ABM Critics Taken to Task

It criticizes, mainly, the performance of some of the more active critics of Safeguard, among them George Rathjens, Professor of Political Science at MIT; Jerome Wiesner, then Provost (and now President) of MIT; and Ralph Lapp, a prominent technical publicist of the anti-military-industrial complex. Other critics whose analysis was questioned by the ORSA Committee include Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, Director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory; Steven Weinberg, Professor of Physics at MIT; and Carl Kaysen, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

The Committee also criticized material presented by some supporters of Safeguard, principally by the American Security Council, an organization whose influence in the debate was not exactly notable. As concerns official spokesmen for Safeguard, the Committee said: “. . . the analytical arguments presented by spokesmen for Safeguard within the Administration were carefully examined. While shortcomings were found as documented below, they nowhere equaled the cumulative mass of inadequacies compiled by the opposition.”

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Roger Halstead

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It criticizes, mainly, the performance of some of the more active critics of Safeguard, among them George Rathjens, Professor of Political Science at MIT; Jerome Wiesner, then Provost (and now President) of MIT; and Ralph Lapp, a prominent technical publicist of the anti-military-industrial complex. Other critics whose analysis was questioned by the ORSA Committee include Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, Director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory; Steven Weinberg, Professor of Physics at MIT; and Carl Kaysen, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

The Committee also criticized material presented by some supporters of Safeguard, principally by the American Security Council, an organization whose influence in the debate was not exactly notable. As concerns official spokesmen for Safeguard, the Committee said: “. . . the analytical arguments presented by spokesmen for Safeguard within the Administration were carefully examined. While shortcomings were found as documented below, they nowhere equaled the cumulative mass of inadequacies compiled by the opposition.”