ABSTRACT
When President Reagan announced his proposal last spring for defending the United States against Soviet missiles, the reaction from scientists, politicians, and journalists was almost uniformly hostile. Dr Richard Garwin, who has had a great deal of experience in defense technology, said, ‘It won’t work’. Former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara called the plan ‘pie in the sky’, former National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy described it as ‘astonishing’, and Senator Edward Kennedy said it was ‘misleading’ and ‘reckless’. Anthony Lewis wrote in his column in the New York Times that President Reagan was indulging in ‘a dangerous fantasy’ and James Reston entitled his Times column on the President’s speech, ‘The April Fool’.
