Word: laird
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
...told members of two Senate committees that the Soviet Union has gone ahead to install hundreds of giant S59 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each of which can deliver up to 25-megaton hydrogen warheads. (The U.S. Minuteman ICBM carries a relatively modest one-megaton punch.) The SS-9, said Laird, is far too potent a weapon for the mere destruction of cities: since the Soviets must have it in their inventory for the purpose of knocking out a tougher target, the U.S. ICBMs in their silos...
First Attack. Therefore, Laird concluded, the Soviets have done more than construct a missile system restricted to retaliation in case the U.S. strikes first. They have gone on to build missiles that can only be intended to render the U.S. incapable of responding to a Soviet attack-which means that they propose to make the first attack themselves. "There is no question about that," said Laird...
...Laird's estimates, by 1975 the Soviets will have deployed some 500 S59 missiles, which-only if the U.S. takes no countermeasures-would enable the U.S.S.R. to knock out substantial numbers of U.S. ICBMs. Last December, however, a top Pentagon official said that the S59 was merely a retaliatory weapon, and was not designed for a first strike against the U.S. There has been no new intelligence since then. The Soviets had installed nearly 200 SS-9s by last summer; and they have now added roughly...
...indication of any shift away from the Johnson Administration's insistence on dictating South Vietnam's future, and the American negotiators in Paris continue to behave as though there were any legitimate claims in Vietnam about which to negotiate. Meanwhile U.S. and Vietnamese casualties continue to rise. Secretary Laird makes bland predictions about keeping half a million men in Vietnam for "at least" two years, and there are ominous rumors of a resumption of the air war against North Vietnam...