192 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
shaking the Kremlin’s self-confidence.^5 Even Henry Kissinger, who
referred sniffily to the strategic ideas of the White House as ‘the movie
version’, was willing to concede that ‘pretty much all the Soviet [sic]
I talked to were rattled by SDI’.^6
There was debate in Washington, out of public earshot, about
whether the Kremlin might have a rational basis for its fears. Reagan
stressed that the research programme was geared exclusively by defen-
sive objectives. Poindexter, however, understood Gorbachëv’s worry
that the Americans might be aiming to develop outer-space weapons
that could hit targets on earth. He also sensed that once Gorbachëv
had spoken against the programme, it would be politically embarrass-
ing for him to back down.^7 The CIA’s Robert Gates implicitly agreed.
He knew, for example, that several current projects could have offen-
sive applications at some time in the future.^8 But like every other
official, he toed the public line that there was nothing in the pro-
gramme to cause the other superpower to tremble.
With Gorbachëv as General Secretary, there was a danger that
Soviet propaganda would exploit the White House’s vagueness about
the American ambition for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Nitze
implored Reagan to bring clarity to the matter; he also asked for the
administration to promise to stay within the framework of the Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty. He asked him to abjure any ambition of
military superiority and to aim for a dependable strategic balance. He
also contended that offensive nuclear weapons would be necessary for
mutual deterrence until such time as the two sides could agree on ‘a
transition to a more defense-reliant balance as a cooperative endeavor’.^9
Weinberger occupied the opposite end of the spectrum of analysis.
To his way of thinking, America’s interest lay in preserving a degree
of vagueness about strategy. The more the USSR was kept guessing,
the better – and Weinberger had no concerns about breaching the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to save the Strategic Defense
Initiative in all its intimidating potential. Only privately did he admit
that extraordinary technological progress was still required. The new
space-based system, he commented, would need to achieve the equiva-
lent of ‘hitting a bullet with a bullet’. But in public he avoided any hint
about the scale of the task.^10
While continuing to correspond with Edward Teller, Shultz had
severe doubts about the claims that Lieutenant General Abrahamson
made for the programme.^11 Scientists such as Thomas H. Johnson,
director of the Science Research Laboratory, kept a close watch on