vention, Senator Tower criticized McNamara’s no- torious antipathy to missile defense and said a sys- tem was needed for safety “against a limited irra- tional missile attack from some such nation as Red China [or] protection against a mistakenly launched Russian missile’—the very reasons given by Mc- Namara two weeks later.
Having prodded the Defense Department into ac- tion, the President will also have partially pleased the Joint Chiefs of Staff and those congressional committee leaders who have constantly called for a full-scale ABM system (cost between $20 and $50 billion as against $5 billion for the “thin” Nike-X.
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