Transcript of conversation between Peter Meade and Daniel Ellsberg, April 16, 1986

In a WBZ radio interview the morning after U.S. airstrikes in Libya in 1986, Ellsberg decried the so-called “strategic bombing” as an overt act of American terrorism. In this operation, the United States targeted Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in his home in a dense residential area of Tripoli, inevitably producing civilian casualties. I selected this document because Ellsberg so clearly articulates his moral opposition to the targeting of civilians, arguing that even if such tactics were effective from a policy standpoint, that “killing children, killing innocent people, killing residents of Tripoli is wrong, immoral.”

Eric Ross