Word: laird
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Charges of inefficiency and worse are becoming a serious political problem for the Pentagon, and last week Defense Secretary Melvin Laird attempted to demonstrate that there is some movement toward reform. He named an in dependent committee to review the big department's management, research, procurement and decision-making operations. He also anticipated complaints of conflicts of interest. The year-long study will be headed by Gilbert W. Fitzhugh, 59, chief executive of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., who is, significantly, a man free of any military-industrial connections...
...March, speaking of Soviet intentions, Secretary Laird said flatly: "They are going for a first-strike capability [the ability to so devastate the American arsenal that the U.S. could not retaliate]. There is no question about that." That statement flew in the face of testimony by Pentagon intelligence experts only a few months before, contending that the Russians were doing no such thing. Laird's assertion drew charges that ABM advocates have altered intelligence estimates and used classified information that helps their case, while downplaying data that damages it. Laird has since modified his March statement; he now says...
...system proposed by the President and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird is designed primarily to protect U.S. offensive missiles against surprise attack, and also to provide a measure of defense for U.S. cities if an enemy should launch a few missiles at them by accident or by design. Strategically, the argument for the project is that if an ABM defense guaranteed the survival of enough missiles to inflict prohibitive damage on an attacker's homeland, the aggressor would be deterred from risking the first strike...
Defense Secretary Melvin Laird has said that the Russians are not yet capable of launching MIRVs. But in his press conference last week, President Nixon hinted that the Soviets have developed some sort of control system for their MRVs...
...President's "footprint" statement was yet another disclosure of normally secret intelligence material to bolster the chances for approval of the embattled ABM. For the White House regards its Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system as the answer to the presumed Russian MIRV threat. Among his other warnings, Secretary Laird has said that the Russians are developing an ABM system of their own that can "loiter for a period of time until a specific target is selected...