Dear friends and supporters,
I have difficult news to impart. On February 17, without much warning, I
was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer on the basis of a CT scan
and an MRI. (As is usual with pancreatic cancer--which has no early symptoms--it
was found while looking for something else, relatively minor). I’m sorry
to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six months to live.
Of course, they emphasize that everyone's case is individual; it might be
more, or less.
I have chosen not to do chemotherapy (which offers no promise) and I have
assurance of great hospice care when needed. Please know: right now, I am
not in any physical pain, and in fact, after my hip replacement surgery in
late 2021, I feel better physically than I have in years! Moreover, my
cardiologist has given me license to abandon my salt-free diet of the last
six years. This has improved my quality of life dramatically: the pleasure
of eating my former favorite foods! And my energy level is high. Since my
diagnosis, I've done several interviews and webinars on Ukraine, nuclear
weapons, and first amendment issues, and I have two more scheduled this week.
As I just told my son Robert: he's long known (as my editor) that I work
better under a deadline. It turns out that I live better under a deadline!
I feel lucky and grateful that I've had a wonderful life far beyond the
proverbial three-score years and ten. ( I’ll be ninety-two on April
7th.) I feel the very same way about having a few months more to enjoy life
with my wife and family, and in which to continue to pursue the urgent goal
of working with others to avert nuclear war in Ukraine or Taiwan (or anywhere
else).
When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969, I had every reason to think I
would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would
gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War, unlikely
as that seemed (and was). Yet in the end, that action—in ways I could
not have foreseen, due to Nixon’s illegal responses—did have an
impact on shortening the war. In addition, thanks to Nixon's crimes, I was
spared the imprisonment I expected, and I was able to spend the last fifty
years with Patricia and my family, and with you, my friends.
What's more, I was able to devote those years to doing everything I could
think of to alert the world to the perils of nuclear war and wrongful
interventions: lobbying, lecturing, writing and joining with others in acts
of protest and non-violent resistance.
I wish I could report greater success for our efforts. As I write,
"modernization" of nuclear weapons is ongoing in all nine states that possess
them (the US most of all). Russia is making monstrous threats to initiate
nuclear war to maintain its control over Crimea and the Donbas--like the
dozens of equally illegitimate first-use threats that the US government has
made in the past to maintain its military presence in South Korea, Taiwan,
South Vietnam, and (with the complicity of every member state then in NATO
) West Berlin. The current risk of nuclear war, over Ukraine, is as great
as the world has ever seen.
China and India are alone in declaring no-first-use policies. Leadership
in the US, Russia, other nuclear weapons states, NATO and other US allies
have yet to recognize that such threats of initiating nuclear war--let alone
the plans, deployments and exercises meant to make them credible and more
ready to be carried out--are and always have been immoral and insane: under
any circumstances, for any reasons, by anyone or anywhere.
It is long past time--but not too late!--for the world's publics at last
to challenge and resist the willed moral blindness of their past and current
leaders. I will continue, as long as I'm able, to help these efforts. There's
tons more to say about Ukraine and nuclear policy, of course, and you'll
be hearing from me as long as I'm here.
As I look back on the last sixty years of my life, I think there is no greater
cause to which I could have dedicated my efforts. For the last forty years
we have known that nuclear war between the US and Russia would mean nuclear
winter: more than a hundred million tons of smoke and soot from firestorms
in cities set ablaze by either side, striking either first or second, would
be lofted into the stratosphere where it would not rain out and would envelope
the globe within days. That pall would block up to 70% of sunlight for years,
destroying all harvests worldwide and causing death by starvation for most
of the humans and other vertebrates on earth.
So far as I can find out, this scientific near-consensus has had virtually
no effect on the Pentagon's nuclear war plans or US/NATO (or Russian) nuclear
threats. (In a like case of disastrous willful denial by many officials,
corporations and other Americans, scientists have known for over three decades
that the catastrophic climate change now underway--mainly but not only from
burning fossil fuels--is fully comparable to US-Russian nuclear war as another
existential risk.)
I'm happy to know that millions of people--including all those friends and
comrades to whom I address this message!--have the wisdom, the dedication
and the moral courage to carry on with these causes, and to work unceasingly
for the survival of our planet and its creatures.
I'm enormously grateful to have had the privilege of knowing and working
with such people, past and present. That's among the most treasured aspects
of my very privileged and very lucky life. I want to thank you all for the
love and support you have given me in so many ways. Your dedication, courage,
and determination to act have inspired and sustained my own efforts.
My wish for you is that at the end of your days you will feel as much joy
and gratitude as I do now.
Love, Dan
PS: I will enjoy reading any message you send me to this email, though I
may or may not be able to respond to every message or call. I prefer email
to calls, and in general I am avoiding personal visits, from concern about
covid. Please know that I hold you in my heart.
