Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

buildup in order to maintain the high STARTII ceilings. Presidents

William J. Clintonand Boris Yeltsin also agreed to negotiate the

problem of nuclear warheads, not just delivery systems. Doing so

would mean that intelligence verification would extend to warheads

removed from downloaded carriers, or even the dismantling of those

warheads.

STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE (SDI).The SDI was a plan

for a ground- and space-based laser armed antiballistic missile

(ABM) system that would have created a shield for U.S. land-based

missiles. President Ronald Reagan announced the plan on 23

March 1983, and his administration poured substantial sums of

money into the program, administered by the Strategic Defense Ini-

tiative Office (SDIO). Although there was considerable research un-

der the project’s auspices, congressional and public opposition to

it—on the grounds that the concept would have meant scrubbing

some key arms control agreements at significant financial and rep-

utation costs—essentially derailed the program. President George

H. W. Bushdiscontinued plans to deploy the SDI when he came to

office in 1989. However, the introduction of the SDI into the volatile

mix of the Cold Warprobably was the catalyst for such crises as the

1983 Soviet war scareand the dissolution of the Soviet Unionin

1991. Succeeding administrations have recommended modified ver-
      sions of the SDI at the theater level, such as the high altitude theater
      defense program President George W. Bushauthorized on coming
      to office in 2001.

STRATEGIC SUPPORT BRANCH. Established in 2002, the Defense

Intelligence Agency (DIA) created the Strategic Support Branch on

the orders of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to boost the Defense

Department’s espionagecapabilities by deploying small teams of case

officers, linguists, interrogators, and technical specialists alongside the

military’s special operations forces. According to insiders, the Strate-

gic Support Branch was established to lessen the Defense Depart-

ment’s dependence on human intelligence(HUMINT) supplied by the

Central Intelligence Agency(CIA). In addition, the idea behind the

Branch was to give combat forces more and better information about

their enemy on the battlefield and to find new tools that could be used

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