Word: abm
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...Congress believed that the proper response to a full-fledged Soviet antiballistic-missile network was for the U.S. to deploy its own countrywide ABM system. The Army had been working on such systems since the late 1950s, first the Nike-Zeus and later the Nike-X. In 1966, therefore, the Congress authorized and appropriated $167.9 million for production of a Nike system (when fully deployed, the weapons would probably have cost a total of $30 billion). President Johnson and I believed the system would provide little if any protection either to our population or our weapons. We refused to spend...
...President called on each of the five Chiefs in turn, and each one of them urged approval of the ABM program. Walt Rostow sided with the Chiefs. This was an extraordinarily difficult moment for President Johnson. I never hesitated to disagree with a unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs if I felt it was the wrong decision. In this case, however, Congress had already passed a law authorizing production of the ABM system. To continue to refuse to proceed in the direction that had been supported by the Congress, and to do so in the face of a unanimous recommendation...
...that point I said to the President, "The Chiefs' recommendation is wrong; it's absolutely wrong. The proper response to a Soviet ABM system is not the deployment of an admittedly 'leaky' U.S. defense. The proper response is action that will ensure that we maintain our deterrent capability in the face of the Soviet defense. What the Chiefs are recommending has nothing to do with maintaining that deterrent. If our deterrent force--our offensive missiles and bombers--was of the proper size before the Soviets deployed their defenses, it must now be expanded to ensure that the same number...
...informed Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, of the President's decision. He immediately approached the Soviets, seeking to initiate negotiation of an ABM treaty. They refused to participate even in preliminary discussions of such an agreement...
...Soviet Premier, Aleksei Kosygin, came to New York City to visit the United Nations. After some difficulty, it was arranged for the Premier and President Johnson to meet on June 23 at Glassboro, NJ.--Glassboro is halfway between New York and Washington--to discuss the question of ABM deployment. At lunch in New Jersey on that June day, the President, the Premier and a group of their associates were sitting around a small oval table. It was clear the President was becoming frustrated by Kosygin's failure to see the U.S. point of view on ABM defenses. Finally, the President...