U.S. Anti-Satellite Program: ‘Space Is Part of Our Security’

I see from the column by Rowny that one of the land mines left behind by President Reagan’s Richard Perle and his “Pentagon Mafia” has just gone off. Again the target is the ABM treaty and the cause is Star Wars.

Rowny’s claim that we need defenses in space has been proved tendentious, not to say disingenuous, frequently enough to make one wonder about his sincerity. The fact is that we would be more vulnerable in space conflict than the Soviets, who, for one thing, are less dependent on satellites for command and control than we, not to mention the whole fabric of our working society.

Whatever the space cadets of Reagan’s Administration may claim, there is no defense for our satellites against the myriad projectiles that the Soviets could launch against them.

Rowny’s record in his eight years in the Reagan Administration is sharply outlined in the most valuable book we have on the subject: Strobe Talbott’s “Deadly Gambits” (Vintage Books, N.Y., 1985). That record is a sorry one.

Rowny originated the now completely discredited phrase, “window of vulnerability” (p. 220). He is cited as “ . . . Notorious for changing his mind--and for letting (former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard) Perle change it” (p. 295). And: “The director of the arms control and disarmament agency and the chief U.S. arms-control negotiator (Rowny) had come to symbolize the ineptitude and deviousness that many critics . . . associated with the Administration arms-control policies as a whole” (p. 299).

There are many more of his footprints on the history of those frustrating years. We don’t need any more of Rowny’s obstructions to understanding and agreement.

FREDERIC E. PAMP

Santa Ynez