One major reason for the existence of the National Security News Service was an indomitable woman who believed that through public education mankind could be convinced not to destroy itself in a nuclear war. To that end, Sally Lilienthal and her colleagues at the Ploughshares Fund devoted their efforts to raising money, so that small organizations like the National Security News Service could find a way to do investigative journalism about important national security matters. NSNS received its first Ploughshares grant seventeen years ago.
Through hundreds of stories, Ploughshares kept supporting NSNS as we helped the national and international media to do stories that ranged from secret programs to resume atmospheric nuclear testing to covert aide to Saddam Hussein. Without Ploughshares’ help NSNS would never have existed.
Joe Trento, who is the third NSNS President, recalls “One of the real pleasures of my job was making occasional visits to San Francisco to visit Fort Mason, where the Ploughshares Fund offices are located. It was here that I would meet with one of the most fundamentally decent and intelligent human beings it was my pleasure to know. Our relationship was professional, and my role was to tell Sally Lilienthal and her colleagues what stories we were working on. Sally was not shy; she asked probing questions about what NSNS was doing to inform the public about national security and weapons proliferation. She also had a fundamental understanding that it was NSNS’ independence from its funders that gave us the credibility we needed to keep faith with the media. Sally never tried to influence our coverage.”
Sally Lilienthal, who died last October 24, would be dismayed to know that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has again moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock ahead, two minutes closer to midnight. Sally would be dismayed but she wouldn’t be discouraged. She’d be on the phone trying to get people to do the right thing.
When Sally started Ploughshares back in the early 1980s to promote and subsidize organizations working to eliminate nuclear weapons, the clock stood at seven minutes to “midnight,” or nuclear annihilation.
By the time Ploughshares closed in on its first decade, those Doomsday hands had been set back a full ten minutes, to seventeen minutes to midnight. It is beyond dispute that Sally Lilienthal was central to that ten-minute leap. She solicited ideas, energized activists and raised money to support dozens of groups doing the dogged work of educating the public about nuclear weapons and war. Her recipients included every sort of grassroots and citizens group, media projects, organizations of physicians and scientists, academics, computer professionals and even theatre projects.
The National Security News Service was one of many organizations that received initial funding from Sally and Ploughshares. From a 1988 study it commissioned, Ploughshares concluded that there was need for a news project devoted solely to dissemination of hard news about nuclear weapons and nuclear policy to offset the “official” coverage that dominated the mainstream media. Having successfully met that challenge, NSNS is still here and Ploughshares is still funding us.
Sally Lilienthal really “got it” that an early Ploughshares grant was worth a lot more than the money, especially for a new or a struggling organization. It was an investment in your ability to do the job you proposed. It was a challenge. It was a collective act of faith from Sally and all her donors.
National Security News Service was never a grassroots group of true believers, so supporting NSNS required a leap of faith. That faith was that once you educated the public and policymakers by exposing the truth, the public would want to do what was rational. For a group as atypical as NSNS, support from Ploughshares put you “on the map.” Suddenly you were in touch with thousands of people across the country and around the world who were working toward the same goals – albeit in different ways.
Now acts of terrorism are leading us down the road to annihilation. New state and non-state actors have replaced the big Cold War powers. In many ways the dangers now are greater then ever. But as our tribute to Sally, we at the National Security News Service will do our best to push the hands of that Doomsday Clock further back from midnight. We will do it by telling the public the truth about what we face and we will do it with the kind of relentless determination that Sally Lilienthal mustered in those very dangerous last years of the Cold War.
