‘Star Wars’ Cuts Confirmed by White House

The White House on Thursday stood by Vice President Dan Quayle’s assessment that the “Star Wars” program has been scaled back from former President Ronald Reagan’s ambitious concept, but it said that Quayle’s description of the original plan was inflammatory.

“The only thing we have different today is two inflammatory words,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said. Quayle had characterized as “political jargon” Reagan’s initial goal for his Strategic Defense Initiative, as “Star Wars” is formally known.

Fitzwater said the White House has recognized for some time that the original Reagan plan of creating an “astrodome” anti-missile shield for the nation would have to be scaled down.

But, when asked whether the White House had given up on the idea of a “total, space-based defense shield against all incoming nuclear missiles”--the original “Star Wars” concept envisioned by Reagan--Fitzwater said: “That still is the theoretical concept under which the SDI program operates. That’s kind of the goal that you keep working forward to as you proceed with research and development.”

Quayle’s remarks, in an interview with The Times on Wednesday, reflected “the fact that we have been able to winnow the objectives of the program . . . to fit more definable kinds of objectives,” the White House spokesman said. He described the scaling-back process as having been “under way for some time.”

In the interview at The Times’ Washington Bureau, the vice president said: “We have redefined (“Star Wars” and) put it into missions, requirements, doctrine and strategy much differently than we did in the early 1980s.”

Reagan, who announced the program in March, 1983, as a shield-like defense to intercept ballistic missiles aimed at the United States, “talked about this impenetrable shield that was going to be completely leak-proof,” Quayle said.

” . . . I believe that, in the semantics of, let’s say, political jargon, that that was acceptable. But it clearly was stretching the capability of a strategic defense system.”

Other government officials vouched for Quayle’s characterization.

“That’s nothing the vice president hasn’t said before,” said Mark Albrecht, executive director of the National Space Council, of which Quayle is chairman. “He’s a strong supporter of SDI. He understands it, and he has it just right.”

Retired Gen. Daniel O. Graham, one of the originators of the SDI concept and now chairman of High Frontier, a group that lobbies on behalf of space defense, said that the uproar over Quayle’s comments is “kind of annoying, to be perfectly frank about it.”

“Even Reagan said he wasn’t talking about perfection”--a leakproof anti-missile shield--when he proposed the program, Graham said.

“It is true that it was a piece of political jargon,” Graham said. “But, as a matter of fact, Dan Quayle is the strongest supporter of SDI within this Administration. The notion that Danny Quayle has given up on this program is ridiculous.”

Quayle’s Remarks Praised

Richard N. Perle, who as a senior Reagan Administration defense official tried to scale back public claims for the “Star Wars” program, hailed Quayle’s remarks as “long overdue,” adding that it should improve the prospects for congressional and public support of the program.

“It marks a real change in the sense that the goals he’s talking about for SDI are both more realistic and more affordable,” Perle said. “The arguments against the Strategic Defense Initiative have been based to an extraordinary degree on the notion of a perfect defense. This pulls the ground out from under those critics.”

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney could not be reached for comment. But, during his confirmation hearings in March, he acknowledged that the “Star Wars” concept had been “oversold” by Reagan.

And, in a speech two weeks ago, Cheney said that SDI was never intended to be an impenetrable shield against all nuclear missiles.

“When SDI was first proposed by President Reagan, some critics thought it was hopelessly idealistic,” Cheney told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. But he said that even a partial shield would be militarily useful by complicating the job of Soviet war planners, who would not know how many or which of their missiles would reach their targets.

“We want to pursue SDI because we think a successful SDI program would be immensely valuable,” Cheney said. “It no longer is visionary to think that a successful strategic defense could render our fears about a preemptive first strike obsolete. That is why President Bush committed himself to deploying SDI when it proves feasible.”

“Star Wars” budget cuts have forced defense contractors to scale back their hopes in recent years, but defense industry and Pentagon officials said that the new focus on limited defenses will not mean the end of potentially vast business opportunities. Industry experts said that the focus on low-cost space-based interceptors is expected to mean big rewards for firms such as Martin Marietta Corp. and Rockwell International Corp.

Many at the Pentagon, which has stewarded the program since 1983, insist that Quayle’s remarks do not mark a change in policy but rather a shift in emphasis toward defensive technologies that will be available for deployment soon. Six years and billions of dollars after Reagan’s 1983 announcement, defense technologists are closing in on many of the engineering problems.

“I don’t see it as a change in basic objectives,” said Kent G. Stansberry, a senior Defense Department official responsible for helping set department policy for “Star Wars.”

“There is simply a lot more focus on practical things” as the Defense Department nears decisions on deployment, he said.

Played on Page 1

Fitzwater, referring to the placement of the Quayle story in the most prominent spot on Thursday’s front page of The Times, said: “The story has been played a little interestingly, but essentially the vice president has been, is, and will remain one of the main advocates of SDI.”

When asked whether Bush agreed with Quayle’s assessment of Reagan’s original program as “political jargon,” Fitzwater said:

“I read the quote specifically, and I urge all of you to read it, too, not the way it was reported in the lead of the story, but in its entirety. The vice president did use those words to reflect some of the rhetoric that was attached to the program. But he believes in the goals and objectives of the program . . . . President Bush did and still does, and there is no difference between them. Nor is there any turning away from the original objectives as enunciated in the Reagan Administration.”

Fitzwater argued that the missile defense program has been evolving over several years and that the vice president’s comments on the shift to the so-called “Brilliant Pebbles” concept were “simply reflecting the status of the program today.”

Swarms of Interceptors

Last spring, when Bush asked Congress for about $4.7 billion for the “Star Wars” program for the 1990 fiscal year, Cheney said that a key component would be development of a “Brilliant Pebbles” weapon. The proposed weapon would consist of swarms of small space-based interceptors designed to knock out ballistic missiles headed toward the United States.

And, during the political campaign last September, Quayle said in an interview with The Times that a “better comprehension of SDI” was needed in the future than had existed during the Reagan Administration.

He said SDI advocates pushed the total shield description as a way “to begin to capture the imagination” of the public. “That’s nice, but it might be after my lifetime,” he said. “Now, we’re back to a practical point of view.”

Staff writers John M. Broder and Melissa Healy in Washington and Cathleen Decker in Los Angeles contributed to this story.