SENATE REPORT - REAGAN PLANS EARLY SDI DEPLOYMENT
The Reagan administration is secretly
developing plans for an early deployment of President Reagan's
controversial "Star Wars" anti-missile system, according to a
Senate study.
    "Near-term deployment is an absurd and dangerous course for
America," said Sen. Bennett Johnston in a statement issued with
the report. "It would force us to break the bank, throw out the
ABM treaty and commit us to an arms race in space."
    The Reagan administration is engaged in an internal debate
over the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), as the land and
space-based anti-missile system is called, and may decide later
this month to reinterpret the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
treaty to justify an acceleration of SDI research to include
development and space testing.
    Johnston, of Louisiana, and fellow Democrat William
Proxmire of Wisconsin, whose staff prepared the report, accused
the administration of covertly seeking early  deployment as a
political ploy to commit the United States to strategic
defenses even after Reagan leaves office in 1989.
    "This report exposes the fact that without a presidential
directive or congressional consent, the SDI program ... is
being changed to pursue a near-term deployment of strategic
defenses," Proxmire, chairman of the powerful Senate
Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said.
    "In other words, they're covertly reorienting the SDI
program without congressional approval."
  
 Reuter
