Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known

[soryang]

Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known
The famed source of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, has made another unauthorized disclosure — and wants to be prosecuted for it.

NY Times by Charlie Savage May 22

WASHINGTON — When Communist Chinese forces began shelling islands controlled by Taiwan in 1958, the United States rushed to back up its ally with military force — including drawing up plans to carry out nuclear strikes on mainland China, according to an apparently still-classified document that sheds new light on how dangerous that crisis was.

American military leaders pushed for a first-use nuclear strike on China, accepting the risk that the Soviet Union would retaliate in kind on behalf of its ally and millions of people would die, dozens of pages from a classified 1966 study of the confrontation show. The government censored those pages when it declassified the study for public release.

The document was disclosed by Daniel Ellsberg,...

more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/us/politics/nuclear-war-risk-1958-us-china.html

[70sEraVet]

1. Seems like it should be made public after 63 years

I mean, its part of history, now. It would do us GOOD to know how close we came to nuclear devastation!