Night Fighter

by Hamilton, William H. ; Sasser, Charles W. ;

  “Mr. Rodriguez, you have to understand that there are many allegations about the Contras that we have to probe,” Kerry began.

  “Senator, you should know that there is a disinformation apparatus within the Soviet and Cuban intelligence services. It is in the best interests of the Soviets and the Cubans that the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters do not prevail.”

  It quickly became apparent that Kerry was simply speaking to hear himself talk, to make a record for his own benefit and pave the way for higher political aspirations. At one point, he even asked Felix why he did not try harder to save Che Guevara’s life in Bolivia.

  The verbal sparring continued until Felix lost his temper. “Senator, this has been the hardest testimony I ever gave in my life.”

  Kerry looked up, glasses perched on his nose. “Why?”

  “Because, sir, it is extremely difficult to have to answer a question from someone you do not respect.”

  I almost did jump up to cheer.

  Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger and thirteen other administration officials were indicted, eleven of whom were convicted. Most of the convictions were vacated on appeal. President Reagan was absolved of direct knowledge of North’s Contra-Iran weapons arrangement, but the Tower Commission criticized him for not properly supervising subordinates in his administration.

  Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North took the biggest fall and kept his mouth shut. He was convicted on three felony counts. He received a three-year suspended prison term, two years’ probation, a fine, and community service. His convictions were later vacated.

  I shook his hand the next time I saw him at the Pentagon. “Fighting terrorism and communism is getting harder and more dangerous ever year,” I commented.

  “We can’t ever give up, Bone. It’s all over if we do.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  I WAS CURLED UP IN my easy chair, wearing glasses, reading a paperback novel.

  “It’s the end of the world. I’ve never had to imagine anything like that before.”

  John Osborne laughed. “It’s not the end of the world at all,” he said. “It’s only the end of us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”

  Dwight Towers shook his head. “I suppose that’s right.…” He paused, thinking of the flowering trees that he had seen on shore through the periscope, cascaras and flame trees, the palms standing in the sunlight. “Maybe we’ve been too silly to deserve a world like this.”

  Barbara entered the room, wearing her nightgown. “Honey, it’s late. This isn’t like you.”

  I showed her the garish cover. On the Beach by Nevil Shute. I summarized the plot for her. “There’s been this nuclear war, and the whole world is gone. Radiation has killed everybody. Now some people are setting out in a submarine to see if they can find other people alive.”

  “I know, honey. I’ve read it.”

  Of course she had. Barbara was no stereotypical blonde.

  “Heavy stuff,” she acknowledged.

  “Doll, it could happen. You know that, right?”

  The window next to me was dark, as though nothing existed beyond it. After a long moment, I added, “In fact, it may be happening now.”

  Seldom has a time existed in my life that I hadn’t thought of that day at Annapolis when our instructor entered the classroom to announce that the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. It marked the beginning of my interest in unconventional warfare as an alternative to the world’s destroying itself. That was nearly forty years ago, and the drama of nuclear terrorism had not yet reached Act III.

  After President Reagan assumed the White House in 1981, I was appointed to various panels and advisory and consulting groups to discuss the U.S. official position on nuclear war. Conferences, meetings, discussions, summits … seemed to consume politics. All we did seemed to be to discuss—while we dug ourselves deeper and deeper into the insane philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction. Reagan referred to MAD as a “suicide pact” strategy.

  I learned of “Star Wars” in a conversation with Secretary of State George Shultz. According to him, shortly after Reagan became governor of California, he attended a lecture by physicist Edward Teller held at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Teller had worked at Los Alamos in developing both the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb. His lecture was on the feasibility of defending against nuclear missiles with nuclear missiles.

  Nothing came of Teller’s ideas for more than a decade afterwards. But the concept apparently continued to ferment in Reagan’s mind. In 1979 as he prepared for his second run at the presidency, he visited the NORAD command base at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex where he was shown extensive U.S. missile tracking and detection systems that extended throughout the world and into space. What struck him most was a comment that while the system could track incoming missiles and thereby warn individual targets, nothing could be done to intercept and stop them.

  Reagan requested Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham, a campaign advisor, to come up with a strategic defense concept using ground- and space-based weapons now theoretically possible because of emerging technologies. Reagan and Graham referred to it as “High Frontier.”

  Shortly after Reagan won the election and moved to Washington, he called a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I attended as an advisor to the CNO, Admiral James Watkins. It was my first meeting with Ronald Reagan, who reminded me of an elderly uncle until you saw the shrewd intellect behind the septuagenarian appearance. He exuded confidence and purpose. The United States, I thought, might be in good hands.

  The president stood at the head of the long polished table. He said, “Every offensive weapon ever invented by man has resulted in the creation of a defense against it. Isn’t it possible in the age of technology that we could invent a defensive weapon that could intercept nuclear weapons and destroy them as they emerged from their silos?”

  After Reagan finished explaining his “High Frontier” concept, the Chiefs of Staff looked at each other, then asked if they could consider among themselves for a few moments. Reagan nodded and walked out of the room. So did us advisors.

  Shortly, the JCS came out of its huddle. “Let’s do it,” said the JCS Chairman, General John Vessey, a rail-thin army officer with a hawkish face.

  The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was born.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  “NUCLEAR FREEZE” WAS THE current buzzword among peaceniks in the United States, who saw as the path to peace the U.S. and USSR “freezing” their production of nuclear weapons at the current level. As much as I would have liked to bury the genie, I had to agree with the president. The Soviets were way ahead in numbers of nuclear weapons; Reagan, thought to support a freeze, would leave the Russians in a position of nuclear superiority and amount to a unilateral disarmament by the United States.

  On March 8, 1983, Reagan delivered what soon came to be known as the Evil Empire speech, which ushered in a major escalation of Cold War rhetoric and set up a howl among the political class and the chattering news media community. According to George Shultz, the speech was designed to let the Soviets know we knew what they were up to in preaching for a freeze.

  “The Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution,” Reagan began. “They must be made to understand that we will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. … I would agree to a freeze if only we could freeze the Soviets’ global desires. A freeze at current levels of weapons would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major arms reductions which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve their objectives through the freeze. … (L)et us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they
are the focus of evil in the modern world.…

  “If history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom. … In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of … blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.…

  “I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in history whose pages even now are being written.”

  Three weeks later, on March 23, President Reagan introduced SDI in a speech televised to the nation.

  “Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope,” he stated. “It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive. Let us turn to the very strengths in technology that spawned our great industrial base and that have given us the quality of life we enjoy today.

  “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies …?

  “Tonight, consistent with our obligations under the ABM [Antiballistic Missile] Treaty … I’m taking the important first step. I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. This could pave the way for arms control measures to eliminate the weapons themselves. We seek neither military superiority nor political advantage. Our only purpose—one all people share—is to search for ways to reduce the danger of nuclear war.”

  The president appointed a past director of the NASA Space Shuttle Program, Air Force Lieutenant General James Alan Abrahamson, to oversee the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). I worked with SDIO to help draft a policy “to ensure the security, integrity, confidentiality and mission availability of all SDI assets … in the face of direct attempts to degrade, disrupt, destroy, or usurp the various elements.”

  At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a scientist named Peter Hagelstein and his team called the O Group began efforts to design a nuclear explosion-powered X-ray as SDI’s initial focus. The system they envisioned combined ground-based and space-based sensor units, orbital space platforms, and lasers to shoot down incoming Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles.

  A news article published by the Washington Post the day after Reagan’s speech introducing SDI quoted Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts describing the president’s proposal as “reckless Star Wars schemes.” His reference was to the George Lucas Star Wars movies still running in theaters nationwide. In my opinion, in this real-life drama, the United States played hero Luke Skywalker while Russian leaders assumed the role of villain Darth Vader.

  Reagan’s critics used the “Star Wars” tag derisively, implying it was impractical science fiction fantasy. The American media’s mockery did much to damage the program’s credibility in the public mind. The Soviets, however, took it seriously. They viewed SDI as an effort to seize the strategic initiative in arms control by neutralizing the military components of Soviet strategy. The Kremlin released statements condemning SDI, saying space-based missile systems made nuclear war inevitable.

  Through DCI William J. Casey, I obtained secret plans the Soviets intended their KGB agents and other officials to use in discrediting, penetrating, or otherwise destroying SDI. It was a hefty document that revealed much not only about the structure of communism and its worldwide goals and activities but also about Judas goats hidden inside the West. Clearly, the Soviets were concerned SDI might interfere with their aim of subjugating the world to the “working man.”

  The missive began with a cover paragraph stating, “As a part of the continuing effort by ruling circles in the United States to achieve dominance and prevent the achievement of the peaceful objectives of the Soviet Union, in March 1983 President Reagan announced a new program aimed at disabling Soviet strategic peacekeeping forces and emplacing strike weapons in space.

  “This program envisions the development of a multi-layer array of weapons operating over the homeland of the USSR, over the oceans where our seaborne forces operate, and in U.S. territory to nullify the effectiveness of our strategic deterrent forces. It will require highly advanced technology, will cost enormous sums of money, and will extend the arms race into space, destroying the hopes raised by present international arms-control treaties and agreements. In the interest of mankind’s progress, the Soviet Union is obliged to resist this development by every means.…

  “The proposed Star Wars systems are vulnerable in all stages of their development. The purpose of this study is to identify those vulnerabilities and outline means, excluding direct military attack, for exploiting them.

  “The first and most fundamental vulnerability is political, primarily within the U.S. governmental system. … Clearly, if ways can be found to cause the defunding of Star Wars, our central objective will have been achieved without any need for other, more costly and risky, countermeasures on our part. Therefore we attach high priority to political measures against Star Wars. An example of such measures is discrete support of anti-Star Wars scientific and popular groups in the U.S. … In parallel with such public, high-profile activities as our “Star Peace” program being presented to the world via the United Nations, we must continue to identify reliable and respected Western opponents of Star Wars and do what we can to advance our cause. Direct sponsorship of such people is out of the question because it would destroy their credibility in internal U.S. debates. Therefore, we must use more indirect methods as discussed later below.”

  The document then listed some of these “indirect methods,” to include:

  • Propaganda through both overt and covert channels

  • Diplomacy by injecting the issue into all negotiations with the U.S.

  • Organizing protests against it through sympathetic organizations such as the World Peace Council, International Organization of Journalists, World Council of Churches, United States Peace Council, World Federation of Teachers Union, and others

  • Influencing the U.S. Congress by working with students, journalists, scientists, lawyers, clergymen, physicians, and others to effect policy change in Washington

  • Activate deep-cover agents under KGB and GRU control to leak forged documents to the press implicating illegal transactions between SDI representatives and “the military-industrial complex.”

  • Participation by the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), the missive emphasized, “will be held to a minimum, as this fraternal party is unfortunately too closely identified in the U.S. public mind as an arm of Soviet foreign policy.”

  The entire thing was a masterful exercise in subterfuge and deceit. These guys were good at what they did.

  The report concluded with, “Emphasis must be placed throughout that this sad waste by a misguided U.S. government … is occurring at a historic moment in the superpower relationship—a time when the current leadership of the Soviet Union is consciously and obviously striving to eliminate the climate of mutual distrust and fear which has led to the superpower arms race.…

  “Again, ‘Star Wars’ must be presented to this ‘soft’ audience in the context of ‘peaceful’ Soviet proposals for cooperative, ‘progressive’ uses of high technology, like space exploration, and advanced medical research. [The search for a cure for AIDS is a subject which surveys have shown meets with high levels of approval across most ethnic, cultural and educational achievement lines]… Absence of U.S. collaboration in worthy causes which should bene
fit mankind should be lamented, caused by diversion of huge amounts of funds, talent and energy into the useless ‘Star Wars,’ which has impeded the social, medical, and nutritional benefits that modern-day technology rightfully should be achieving.”

  Even while the Soviets were mouthing platitudes of “peace” and “cooperation,” Secretary General Yuri Andropov continued to pursue the same agenda as previous Russian leaders had in their quest for world domination, stirring up insurgencies, funding rebel communist guerrillas, suppressing revolts against communism as in Hungary, keeping satellites like Poland and East Germany encased in the Soviet iron fist.

  Conflict between the West and communism repeatedly brought the world to the very brink of nuclear war. On the night of August 31, 1983, Russian fighter planes shot down Korean Airliner Flight 007, killing all 269 passengers, including a U.S. congressman and sixty other Americans. Andropov claimed the Boeing 747 was on a “spy mission” over Soviet territory. Like the biggest bully on the block, he refused to back off his accusations.

  I believed more and more that Reagan was on the right track.

  Incredibly, some at the Pentagon claimed an all-out nuclear war with the Soviets was “winnable.” I knew there were Soviets who thought the same thing. One day CNO Watkins returned from a briefing at the White House with President Reagan, Cap Weinberger, and General John Vessey, JCS chairman. The briefing centered on a U.S. plan for defense in the event of a surprise nuclear attack before we had an adequate deterrent. Essentially, the plan was another take on MAD. The CNO wanted my opinion.

  “What you’ve described,” I replied, “could lead to the end of civilization.”

  Barbara and I watched The Day After on TV, a movie in which a nuclear strike wiped out Lawrence, Kansas. Scenes from it burned themselves into the minds of millions of Americans. Armageddon like that was appearing more frequently in movies and books. People were jittery, uncertain, afraid.