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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 05:09pm Jun 23, 2002 EST (#2693 of 2697)

peril was so great that anything was justified. Nixon took a great deal to "logical" conclusions - - and those logical conclusions are being pursued again.

I was a small, isolated part of that small world, and some of that logic, trying to do things that I felt, and still feel, were in the national interest, and the world interest - by very problematic means. Did Bill Casey intentionally "bury" me? I sometimes wonder, and Casey probably was partly motivated to do so. But he also gave me some very careful, caring briefings, on what he hoped I could do, and explained carefully how, if the going really got rough, I should come in through The New York Times.

It didn't start with Watergate, and it didn't stop there, either . .

rshow55 - 05:10pm Jun 23, 2002 EST (#2694 of 2697)

The Bad Old Days at the F.B.I. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/16/opinion/16SUN2.html

Clark Kerr, who was president of the University of California from 1958 to 1967, had a witty send-off when the state's board of regents — upset by the rising tide of protests on campus — removed him from office. He was leaving as he came, he declared, "fired with enthusiasm!" What Mr. Kerr did not know at the time was that he was also fired, at least in part, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to newly released documents, the F.B.I. waged a defamation campaign against Mr. Kerr, whom J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I. director, regarded as too liberal, passing on false information about him to conservative regents. The F.B.I. also spied on Berkeley faculty members, staff and students whose politics it despised. And it sabotaged Mr. Kerr's attempt to join the Johnson administration.

These revelations, first reported this month in The San Francisco Chronicle, came to light as a result of a 17-year campaign by a reporter there to obtain the records under the Freedom of Information Act.

That's not enough freedom of information, in our society.

rshow55 - 05:11pm Jun 23, 2002 EST (#2695 of 2697)

I'm trying to work in ways that America is supposed to work, and often has in the past, and often does now. I'm freeing myself from classification constraints that have kept me isolated, kept me from communicating some basic things - - and some able people, with connections, and much good faith, are talking to me. I'm trying to be careful, and do things that are reasonable, and beautiful, in the sense that they fit what needs to be done, balancing all the interests. Often, beautiful solutions are simple.

I was very interested in Debuting: One Spy, Unshaken By GEORGE F. CUSTEN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/23/weekinreview/23CUST.html . I'm going to see "The Bourne Identity" in about an hour.

I've spent a lot of time today, resting but also wondering what people in Eisenhower's generation, and Roosevelt's generation, would want done now. They'd want care. They'd also want, I believe to do the things possible to guard the values and checks and balances that characterize America when it works well, as it so often does.

I've also asked myself -- would Bill Casey approve of what I've done over the last few years, what lchic has done, and what the NYT has permitted on this thread? I feel sure that the answer would be "yes" .

So far, it seems to me, so good. Maybe so far, very good.

rshow55 - 05:22pm Jun 23, 2002 EST (#2696 of 2697)

I've had more than usual trouble with my modem and computer.

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