256. Letter From Senators Wilson, Wallop, and Quayle to Secretary of Defense Carlucci1
We wanted to take this opportunity to thank you again for taking the time to meet with us to discuss the future of the President’s SDI program.2 We share your view that if the program is not only going to survive, but more important, to be successful in providing a strategic defense of the United States, it must be refocused to provide deployment options which make tangible contributions to U.S. security in the near-term. Instead of detracting from the program’s more ambitious and important goals, we believe that the deployment of a limited protection system will create insurmountable political pressure for more and more capable defenses.
We are concerned by a report from one of our colleagues which indicated that you felt, based on our meeting, that we were encouraging you to deemphasize Phase 1. This was certainly not the case, and we hope you were not left with this impression. While we recognize that in the short-term funding for development and deployment of a limited protection system might come at the expense of continued development of Phase 1, we also believe that beginning to deploy defenses will result in increased public support for the SDI program and therefore more funding from the Congress. Therefore, deployment of a limited protection system would have a very positive effect on the development and eventual deployment of Phase 1. We view the deployment of a limited protection system as a means of moving us toward the goal of more effective defenses, and our support for it is based on this belief. To deploy a limited protection system while deemphasizing Phase 1 would be to sacrifice our ultimate objective in the interest of pursuing it. We hope this letter helps to clarify our views on this matter.
The problem of translating the overwhelming public support for the SDI program into a political constituency for the program in Congress is a complicated one that we have grappled with for many years. We are confident that an emphasis on the deployment now of [Page 919] even limited defenses will help move us toward the more effective defenses which are so vital to our nation’s security.
Finally, while we understand the Joint Chiefs’ emphasis on the military and deterrent value of any defensive deployment, we again wish to express our concern regarding the political hazards of limiting SDI to a defense of the Pentagon.
Again, we very much appreciate your willingness to listen to our views and share your own with us on this vital program. We hope that this is a channel of communication that can be kept open.
Sincerely,
- Pete
Wilson
United States Senator - Malcolm
Wallop3
United States Senator - Dan Quayle
United States Senator
- Source: Reagan Library, Frank Carlucci Files, SECDEF Carlucci’s Library Subject—1988: National Security Council and State Meeting [05/18/1988–06/15/1988]. No classification marking. Carlucci sent copies of the letter to Shultz and Powell, separately, under cover of June 13 memoranda: “You may be interested in reading the attached prior to our discussions on SDI. This is not easy!” (Ibid.)↩
- No memorandum of conversation was found.↩
- Wallop signed the letter “Malcolm” above his typed signature.↩