GEN. GRAHAM'S STAR WARS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403710030-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 30
• Publication Date: November 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403710030-7
WASHINGTON POST
- A4.4 L;ff5) 17 November 1985
[N4~ The The project, in the form of Presi-
dent Reagan's Strategic Defense
One-rflan Initiative, sometimes known as Star
lobby Wars, is moving forward, less speedily
to fill than Graham would like, but still at a
controversial, multi-billion-dollar
Space
with
weaponry
clip. The Soviets, in turn, have cried
foul, charging that an antimissile
shield would simply tempt the United
States to launch a crippling first
strike without having to worry about
BY GEORGE LARORER JR. effective retaliation.
D ONT PANIC if you hear a
one-megaton nuclear bomb is
headed your way. Lt. Gen.
Daniel 0. Graham, U.S. Army
(Ret.), has some advice for
you.
Walk briskly for about 59 minutes,
the general says, 4.2 miles to be pre-
cise, then hide behind a lilac bush. Do
that, and "you will not be hurt."
Graham relishes such advisories,
which tend, he observes, to drive "the
antinuke people" wild. How one
would know where ground zero is so
one could be sure to be walking away
from it rather than toward it is not
explained, but never mind. The blunt
and raspy-voiced Graham likes to
command attention, especially if it
leaves the other side sputtering.
The former chief of the Defense In
te ' nce Agency. a Pen on version
a
of the CIA. Graham has been doing
air amount of that as director of
Hirh Frontier Inc.. an o on
dedicated to the nrooosition that
America can be made "safe from at-
tack Soviet nuclear missiles."
Graham and High Frontiersmen
foresee a network of space-based
weapons to knock out incoming
Soviet missiles. It would replace the
longstanding doctrine of mutual as-
sured destruction, which relies on the
presumed certainty of an American
nuclear counterattack to deter the
Soviets from launching their missiles
in the first place.
Graham, a West Pointer who began
in the Quartermaster Corps, has been
claiming much of the credit for the
Star Wars initiative since President
Reagan announced it in a speech in
1983.
"We [at High Frontier] are the peo-
ple who caused the president to
sound off a year ago in favor of a
strategic defense initiative-that is,
defense in space," he told the Wash-
ington Times in a 1984 interview.
"We went public in March 1982 and
by March 1983 we had the president
of the United States going our way."
Such modesty is typical for 60-
year-old Danny Graham, who, when
asked at a recent courtroom appear-
ance how many stars he used to wear,
shot back: "Six. Three on each shoul-
der."
Other SDI advocates, as well as
critics, say Graham overstates his im-
portance, but most agree he played a
significant role in promoting the idea
when he was a Reagan campaign ad-
viser in 1980.
.His most important contribution
was that he, in fact, put it on the pub-
lic agenda," said Phil Truluck, execu-
tive vice president of the Heritage
Foundation, a leading bastion of pro-
SDI thought. "He got us interested in
it. And we've had many meetings at
Heritage on the subject."
A prominent SDI opponent, John
Pike of the Federation of American
Scientists, agrees: "High Frontier has
probably done more to create some
public constituency for this program
than anyone else. A lot of discussion
has focused on why the administra-
tion wanted to do this. High Frontier
was instrumental in letting them
think they could get away with it."
An early supporter of what he calls
a "technological end run on the Sovi-
ets," Graham formed High Frontier
as a nonprofit organization in Sep-
tember 1981 and around the same
time, he says, he raised some $500,000
in private funds, "mostly from indi-
viduals."
Graham had been on the staff of
the conservative American Security
Council, headed by John Fisher, but
Fisher, Graham said, "really didn't
think much of this idea." Graham
found a more receptive audience, not
to mention "a tax-free pocket," at the
Heritage Foundation. "So the checks
were made out to Heritage, but they
really had nothing-little-to do with
it," Graham said.
By March 1982, Graham had put
together a team of scientists, engi-
neers and retired military officers to
produce a 175-page study under the
Heritage imprimatur proposing a
"layered defense" in which nonnu-
clear weapons shot from satellites in
space and from ground bases in this
country would destroy incoming
Soviet missiles.
Graham maintains it could all be
put into place in about 10 years for
about $40 billion, using largely off-
the-shelf technology. In one mailing
last year, he asserted that his "shot-
gun satellites," firing clouds of high-
velocity pellets and deployable in five
or six years, "alone would wipe out 80
percent of any mass ICBM attack
while it is still over Soviet territory."
Critics have been astounded. Not
even the Pentagon's Strategic De-
fense Initiative Organization is con-
templating such results. The adminis-
tration has its eyes on longer range
research and more exotic technolo-
gies.
GEORGE LARDNER JR. is a a reporter on the National staff of The Washington Post. He was
assisted by staff researcher James Schwartz.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403710030-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403710030-7 ,
HIGH FRONTIER appears to be
flourishing. It occupies the entire
10th floor of a downtown Washington
office building and has a full-time
staff of 20, income of about $3 million
a year, a smoothly written monthly
newsletter with a circulation of
56,000, a network of more than 100
volunteer speakers and a string of
subsidiary operations including a
European affiliate based in Rotter-
dam, the High Frontier Europa
Foundation.
Atop High Frontier itself is a four-
member board of directors that in-
cludes Graham; his deputy, retired
Air Force brigadier general Robert
Richardson III; chief of staff Bob
Billings; and Marianne Mele Hall,
who quit as chairman of the Copy-
right Royalty Tribunal in May follow-
ing a furor over her work on a book
with racially disparaging passages.
The main author of the book,
Foundations of Sand, Lawrence Haf-
stad, and coauthor John Morse, a re-
tired Navy captain, were also mem-
bers of the team that produced the
1982 High Frontier study.
"Most of our money comes from
fairly large donors," Graham said in
an interview. "That's people [who
give] from $500 up every few months.
We have a few $100,000 types ...
Direct mail brings in about a fifth of
what we get."
Other endeavors include a lobbying
arm called Americans for High Fron-
tier, which, a spokeswoman says, is
"General Graham basically," and a
political action committee called the
American Space Frontier Committee,
which was organized in the fall of
1983 with Graham as board chairman
and Robert K Dornan, who has since
become a Republican representative
from California, as president.
"Danny sent me around the coun-
try, making speeches for SDI," Dor-
nan says. "Me message was that this
was lovable, because it's nonnuclear."
Dornan acknowledged that the lov-
ability argument has been tarnished
because the administration's SDI
funding plans include research into
"promising concepts which would use
nuclear energy to power devices" such
as Dr. Edward Teller's proposed
X-ray laser. But Dornan-and
Graham-reason that "that kind of
technology should be pursued," even
if undesirable.
The PAC made barely a ripple in
last year's congressional campaigns. It
spent nearly $365,000 in the 1983-84
election cycle, but most of the money
went for operating expenses, such as
direct-mail and fund-raising costs. It
gave out only $36,199 in contributions
to favored candidates, including Dor-
nan, and spent another $1,732 trying
to defeat other candidates, including
Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.).
Brown, who was targeted along
with Rep. Mel Levine (D-Calif.) for
forming a congressionally based
Coalition for the Peaceful Uses of
Space, said as far as he could tell,
High Frontier's "bark is worse than
their bite."
There are, however, no toothless
views about Danny Graham, as illus-
trated by his role in the CBS-West-
moreland libel trial last winter when
'he testified in connection with allega-
tions that he had doctored estimates
of enemy strength as an Army intelli-
gence officer in Vietnam in 1967-6&
Graham's efficiency reports gave
him top grades in everything but tact.
One rater called him "by far the most
capable military intelligence officer I
have met in 20-odd years in the
field."
According to trial records however,
ce eaguea
"Graham was and is infamous in the
intelligence community as a man who
would take whatever analytical p si-
t would brim
the
and pursue that position doggedly, or
chance it for another if expedient, re-
which indicated a contr conclu-
sion." said D. Kovar a 30-
year CIA ~~ duties in
1968 included numerous reports and
memoranda concerning Vietnam
a 1983 affidavit, over charged
that Graham was "an upward-climb-
ing careerist who let nothing and no-
body stand in the way of his grand-
standing efforts to win the favorable
attention of his superiors."
Graham shrugs off the criticisms
and adds that other witnesses had
"some pretty nice things" to say
about him.
"I am not tolerant of bad work," he
told a reporter. "So you can believe
there are a lot of officers that don't
like me ... No, I'm not, I never have
tried to pretend to be, a nice guy."
The criticisms of those who con-
sider Graham an opportunist seem
simply to bounce off. He insists that
he's on the right track. The mutual
assured destruction strategy had
bothered him, he says, as a soldier,
for many years. "You know, if Amer-
icans are frying under a nuclear at-
tack, we're supposed to say, `Don't
worry about it, folks, we're out to
fry a bunch of Russians.' That really
runs very contrary to the military
ethic."
GRAHAM'S training in self-de-
fense started early. His grandfather,
an Oregon sheriff, once slammed him
across a cabin for "getting whipped"
by another boy. Graham lived with
the man for a couple of years when he
was a boy. After that first thumping,
he says, "every time I came back to
the cabin after that to tell him I'd
been in a fight, I told him I just
whipped the hell out of the other guy,
no matter what happened. I wasn't
going to catch it again."
Graham's parents lived in Med-
ford, in adjoining Jackson County,
and when he got back there, he re-
calls, his fame as a pugilist, proudly
commemorated in letters from grand-
father,-had preceded him.
"My little brother had
lined up fights for me all over
town," he remembers. "I had
to fight every kid in Med-
ford."
When it came time for col-
lege, Graham's father, a
roughriding cavalry sergeant,
dreamed of West Point for
his son-and worked for it. A
"yellow dog Democrat," Pat
Graham pinned his hopes on
the Democratic candidate
who had promised, if elected
in the 1942 campaign, to send
young Daniel 0. Graham to
the United States Military
Academy.
The Republican candidate,
Mathew Harris Ellsworth,
won. "Dad was in despair,"
Graham says. For him, "my
going to West Point was like
me going to heaven or some-
thing. So I said, `Well, I'll try
the guy who won.' Dad said,
'Ali, . . blankety-blank Re-
publican.' I said, `Well, I'm
I trying anyway."'
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Ellsworth gave him the ap-
pointment after Graham
came in first on the civil serv-
ice exam the candidates took.
The only trouble was he came
up a fourth of an inch short
of the minimum 5-feet,
6-inch height requirement.
The congressman stuck
with him. "He went to the
surgeon general and said, 'Oh
for God's sake, he's only 18,
he'll grow a quarter-inch.' He
got me a waiver." Graham
never grew that quarter-inch,
and he got stuck in "the Runt
Company," but he graduated
from West Point on wartime-
acceleration in 1946, three
years after entering.
Graham was converted to
Catholicism not long after
that, during a stint at para-
chute training as a second
lieutenant. "I sat by a priest
at a ball game once and we
had a couple of beers," he ex-
plains, "and the first thing
you know, I became a Catho-
lic. I was afraid the damn
chute wouldn't work. Harsh!
Harrh!"
He got into intelligence
work in the 196M after a
series of courses at Husaian
language and intelligence
schools, and su se uen
came tom a dim view of
the libemL tern establish-
After President
Ford fired Defense
Secretary James R.
Schlesinger,
Graham retired.
"Pm a Schlesinger
man," he said.
ment that predominated at
agencies like the CIA.
The gener eft DIA in
1976, having decided to retire
the previous fall because
President Ford fired Defense
Secretary James R. Schles-
inger. "I'm a Schlesinger
man," Graham said.
He celebrated civilian life
with a plunge into politics,
running as a GOP-backed in-
dependent for the Arlington
County Board of Supervisors
against an incumbent backed
by the county Democrats and
Arlingtonians for a Better
County. One of the issues in
the hard-fought campaign
became Graham's controver-
sial presidency of the Wake-
field High School PTA in
1970 when he stirred opposi-
tion with his attacks on "per-
missive ideology" at the
school. Graham says he rolled
up more votes than previous
winners, but still lost the
election by about 4,850 votes.
That same year, 1976,
Graham also worked with
Schlesinger as a military ad-
viser to Ronald Reagan.
"Even back then," Graham
recalls, "Ron Reagan was
asking a very fundamental
question. He was saying, you
know there's got to be some
better way to deter a nuclear
war than, as he described it,
two guys with pistols pointing
at each other's head ... "
Since then Graham has
made statements that lead
some to understand he thinks
nuclear war winnable.
"Damn weapons are awe-
some. No doubt about it," he
said in a 1980 interview with
Rolling Stone. ,But they are
not absolute by any means.
You can escape the effects of
nuclear weapons. We have
had the great bulk of the
population believing that if
nuclear war occurs, the world
will be a burned-out cinder
drifting through space. That's
sci-fi rubbish."
Asked if he was arguing
that nuclear war is feasible,
Graham, according to Rolling
Stone, replied: "If, in fact,
nuclear war could obliterate
countries, it would be unfea-
sible. But the fact of the mat-
ter is, that's not what would
happen. The fact is, you can
win a war with nuclear weap-
ons. Highly destructive war
indeed. But the Russians, be-
cause they've paid some at-
tention to holding down dam-
age, would in fact take fewer
casualties in a nuclear war
now than they took back in
World War II."
In an interview, Graham
confirmed making the re-
marks, but added that "the
only thing they left out of
that is when I answered that
question, I said the United
States can win a nuclear war,
certainly with Mexico. They
leave those little things out
.. As a theoretical thing,
nuclear war is winnable. As a
reality, given the numbers of
weapons now, no. But they
ask it in terms of theory.
That's why the Mexico thing
is important. I said, sure we
can win one-with Mexico.
So you know, don't throw this
up as a total truth. Nuclear
war is not winnable ... It
was winnable by us up until a
certain point ... probably
until '68 or so, we could have
won a nuclear war. With Rus-
sia.?
Rolling Stone writer James
Ridgeway says he doesn't re-
call Graham's saying any-
thing about Mexico. "I think
I would have remembered
that," Ridgeway says. "In
fact, I would have used it"
SDI SUPPORTERS in-
clude a number of big names,
including Dr. Edward Teller,
the physicist who played a
leading role in development
of the hydrogen bomb. Teller
favors a different technology,
a nuclear-powered X-ray
laser, but he credits Graham
as a fellow pioneer.
"While I might disagree
with Danny [on some points],
he has spent more than a few
days [on the subject]," Teller
said in a telephone interview.
"... SDI is what we need in
order to survive and have
peace. The Soviets are doing
it and they are screaming
bloody murder about our
doing it because they don't
want us to spoil their monop-
oly."
The idea of a space-based
defense, really a collection of
ideas, has its prominent crit-
ics, too, especially over the
notion that it will serve to
protect the civilian popula-
tion. Schlesinger declined to
be interviewed about
Graham, but he is skeptical
about a Star Wars defense.
"The idea of a space-based
defense is, as one writer has
described it, 'half Buck
Rogers and half P. T. Bar-
num,"' Schlesinger said.
3
~
What the president is talking
I
about, he added, is nothing
less than "a shield over this
country to protect the popu-
lation. That is where it gets
its political clout, and it is al-
most certainly not going to
happen."
As the summit between
President Reagan and Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev
has approached, however,
Graham, for one, seems less
concerned by such objections
-and less apprehensive that
Reagan will make some sort
of concessions on SDI that
"kills it indirectly-by mak-
ing it impossible to carry out
the necessary tests or to make
the necessary deployment
decisions."
In Graham's view; the big-
gest obstacle to the program
is the Antiballistic Missile
Treaty of 1972 and in his
view it is time to declare that
"a loser" instead of straining
to interpret it in a way com-
patible with Star Wars.
Similarly, the unpaid mar-
shal of High Frontier (he says
he does not draw a salary) is
not at all impressed with
Soviet protestations about
the program. It has been
criticized in part because the
United States, as part of its
strategy of defending NATO
allies against conventional at-
tack, has never renounced the
possibility of a nuclear "first
strike" in response. Star
Wars, the Soviets claim, will
just encourage the United
States to take that first step.
Responds Graham: "I
don't think the Soviets be-
lieve that for a minute. If we
ever thought a first-strike
capability was useful to solve
our problems, they would
have been blown up a long
time ago when they simply
couldn't retaliate-when we
had a monopoly or a horren-
dous superiority and they
had practically no way at all
to touch the United States. I
think they know that."
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At the moment, Graham
seems just as busy in his new
role as chairman of the Coali-
tion for the Strategic Defense
Initiative, a group he organ-
ized this summer to help
counter the "severe attack"
on the program from various
quarters.
The Coalition includes
more than 100 organizations,
from Accelerated Christian
Education to Young Amer-
icans for Freedom, and more
than 60 members of Con-
gress, most of them Republi-
cans. Its most visible message
is a 30-second TV commer-
cial that began playing in
Washington in September
and is expected to fan oyt to
a 30-market peak before the
summit.
It features the Astrodome
concept of Star Wars, the
same notion that Schlesinger
has denounced as "half Buck
Rogers and half P. T. Bar-
num." The commercial
begins with a child's crayon
drawing of a family outside
their home under a big sun
while a little girl can be heard
asking her father "what Star
Wars is all about."
She goes on to say that her
daddy told her "that right
now we can't protect our-
selves from nuclear weapons
and that's why the president
wants to build a peace shield.
It would stop missiles in
outer space so they couldn't
hit our house."
As she talks, a crayon-line
dome appears over the house
and family; missiles crash
into it and are destroyed, and
the sun starts smiling. The
"Peace Shield" turns into a
rainbow.
"When I fast read the
script, I said, 'Oh God, this
will never do,"' Graham says.
"But I must say, I'm thor-
oughly sold. It's a powerful
piece ... It's dynamite. It's
dynamite." ^
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