Archive

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on the national security state. He is the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare and, with John Kiriakou, The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter and listen to Gareth’s previous appearances on the Scott Horton Show.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG.

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Former CIA agent and The American Conservative magazine contributing editor Philip Giraldi confronts America’s march to war with Iran.

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The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg calls on national government employees to take secret documents pertaining to the upcoming war with Iran and give them to the Congress and the press as a last ditch effort to stop this war.

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Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Ph.D. tells how she witnessed Douglas Feith and his WINEP/JINSA/AEI buddies deliberately lie the people of this country into war in Iraq.

Her best articles on the subject are here, here, here, here, and here. See also this, this and this.

My previous interviews of her here.

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Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina’s 3rd district discusses his House Joint Resolution 14, which would make it clear to the President that he may not initiate a war against Iran without a Congressional declaration of war.

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Journalist Jon Basil Utley talks about the anti-Communist legacy of his mother Freda, who lost China, his post-Cold War break with the pro-empire “conservative” movement, the Armageddon Lobby and some of the possible consequences of a war against Iran.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative and Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. A former correspondent for Knight Ridder in South America, Utley has written for the Harvard Business Review on foreign nationalism and was for 17 years a commentator on the Voice of America. He is director of Americans Against World Empire.

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The Independent Institute‘s Anthony Gregory discusses the Left, Right, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, war and a State out of control.

Anthony Gregory is a research analyst at the Independent Institute, a public policy research organization that analyzes government policy and suggests nonpartisan, peaceful, free-market solutions to today’s social and political ills. He is also a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation, a guest editor for Strike the Root, and a columnist for LewRockwell.com.

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PBS Frontline producer Martin Smith explains U.S. Army’s training of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution’s Badr Corps and the problems this creates for the American mission to train a national army before withdrawal, the subject of his upcoming documentary ‘Gangs of Iraq‘ for Frontline.

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Professor of Middle East History Juan Cole explains some of what is going on in Iraq, with an emphasis on Bush’s claims about Iran’s behavior there.

Juan R. I. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively about modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. His most recent book is Sacred Space and Holy War. His blog, Informed Comment, is a widely read source for Middle East news and commentary.

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