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Hello. I'm Mike Cannon. And this is conversation. Lieutenant General retired Daniel Oh Graham was born in Medford, Oregon. Entered the military service through the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served in stations at Germany, Korea and Vietnam. He attended command and general staff at Fort Leavenworth and the U.

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S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. In Vietnam, he was in charge of military intelligence estimates for Mac, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, and returning to Washington, he became deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. General Graham is credited with being one of the originators of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

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Popularly called Star Wars. He is now the director of an organization that calls itself High Frontier and is technically called a nonprofit educational institution, which favors the development of a non nuclear global ballistic missile defense system. Much like the Star Wars program. A conversation with General Graham.

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When I return in a moment, I want conversation from the University of Florida, a discussion of social, political, scientific and religious issues of the day. Your host is Michael Vegan, in professor of history and Ethics and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.

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Yeah, mhm, General Graham. Welcome to conversation. Good to be here and welcome to the campus of the University of Florida. It's pretty campus. Your High Frontier Institute Institute is the correct word. Is proposing a non nuclear shield against incoming ballistic missiles? Could we talk a little bit about that?

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Because I understand that one of the most promising technologies is a nuclear driven laser beam or Ray? Huh? Well, yes, as we say, Nano. So is the president. He says he wants non nuclear. Uh, doesn't. Actually, if you look at the technologies available to do this, and that's what my group did at High Frontier when we made our recommendations to the president on this, we found that that most of the promising technologies involve any nuclear material, any nuclear physics at all.

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They were things like lasers, and there are three kinds of them, and there's microwave and there's particle beams. And then there's kinetic energy, and we found that that if you want to get there fast, you go with kinetic energy because that's mature technology. We already know how to do it like we did last June, June 10th.

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Last year we shot one down with Kinetic. Uh, but the nuclear pumped laser is one of them that we considered the X ray laser. The reason we rejected it was mainly because if you put a satellite up there that has a nuclear explosive device in and it's the only way it can generate power to kill a weapon is by blowing itself up.

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You've got a military paradox, because if you shoot one missile at that defensive satellite, it has to decide whether to destroy itself or or just hope it doesn't get hit. So that was the reason we we didn't go for that one. Ah, and well, that was, uh, the real favorite of one of the men who I was working with at the time, which was head Teller.

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He preferred that one, but we thought it was militarily. It didn't make a lot of sense. Now, of course, one of the other problems you would have if you went to using these nuclear devices and you had to put several satellites, maybe 100 or so up there with nuclear explosive devices in it you would run bang on into all of the nuclear phrase people and all of the nuclear people who were terrorized by nukes, even though that kind of system couldn't harm a hair on a human's head when you set it off to create the laser, why do you suppose you are getting such opposition from so many people?

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Not only the proponents of a nuclear freeze, but others as well? Well, I think we've got three categories of opposition. One is that those who gave us the mutual assured destruction idea in the first place and they don't want to back off. That's people like McNamara and Ambassador Gerard Smith and folks like that.

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Then you've got bureaucratic resistance. A lot of my old friends in the Pentagon they got so used to that rut of all offense, no defense military programs, they don't want to get out of it. And there are people in that have been running arms control who want to You want to continue as we have in the past, pursuing arms control that tries to bolster the mutual assured destruction balance of terror.

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In other words, let's negotiate balance within the balance of terror But then so we got bureaucratic resistance, and I sometimes think it's the worst of all the types of resistance now the most noxious. To me resistance is the pure political resistance. And these are people who have been saying for many, many years that our only options were things like freeze or fry.

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You know, uh, and to their politics, their their agenda requires us to have this horrible nuclear apocalypse staring us in the face because you have to terrify people with that in order to get them to go their way. Now this causes a political resistance, and but I don't think it's too strong.

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I think it I mean it everywhere. And it doesn't seem to be very difficult to handle because they wind up in the position that I know they don't want to be in where they're arguing for mutual assured destruction, a policy of vengeance, balance of nuclear terror and instead of non nuclear defensive systems.

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And this is this is their disconnects in there, and I sometimes even feel sorry for him trying to make their arguments, although I get more disgusted with him than I. Even with the bureaucrats and the and the old timers that could you not have a mix of two elements?

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One your S D I program combined with, say, a nuclear freeze of offensive arms, perhaps even a mutually verifiable reduction in such arms. Could those not go together? They certainly could. And if the people from that quarter would come in and start thinking that way, I think they would realize that not only could we, uh, mutually uh, freeze nuclear weapons, we could the day we start getting those defenses and start reducing our own nuclear stockpile unilaterally without any military danger whatsoever because we would no longer be dependent upon having enough nuclear weapons so that if we got attacked, there would be enough left over than two retaliate with.

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So we could, I think, yes, the two things can be combined. I think s d I should be looked at as the road to arms control, not a not an obstacle to it. A major objection to Star Wars, however, has been that a defensive system such as you envision would be quote unquote destabilizing because it would cause the Soviets to vastly increase their numbers of offensive ballistic missiles and over to in order to overcome the shield and that that is the last thing that we would want.

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How do you respond to that? Well, that I don't think people have thought that through. Very. It's sort of like saying that when the machine gun came along and made horses, uh, obsolete or or less useful, that you'd run out by a lot more horses. That simply is not what the Soviets are going.

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They're not going to build more of these things when they know that you can. You can put up defenses against them. They cost much less at the margin, then they're attempting to get 20 times the number of missiles they've got. Furthermore, they're turning out offensive missiles today, I believe as fast as they possibly can.

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They've got tremendous programs going to add more missiles now, and to figure that somehow they'll just throw the throttle forward. And when we can get 95% of their missiles, they'll just had 20 missiles for every forever, you know, replace all those 20 missiles. They have 20 times as many missiles that they've gotten out.

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No way. That really doesn't compute another major objection that has been made is as follows. There never has been a perfect defensive system, and it is not expected, even with the best state of the art technology, that the United States could prevent a sizable number of Soviet missiles coming through.

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And that sizable number is enough to devastate the United States. So to what point? The defensive system, if ultimately it would not work. Wow, of course, and the high frontier in the beginning. And the president, nobody has said we're going to try to get a perfect defense because it's literally impossible and people can say it would cost a trillion dollars.

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I think they're underestimating if you're trying to get a perfect no, but you can get a very good one. And a 90% effective defense is a 100% defense of the American people because no Soviet is ever going to fire, uh, nuclear strike against the United States.

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That is 10% affected. It just simply is not going to happen now. Those and there's a curious disconnect in that argument. You know, they say, Well, you've got to have it perfect because of 5% get through it will destroy the United States. Well, it depends where that 5% is aimed.

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Of course. Of course. The assumption is that the 5% get through were all aimed at our biggest cities. Okay, 5% of their inventory aim that got through and hit all of our cities. Yeah, but are they going to do that? Are they going to take all of their weapons and mass them together and fire them at our cities?

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No. Now, that's an act of insanity, and there's no way I can determine insane man. And, you know, all you can do is time up. You know, they would target a significant number of those missiles at our own silos, our own military installations to prevent a retaliatory attack on our part.

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That's the way they are. You know, they have about 6000 warheads on these big missiles now, and so you live in ethic of New York? Do you think they want to knock off Replica? I think they wouldn't because Carl Sagan is there. But they did. If they did want to knock off Ithaca.

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Uh, you know, they only have to aim three warheads now because I think is totally undefended from these things, But suppose they we had a 95% effective defense up there. And what are the chances of the three aimed at Ithaca being in the 5% that get through?

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Well, you don't have to be Einstein to figure that's pretty near zero. So, are you protecting the people of Ithaca when you don't have 100% effective defense? Of course you are. The notion that you can't protect people unless it's 100% just isn't true. Let me ask you this.

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We presently have a second strike policy. We would absorb a first nuclear strike and then fire off our weapons in return. That is those which survived a massive Soviet assault on our silos. Would our general policy in that respect change if Star Wars program were put into operation?

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In other words, would our defensive apparatus go into operation at the same time as we would unleash our own missiles? Or would we still wait for to see how many Soviet missiles arrived and then determine whether or not we would unleash a retaliatory attack? And in what magnitude?

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Well, for one thing, the president would have a whole lot more flexibility if anything went haywire today, even if it's an accidental attack, he, uh his options are limited. He can, That's, I either hit the button and try to to destroy as much as I can of their capabilities so that more don't come or I'm going to punish him now for having started it.

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Or you can just say, Well, I think that's a mistake and so we eat the missiles. But if he had a defense him, then he would have a He'd have a lot of options. For instance, he wouldn't have to. He's not any use them or lose them situation where he just has to push the button or they'll all be destroyed.

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He can wait. He can determine whether it was a mistake. Uh, he can, you know, he's got some flexibility. He's got something he can do except this automatic. Okay, we pushed. Uh, and, uh, we should never leave any human being any president in the situation. We have been leaving our presidents in now for for eight or 10 years where you just eat them or destroy Russians.

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That's that's a lot of people are worried, and increasingly so about the possibilities of an accidental discharge such as you describe. There are just too many of those missiles out there. Um, we all know that no matter how safe technology, it can go awry. We also know that there are individuals, human beings who are sometimes bent to do strange things, and quirky behavior could destroy a sizable number of the people who inhabit this Earth.

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So I worry about that, and I know others do. Besides, and if I heard you correctly, you said once that you are 100% convinced that given the numbers of missiles that continue to exist on both sides of the divide, that there will be such an accidental discharge, is that correct?

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It's mathematically so. It is mathematically a fact that with thousands of missile launches around and Cruz and switches and, you know, communication systems and so forth, it is mathematically certain that one day some of those missiles at least one of them, will be fired by accident.

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Uh, now, every now and then, you hear about something. Well, that means that both of us must put in devices so that we can send a radio signal, say, blow yourself up that will never happen because of things like the Walkers. The spies? Yes, because if we had that kind of a system, it would be the number one Soviet espionage target.

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Would we find that code so that we can We can destroy the whole the enemies. We can take care of their missiles by sending out a signal instead of having to do anything else. So that's never gonna happen. Some people throw that up, but they just don't think about that.

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No, it is a fact. I think I think it is a certainty that these missiles stand around like this. One day one will be fired in anger or maybe more. And if that one goes, maybe the rescue or at least a significant number of missiles go.

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Everybody's immediately on hair trigger, and you may just start the exchange. They, uh I I thought about it was a serious problem to me when I was running Defense Intelligence Agency that, you know, to think one day you might have to tell the president that a bunch of half a dozen missiles that come charging up out of the Pacific Ocean or something and say what do you want us to do, Mr President, call Sac and tell him to attack or call the mayor of Los Angeles and tell him he's going to lose about up 18 million people in a And but we're not going to war over.

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There have been some false alerts, false reports of incoming missiles because of glitches in the computer system. Were you in charge of the Defense Intelligence Agency whenever one of those incidents occurred? How did you manage that? Well, it didn't last very long. For one thing, it would be just a matter of at least the one I was involved.

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It didn't last long enough so that anything happened, except people would run to grab telephones. But we immediately got got there, you know, forget that That wasn't so. But you know, these this is this is something that worries me, too. And this is why Another reason I say we should go to the defensive system because you're a defensive system has computers to and they might.

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And a sensor or a computer might make a mistake on a defensive one. And if you fire the defense, you might shoot down a test, rocket or or or an innocent firing by the Soviet Union, and that would be an awful flap, but it would not kill anybody, and it would not start World War Three nuclear.

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Now, as the computer gets more and more involved in the in the nuclear standoff and we stay with our current strategy that all of the opponents of S. D. I insist we do stay with mutual assured destruction, a sort of a hair trigger all offense thing, like a cowboy ready to go for that nuclear six gun.

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That's the problem. There's where the computer can cause a war. Now. I think we've done everything humanly possible to prevent that from ever happening, but humans aren't that perfect, and this could happen, but and it could happen with the defensive system that I propose? Sure, but if it does happen, I haven't.

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I haven't killed any Russians, and we're not starting a war. You've travelled quite a bit around the United States of late, and you've put in time at universities, some of which have decided not to engage in Star Wars research as it's come to be called. What do you think about the objections that you've heard from academicians that they would not take money from the defense establishment to build these kinds of weapons.

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Well, I think that they are wittingly part of the political effort to kill off the system. And they are. And they choose to cooperate with that movement because it is a paradigm shift that has so weakened the sand. They've been standing on for Lo these years that they can't stand it.

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They don't. They don't like it. However, I dare say that that movement would have never taken place if a Jack Kennedy had goddamn says By the end of this decade, we are going to go into space with our superior technology, and we're gonna get a non nuclear defense against these awesome missiles.

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I would never have happened. I'll tell you why. I know that I, you know, I run a not for profit organization, and most of the money that got my thing going came from the conservative side of US politics. When we first went public with this in March 1982 I was drowning in good press, The Washington Post.

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Everybody wrote one nice story about this great idea of non nuclear space defense. Well, the reason I was drowning is because people don't contribute to things unless it's an issue. Not not not just an idea, or at least not not my kind of contributors did. And it wasn't until Reagan sounded off that we began to get any bad press.

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And that was after Doctor Edward Teller went to see the president and urged him to adopt this program as his own to give it presidential support. Is that correct? Well, I don't know Ed himself, and answer to this question right after the president sounded off, said I that he hadn't seen the president for nine months, so I don't know, uh, I hadn't I didn't seem I saw him.

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Yeah, or just at at dinner over the White House one time. But I hadn't gone in and briefed him, either, although some of the high frontier people did go in and brief him in in March of February of 82. Um, I think head Teller's biggest influence was on Key Worth, who was the president's science advisor?

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Key Worth was a sort of protege of Ed tell, and he could always get in to talk to key Word So I think Ed did a lot of good there, but not necessarily with the president. The thing that really got this going is when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Four Chiefs came in one morning in February of yeah, 83 and told the president, Yes, we can do this and we think we should.

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So there is unanimity at the level of the Joint Chiefs. Well, there was at that moment, Watkins, the Navy chief, was really very strong on this and Vessey. But now Vessey and Watkins are gone, and I honestly don't know the other guys as well. So I'm not sure, General, what is the difference between the Strategic Defense Initiative and the old Anti Ballistic Missile program or A B M?

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Well, A B M program, uh, was strictly a ground based system and and it was strictly nuclear. All the warheads were nuclear and it was all based on the ground. And you not only had the sort of cost program of having to put large defensive installations around everything you wanted to deploy because it was a point defense.

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But you also had the problem of lots of nuclear weapons, then stored around all these cities. And then so you were running into a political problem with the space born defense. It's quite different because it's not nuclear and be it's 300 miles up in space all the time.

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It isn't out in your backyard somewhere. Mhm, and it protects whatever the missile happened to be shot at. If the missile happened to be shot at a silo, it's protecting a silo. If the missile that it shoots down is headed for a city, it's protecting the city.

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But A B M was conceived as a defensive system and 12 plus years ago, 15 years ago. I suppose that's right, and I think it got killed by budget consideration. More than anything else, Mr McNamara literally killed it off by adopting the mutual assured destruction. No defense policy, and I think he was really just trying to save money.

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He didn't want to go to the expense of deploying the safeguard a BM, and he thought that by getting some kind of an agreement with the Soviets on levels of offensive weapons, that could only shoot at cities that he could establish this balance of terror and nobody and he wouldn't even have to spend money modernizing the offensive forces.

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Well, he was wrong on both counts, but I think that's what he's trying to do. Was trying to lower the defense budget. I remember when the Star Wars program was first announced and became a subject of widespread discussion among scientists, and we heard of X ray lasers and rail guns and kinetic energy and so forth.

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One objector said that all the Soviets would have to do is put a spin on the their missiles as they sent them up. There would be no one stationary point and the missiles fuselage if utilizes a correct word that would be subject to intense fire. You remember that criticism?

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What is your response? Ridiculous. That's just plain ridiculous. Well, first of all, we're using kinetic energy. Those pellets don't care whether it's spinning or not. It'll go right through it. But But even if you're using a laser, if you could get the Soviets to spin those missiles as they come up, you probably wouldn't need the defense because they'll be so inaccurate.

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They're never gonna hit anything about it. They're not going to the energy required to spend one of those huge things, you know, they say they're always saying that, so it will simply do this. And so well, the Soviets can't simply do anything that they're talking about their tremendous engineering projects they'd have to undertake.

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They'd have to change their whole missile force Another one. Is this business Well, I'll go for short, uh, burn time rockets. And as Jastrow said, You know, Doctor Jaster, he says, Well, let's hope they do now. We've already reduced the threat by two thirds because they can't put that all that weight on those things if they go that direction.

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Furthermore, it'll take them 20 years to replace the missiles they've got in their force with those. So uhh, these things that the Soviets are going to simply do, they're not going to simply do because they're not simple under the umbrella of all of these programs, offensive and defensive, real and planned.

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Do you, as a military person see that it is possible, or even probable, that there would be an outbreak of conventional war, that the Soviets have maintained an extraordinary conventional strength in Eastern Europe? And while we're talking about nuclear exchanges, they might just decide to move rapidly and take a large slice of European real estate.

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Well, of course, we've got that possibility at all times. The trick is would s d I increase lower or increase that possibility? My view? It will lower the possibility because the Soviets tend to look at what they call the correlation of forces all forces, even political and propaganda, but certainly strategic nuclear forces and theater, nuclear forces and conventional forces and so forth before they ever make up their mind to do something.

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Now, if they believed so long as the United States will stand over here like nuclear nudists totally unprepared. The my worry is that the Soviets could say, Ah, if we go with a big conventional attack, the Americans are supposed to send over airplanes and divisions and so forth back up their European allies.

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But with our threat of total destruction, the United States, they won't do it. They will not have the political nerve to do so now. To me, this is a grave danger, as my some of my European friends consider that a pretty grave danger to because they can even name the senators and congressmen that would jump up immediately.

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Say, Wait a minute. Maybe the West Germans are at fault. Why? Why are we doing this? Uh, so, uh, so you see the Star Wars as decreasing the likelihood of a conventional attack? Certainly not preventing one, but decreasing the likelihood of a decision to go with a large scale conventional attack.

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Yes, I do. General Graham, this has been a fascinating conversation. You had a program and institute called High Frontier Educational Nonprofit program to acquaint people with the advantages to our national safety and having a non nuclear defense against ballistic missiles. I appreciate your being on our campus where you are a guest of accent, our students, speakers bureau.

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And I appreciate in particular you're coming on my program conversation. It was my pleasure. Thank you, sir. Your hairstyle. That's right.