
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 25, 1992                   TAG: 9203250367
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHISTLE BLOWN

GEORGE BUSH, somewhat defensively, calls it "the vision thing." Ronald Reagan had it, amply. But his visions weren't always practical.

One of his most appealing ideas was that scientists could use technology to devise a shield against nuclear missiles. Rather than rely on mutual assured destruction - the ability to wipe out an enemy in retaliation - we would detect his attack and destroy his missiles en route. "Is it not better to save lives than avenge them?" asked then-President Reagan in 1983.

The insurmountable difficulty in fashioning an impenetrable shield did not deter this optimist. Nor did it deter those assigned to the Strategic Defense Initiative Office. Indeed, the cost estimates, ranging into several hundred billions, may have been more an attraction than a deterrent. As long as the dollars flowed copiously, they could find projects to spend them on. And if one purpose for SDI didn't suit, they'd devise another.

Nine years and $30 billion later, SDI is nowhere near the kind of defense Reagan envisioned. It long since deteriorated into make-work and dreamy theories aimed at keeping the money coming. Enter now a whistle-blower: Aldric Saucier, an engineer fired from SDI in February.

In a New York Times article, Saucier charges the Strategic Defense Initiative Office with "systematic illegality, gross mismanagement and waste, abuse of power and the substitution of political science for the scientific method." Among the abuses he cites was alleged falsification of data so it would seem that such projects as the X-ray laser were succeeding. Has a familiar ring.

Reagan's dream might already be dead were it not for the supposed successes of Patriot missiles in the Gulf War; they prompted Congress to raise funding for SDI. A Patriot-SDI analogy would be suspect anyway, but closer looks at Patriot performance indicate that the majority of Iraq's Scuds either escaped untouched or self-destructed before hitting their targets.

The SDI boondoggle should surprise no one, especially those most critical of governmental waste and inefficiency. Yet these people were among its staunchest defenders.

Every spending program of any size has its constituency, its set of contractors with lobbyists and contributors, and it develops momentum that can be hard to stop - even when the program's going nowhere. President Bush is asking $5.4 billion for SDI in fiscal 1993, up by $1.3 billion. That high a figure, Congress should shoot down.

by CNB