Word: abm
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...militant have kept campus rebellions going more to support their own causes than to protest Viet Nam. Senate doves have not lost their voices, but they have been reticent. The presidential critic has for the moment become rather rare. That situation is likely to change over the ABM issue. But for the present, if Nixon has excited only a few, he has angered perhaps even fewer. Arthur Schlesinger complained that "no new President in memory has made so little effort in his first weeks in office to define his purposes," but many liberals, including charter Nixon-haters, are finding that...
...Nixon Administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system promises to be the most complex weaponry ever devised. Difficult as it is for laymen to comprehend the technical and strategic functions of the ABM, the great debate over whether the U.S. should deploy the Safeguard system is made infinitely more complicated by public uncertainty as to what the Russians may be planning in the way of offensive or defensive weapons. Last week, to bolster the Administration's case for ABM, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird made public some startling-and previously classified-information...
...line of reasoning among critics of ABM has been that, since Safeguard would defend only a part of the U.S. deterrent, it is unnecessary. Even if many of the 1,054 U.S. ICBMs were knocked out, the U.S. would still have not only its strategic bomber force but also its 41 nuclear-powered Polaris submarines. Each can launch its 16 missiles instantly. However, Laird reported that the Soviets are developing their own equivalent of Polaris.* He said that they are also launching nuclear-powered attack submarines designed to track down the U.S. subs wherever they go, and thus might...
Option to Ride Out. While Laird found it "most encouraging to see a national debate" growing on ABM, he did not budge under attack. Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore told Laird that deploying ABMs "would make armaments-limitation agreement more difficult, if not impossible, to attain, and thus ultimately could degrade our deterrence." Laird replied soothingly that he would like nothing better than to see his job done away with by disarmament. Gore described the ABM scornfully as "a defense in search of a mission," noting that the system had been switched from defending cities to protecting missile sites...
Fulbright accused Laird of making public classified information that helped his case while withholding secret data that might harm it. In an impassioned outburst, Fulbright accused Laird and the Nixon Administration of applying a "technique of fear" in order to justify the ABM...