LET’S GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING, JIM, AS DIFFICULT AS THAT MAY BE. WHEN YOU FIRST WERE APPOINTED OR PUT INTO THIS POSITION, WHAT WAS YOUR MANDATE? WHAT WERE YOU TOLD THAT YOUR MANDATE WAS?

There was clear direction from the President, and that was to conduct a research program and that research program was aimed at finding a way to destroy ballistic missiles of all ranges that would be a threat to both the U.S. and our allies.

ONE OF THE FIRST NEGATIVE REPORTS TO COME OUT SHORTLY AFTER SDI GETS FUNDED, OR AT LEAST FUNDING IS PROPOSED, I'M NOT SURE EXACTLY THE TIME, WAS THE OTA REPORT, OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT, COMES OUT, I THINK IT’S RELEASED ON APRIL 24TH, AND THERE WAS A STRONG REACTION ON THE PART OF, AM I CORRECT THAT THERE WAS A STRONG REACTION ON THE PART OF SDIO TO THAT REPORT?

The debate about strategic defense was really entered at the time of the President’s speech and then went into a quiescent period as the Fletcher Commission put together a report. And that report laid out the technical roadmap. There was a similar report that laid out the strategic basis and the thought process. The OTA report was a challenge to both of those, but it was only one of several. I wouldn’t give too much credence to that particular report.

CAN YOU TELL ME, WHAT WAS THE CHALLENGE? WHAT DID THE REPORT SAY THAT WAS ACTUALLY, YOUR OFFICE ISSUED A CRITIQUE OF THE OTA REPORT, AM I RIGHT?

Surely.

COULD YOU SUMMARIZE WHAT THE ESSENCE OF THAT CRITIQUE WAS?

Well, the OTA report really echoed the Union of Concern Scientists report. And it said, as many of the arguments in those days, that it is impossible to create a perfect defense and that strategically, there was concern with it being destabilizing. The real failure of that report, in my judgment, was to seriously consider what deterrence truly is. That report, like many, have just accepted the idea of mutual assured destruction as the only way of deterring warfare. And that the only way to have something that could counter and be an effective deterrent would be to have a perfect defense. The President gave us a very demanding challenge, and that was to find a way to counter those missiles. On the other hand, he nor anyone else never indicated that something had to be absolutely perfect. There's nothing that's perfect in this world. But long before you reach the level of a perfect defense, you achieve a point where the military planners on the other side can never be sure of achieving their military objective. And when you've reached that point, you truly have an effective deterrent.

THE IMPRESSION THAT WE ALL HAD, TELL ME WHERE YOU THINK THIS IMPRESSION COMES FROM, THE IMPRESSION THAT WE REALLY ALL HAD IN ’84, MAYBE EVEN THROUGH ’85, WAS THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS TALKING ABOUT A DEFENSE THAT WOULD PREVENT BALLISTIC MISSILES FROM REACHING OUR, SOVIET LAUNCHED ICBMS, FROM REACHING OUR SHORES AND PROTECTING THE AMERICAN POPULATION. IS THAT A MISCONCEPTION?

No, no, it’s not really a misconception. The goal over the very long-term and in the President’s speech was he said it was a long-term goal, was to try to create that kind of a defensive system. But in the process of getting there, people have assumed that it had to be perfect right from the very beginning and that you would abandon your offensive forces immediately. And somehow, this would just spring full-blown into existence. Frankly, I think that was all very, very naïve and not very well thought through. The overall strategy that SDI laid out and the President’s speech outlined for us, was a three-part strategy. And the first one was isn't there a different strategy than relying on always laying our nation and all that we stand for to leaving it absolutely vulnerable to the other side? That was the first important part of the challenge. And the President put it in his poetic way about wouldn’t it be better to save lives than avenge them? But it was a question of isn't there another strategy? And he didn’t give us an answer, he gave us a challenge to go think about that problem and we've been doing that. The second challenge was one that there, a strategy isn't effective unless you can implement it. So therefore, the technical challenge that says, “Can’t you find a way to make nuclear armed ballistic missiles impotent and obsolete?” So, that's the whole technical program. But it has to fit with a strategy. And thirdly, always from the beginning, the President envisioned that this would be part of an arms control and arms reduction initiative because there was a third passage in that speech that said, to the arms control community, and can't you, the negotiators, get rid of the missiles themselves? So, the problem back in those years was people focused on the long-term technical challenge without thinking through the strategic implication, the technical road and how you would get there, and the arms control leverage that you got from this program.

OF COURSE, THE PRESIDENT AND THE ADMINISTRATION IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE “HIGH FRONTIER” MOVIE OR FOR THE AD CAMPAIGN DURING THE ’84 CAMPAIGN, THE UMBRELLA SHIELD THAT KEEPS THE MISSILES OUT. BUT NOR ARE THEY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SHOWS DONE BY NBC OR BY NOVA THAT ALL OF WHICH SEEMED TO CHARACTERIZE WHAT THE PRESIDENT WAS TALKING ABOUT AS BEING A PERFECT SHIELD PROTECTING US. AS I READ THAT AD AND AS I SEE THAT “HIGH FRONTIER” MOVIE AND AS I LOOK AT THOSE DOCUMENTARIES, BUT MIGHT MORE HAVE BEEN DONE TO DISABUSE THE PUBLIC OF THE IDEA THAT, IN FACT, THIS WAS REALLY DESIGNED TO PROTECT, TO DEFEND US, TO TAKE AWAY THAT THREAT OF THE DAMOCLEAN SWORD OF NUCLEAR MISSILES?

I think we all stated that very carefully. I stated repeatedly in my testimony that we're talking about a layered defense and what that layered defense will do is that, first of all, it’ll interfere with war planning because the strategic planner on the other side will never be able to have any real certainty that he can destroy a particular target. And I even laid out probabilities and numerical probabilities and what that strategic planner has to think about. Then, in case of failure of deterrence, there is this tremendous difference between an offense only oriented kind of deterrence. If there is a failure, somehow, some way, if our best intentions on both sides, and after all the history of mankind, there's a history of failures of communication and objectives that somehow ended up in war, terrible wars, and if that somehow would occur in the nuclear age, we can't stop even one missile. And the President’s only response is, “Do I either capitulate or do I say let’s begin the process of destroying the world by having me respond?” That’s a terrible choice for any human being. And therefore, what we outlined was a strategy that had a very different outcome, that said we’ll try to find a way to enhance deterrence, to make it work better, because they will never know that they can get through. Secondly, if somehow tragically even that failed, we then have a defense that will be as good as our creativity, as good as the resources that we are allowed to put into both research, and finally into implementation, can be. And again, the goal was always to be as demanding as we can, to find a way to do that. But the criteria for success was not only if it’s perfect.

ONE MORE QUESTION ABOUT THE OTA AND I'M GOING TO GET OFF THIS SUBJECT. BUT AS I READ THE OTA REPORT TODAY, IT DOESN'T SEEM TO ME TO BE SAYING MUCH DIFFERENT THAN WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. WHAT IT SAYS, AS I READ IT, IS PERFECT OR NEAR PERFECT DEFENSE IS NOT LIKELY TO BE A POLICY OPTION IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. BUT WE SHOULD PURSUE A VIGOROUS RESEARCH EFFORT TO SEE WHAT LIES DOWN THE ROAD. IF MY CHARACTERIZATION OF THE OTA REPORT IS ACCURATE, THEN I CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY IT WAS SO CONTROVERSIAL?

First of all, is that your understanding of the initial report as opposed to the...? Okay. That initial report, in essence, said what the President had challenged us to do and it was not unreasonable in that sense. On the other hand, it was full of negative biases, it was full of, in my judgment, shallow strategic thinking. And it did not deal with, in any serious way, with the real technical challenges, nor how one gets there. And the controversy was not about each detail of the OTA report. Frankly, the controversy was generated more by the press, as it always has been, when they try to take a complex subject and reduce it down to 15 seconds on nightly TV. That's where the controversy really developed.

I'M GOING TO GO OFF THAT NOW. WHAT WAS NEW ABOUT SDI OR WHAT MADE SDI A NEW GAME, SO TO SPEAK, WAS THE POSSIBILITY OF DEFENSES THAT WOULD BE OPERABLE IN THE BOOST PHASE? IS THAT CORRECT? IT WAS THE EMPHASIS ON BOOST PHASE INTERCEPTION AND DESTRUCTION THEN?

When you ask the question what's different between SDI today and the kind of defensive capability that we were building back in 1972 and then destroyed after the ABM treaty, it’s the fundamental philosophy. In those days, the idea was we could probably build a terminal kind of defense, something that you could put missiles around a particular target and you could stop the missiles, the warheads from coming in, by intercepting those warheads in the last few seconds. And oh by the way, you would stop them with a nuclear tipped interceptor. A nuclear explosion would be required to counter the warhead. Well, not only were there technical problems with that, even the fundamental philosophy is flawed because if you had that and you put 30 missiles around a target, the Soviets then are just inclined to put 33 on the target and they have absolute assurance that they will destroy the target. So it does, indeed, provide a motivation for them to build more missiles. On the other hand, if, and this is the SDI philosophy and the difference, if you put up many layers and the Soviets never know which of the missiles are the ones that get to the first layer, and that oh by the way the ones that they have targeted that got to the first layer at a particular target, will also be the ones that get to the second and the third and the fourth layer. Then it’s not a matter of a few additional warheads, it’s a matter of hundreds of additional warheads. So it is economically unfeasible for them, truly, to think that only by building more missiles can they counter such a system. And even though that's still threatened by many people, and worried about by many people, it’s not a practical response to the kinds of technologies that are under evaluation at this point.

IN THE YEARS THAT SDI HAS BEEN OPERATING, GENERAL, HAS THERE BEEN A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS IN LOOKING AT TECHNOLOGIES AT ONE LAYER AS OPPOSED TO ANOTHER? OR HAS THAT REMAINED PRETTY WELL CONSTANT THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD OF TIME? AND MAYBE YOU OUGHT TO DESCRIBE VERY BRIEFLY, IF YOU COULD FOR US, WHAT THE FOUR LAYERS ARE?

Surely. The philosophy that SDI has always followed and was first outlined in the Fletcher Commission report, was that this layered defense is the way to provide assurance that you can interfere with their war plans first; and secondly, that you can stop the missiles, just as many as humanly possible. The four layers are, first of all, a boost phase defense. And that means that you stop the rocket on the way up. You stop it. It doesn't matter if it’s coming from the Soviet Union or from a submarine, or from some mobile location somewhere, doesn’t matter. You try to stop it when it’s most vulnerable. And, of course, if you stop an SS18 in that boost phase, you don’t just destroy a rocket, you destroy something like 10 or more warheads so that you clearly have great leverage in that. But some would get through there, there's no question. So then you build a second layer and that's in what we call a post-boost phase. And that's the time where the rocket has burnt out and there's a spacecraft that's going forward, and that spacecraft is spinning off warheads one at a time at their targets. Some would get through that layer. So then you have another layer in space that we call midcourse. And then you try to pick off some of those warheads. Certainly, there’d be decoys there as well and that's a tough job, separating the decoys from the warheads. Finally, then after all of that, there would be only a few we would hope would be penetrating, and certainly not at the targets that the Soviets thought or understood that they could control. And those are the ones that you use a terminal system for, kind of like clean up hitters in a batting sequence in baseball.

INTERCEPTION OF THE BOOST PHASE AND INTERCEPTION MIDCOURSE, AT LEAST IN THE BOOST PHASE, REQUIRES SPACE ASSETS, RIGHT?

Yes, it does.

ONE OF THE MAJOR CRITIQUES ABOUT THE NOTION OF SPACE DEFENSES IS THAT WHATEVER WE CAN PUT UP THERE TO KNOCK THEIR MISSILES DOWN WHEN THEY COME UP THEY CAN USE TO KNOCK DOWN OUR SPACE ASSETS. THAT IS, THE TECHNOLOGY WORKS BOTH WAYS. IT’S AVAILABLE BOTH FOR OFFENSE AND FOR DEFENSE OR FROM DEFENSE FROM A DEFENSE. COMMENT ON THAT?

When you comment that when we put space assets up, that they can be destroyed and that they can be destroyed by the very same technologies that we're using, that's not quite true. And you have to think about it. What's in space is in a different position than something coming up from the ground in order to destroy it. And there is this tendency in nuclear strategic thinking to think in all absolutes, black and white, and that's not true. Certainly some parts of a space based defense would be vulnerable and would be destroyed, but not everything. Let me give you an example. In order to get an anti-satellite killer up from the Soviet Union, there's a huge rocket and it has to come up and come up very, very fast and it would look to a space based defense just like a missile that is aimed at the United States. And if we can destroy the missile, we can probably destroy that rocket on the way up. By the way, we probably would have fired out the various rockets that would be used to destroy it. And therefore, if it got through, what it would be destroying is an empty garage; very different situation. You have to think through timing, you have to think through how does a formation of these space-based interceptors mutually support one another? And what is the difference? An anti-satellite rocket that comes up from the Soviet Union would probably be five or six stories high, would weigh 200,000 pounds. A space-based interceptor, while it would be hard to get up there, would be about that high and it would go very, very fast and it would be quite different. It’s coming downhill rather than going uphill.

WOULD WE ANTICIPATE THAT THEY WOULD HAVE THEIR OWN SPACE ASSETS TO COUNTER OUR SPACE ASSETS, IS THAT...?

At some point in time, they would probably develop that kind of a system. By then, we think that our second generation of technology would be ready; space based lasers or ground based lasers that fire off a reflecting mirror and then go forward and can destroy the other side. So the key to this is there is no absolute. Just like the nuclear arm ballistic missile is not the super weapon and the ultimate weapon and shouldn’t be thought that way. Neither is an SDI. There is only one final security solution, and that's human understanding. But to think that we are there or that we can just suddenly abandon the technologies and the strategies that we need to defense our nation against an adversary who has proven to be a very dedicated adversary is, I think, a little naive. So what we should do is always work for that human understanding at the same time that we are trying to kind of keep our powder dry in case we can't quite achieve it.

...PROCESS OF TAKING PLACE AS WE MOVE WEAPONS INTO SPACE. THAT IS, WE GET A JUMP BUT THEN THEY'RE QUICKLY BEHIND US, THEY SEEM ABLE TO DO THAT. AND ALL WE'VE DONE IS SPENT A LOT MORE MONEY ON BOTH SIDES TO CREATE A LOT MORE INSECURITY, OR AT LEAST NO MORE SECURITY?

You're asking if we're pursuing technology and they're pursuing technology, will they always catch up and are we caught in a race? The answer, unfortunately, throughout all of mankind’s history has been that yes, we have been in those kinds of races. And that is exactly why I've indicated that the final answer is human understanding. You don’t ask that kind of, let’s stop. I said “you don’t.”

“ONE DOESN'T.”

One doesn’t. If you can just cut there? Okay. One doesn't ask that same question every time the Navy is going to build a new ship or an improved submarine. Nor do they ask that same question when the Air Force is trying to build a new airplane. In fact, the question is how much better will it be than what the Soviets can do today? And obviously implied is when will they catch up? But that isn't the, you don’t ask the question that says, “Well, if they can catch up, maybe we ought to stop building airplanes.” It’s clear, we would then be in a competition both in the laboratory and in space. But what's the difference in that competition? Instead of building more and more nuclear arm ballistic missiles whose result is the clear destruction of mankind, what are we competing in? We've moved the war or the competition to the laboratory. Now that's got to be more security. And secondly, the competition in putting weapons in place are weapons to destroy other weapons, not aimed at destroying people and targets on the ground. That's a step forward. It isn't a final answer.

BUT THE REASON TO KEEP THOSE ICBMS FROM COMING IN IS, AS WE'RE DESCRIBING IT NOW WITH A LESS THAN PERFECT DEFENSE, IS TO MAINTAIN OUR DETERRENCE SO WE CAN RETALIATE? I MEAN, IT’S NOT TO...

Well, you don’t have to retaliate with nuclear armed ballistic missiles. There are lots of ways to have an element of punishment as well as an element of defense operating in concert for deterrence. And of all of the ways to have deterrent, the nuclear armed ballistic missile is the thing that is the least controllable, the fastest acting, the one that has very little, no different response options. That's the one you want to get rid of. Then, you hopefully in the competition move to other kinds of efforts. And at the same time, you work very hard to start to build this understanding and to reduce the level of weapons in all categories. We haven't done that up until this time. As one is going to look back in history a year from now, or even two years from now, I think that they will find that the INF treaty that is being signed now is an absolutely historical event because it is a reduction. It’s our hope that because of SDI and with SDI as a lever, that we’ll have at some point in the near future a reduction in START weapons as well. I think that's got to be particularly upsetting to people who felt the right way to negotiate with the Soviets was to just say, “Clearly it’s in your interest and in our interest if we stop all this.” Because those negotiations were not successful. But when we started SDI, we began to achieve success. Now, I don't attribute SDI as the only ingredient to that success. I think it’s got many, many ingredients. Neither do I try to say kind of “I told you so” to some of those critics. They are sincerely searching for the right way to have improved security just as we are. It’s just that I think that we're more willing to consider a new avenue.

LET ME ASK YOU ABOUT THE FUTURE AND LET ME COUCH WITH THIS AS A BACKGROUND. PEOPLE I'VE TALKED TO, ALMOST NO ONE DISAGREES WITH THE NEED TO MAINTAIN A VIGOROUS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM IN SDI RELATED ACTIVITIES. OTHER THAN THE WAY FAR LEFT, EVERYBODY AGREES WITH THAT. IS SDI DOING ANYTHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT THOSE CRITICS PROPOSE? IN OTHER WORDS, IS THERE ANY PROPOSAL, YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M TRYING TO ASK? I'M TRYING TO LOOK FOR THE ESSENCE OF THIS DISPUTE.

I think there's been a great deal of progress since those early days of 1983 and 1984. Now, there is a fairly clear consensus by a majority of people that yes, we ought to have a vigorous research program. There are some differences about what ought to be in that, and how vigorous, how much money we can afford as a nation to invest in this research. But nonetheless, I think most people will agree, yes we should conduct research. However, if you are just conducting research for research’s sake alone, then you're not getting in a position so you can exploit that research. And frankly, after a period of time, people will have to question and say, “What value is that?” So, you have to not only do research, you must also do planning for real deployment. And even more important, you must have criteria so that when the research reaches a stage which people can then evaluate and say, “Are we ready?” Then people can look at the world situation and say, “The research is ready, we are ready to deploy if we need it. What is the strategic situation at that point, and is it in our national interest to deploy?” So we are going beyond research and doing very specific planning and that's required. And we're planning for as early and as sensible and logical a deployment concept as one can undertake. A step at a time to get experience with each level of capability as you go forward. That will be debated. Nonetheless, if you don’t have that, your research will get unfocused and it won't really aim at clear objective.

CAN YOU EVEN WITHIN FIVE YEAR PARAMETERS GIVE US SOME SENSE OF WHEN IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE TO DEPLOY EACH OF THESE STAGES?

Well it depends, of course, on how much money we get. And within the amount of money that we're allocated, it depends on how much success we've had in the research program. And I can tell you that up through this date in 1988, it is just amazing the amount of success that we've had with substantially less budget than we requested. I'm projecting that that kind of success will continue forward and that somewhere in the early 1990s, and it may get 1992 or it may be 1993 or 1994, but somewhere in that time frame, the nation will be in a position to clearly say, “Yes, we've got phase one of this system good enough so that we can evaluate.” Does it make financial sense and strategic sense to go forward? If that decision in those days is a positive one, I think we’ll have the wherewithal to be able to project how much those things will cost, how effective they’ll be against the strategic system, and therefore what effect it’ll have on Soviet planners. It’s my hope that the Soviets will join us in not our program, but in a shift from offense oriented deterrence to strategic defense deterrents. And that's what we're negotiating about. And hopefully by a year or two or three from now, in fact, that path will be quite clear.

WITHOUT GOING INTO A LOT OF DETAIL ON THE PHASES, PHASE ONE, I TAKE IT, IS FAIRLY, WHAT, TERMINAL DEFENSE?

The phase one system that is under consideration at this point is one that starts with a boost phase layer and has a midcourse layer. And the idea is to add to our offensive forces this defensive element of deterrence, particularly at a time when we're trying to come to an agreement with the Soviets to lower our offense forces. That makes good sense. The Soviets, clearly, are working for exactly that. They just are building on what they have done so far, terminal defense. We're building on where we think we have a clear advantage, and that is the other kind of systems.

WHAT WOULD THE BOOST PHASE FIRST PHASE BE?

Space based interceptors; small interceptors that represent fairly mature technology even today. And we're finding out more and more every day just how feasible that will be.

ANY WILD PROJECTIONS ABOUT THESE MORE EXOTIC TECHNOLOGIES, PARTICLE BEAMS, LASERS, THAT?

Oh yes, they're very important because when you make that decision to make that first step and go ahead with that, you want to have confidence that you can make the second step, too. So we're trying to maintain a balanced research program, one that emphasizes the mature technologies with part of the money and part of the effort and part of the talent. But the other half is now let’s bring along these exotic technologies as well. We believe that provided there is a policy way to proceed within the limits of the treaty, that we could have a fairly impressive demonstration of a space based laser by somewhere in that early 1990s time frame. By the way, we've made enough progress on ground based lasers and nuclear particle beams that we think we can have ground demonstrators of those kinds of systems at the same time. And that will represent very profound steps forward in those exotic technologies.

I KNOW WE'RE RUNNING LATE, I'M GOING TO ASK YOU ONE MORE QUESTION, IF I MAY. YOU'VE STEWARDED THIS THING THROUGH SINCE ’84 SO THAT'S BEEN FOUR YEARS NOW WHERE YOU'VE, AND I WONDER, IN THE BROADEST TERMS, HOW HAS YOUR SENSE OF IT CHANGED IN THAT FOUR YEAR PERIOD IN TERMS OF MEETING CRITICS, IN TERMS OF PRESS INTEREST, IN TERMS OF ACCEPTABILITY BY THE DEFENSE COMMUNITY OR WHATEVER? DOES ANYTHING STAND OUT IN YOUR MIND AS HAVING BEEN A REAL MARKED CHANGE IN THAT PERIOD OF TIME?

Well, I think that my view over these four years is one that says at first the debate was kind of at the level of bumper sticker logic, you know. It will work, it’s peace on Earth; no, it’s war in the heavens, that kind of level. And frankly, that was very disappointing. Now, I believe that the debate has, in fact, taken root and that serious political thinkers on all sides are looking clearly into the issues; not only the technical feasibility, but the strategic value and they're seeing the value in the negotiations as well. That's very gratifying to me because I believe that everyone in the country must understand how their future and the future of mankind is going to, how we're trying to protect it, not just only with SDI, but the overall national strategy. And this informed debate is the way to do it. Sometimes, it’s painful. We get a lot of shots and we get a lot of things that are sometimes not as objective as I would like. Or sometimes, you know, we're very optimistic about something and other people aren’t so optimistic. But in the end, it is this movement towards an informed debate that is the most gratifying to me.