[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 3 (Friday, January 5, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E28]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      REMEMBERING GEN. DAN GRAHAM

                                 ______


                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, January 5, 1996

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, this past New Year's Eve, America lost a true 
patriot. Gen. Dan Graham, the father of SDI, the Strategic Defense 
Initiative, passed away that day. I want to share with our colleagues a 
column in today's Washington Times by Paul Weyrich which tells about 
the life of Dan Graham and his mission for a strong defense to protect 
the national security of the United States.

                     The Mission of a True Patriot

                          (By Paul M. Weyrich)

       About six weeks ago, I received a newly published book with 
     a personal note from the author hoping that I would find it 
     useful. I read through the book and dropped the author a note 
     suggesting that he appear on my program, ``Direct Line,'' to 
     discuss the book. I received no reply and yesterday I found 
     out why. Gen. Dan Graham passed away on New Year's eve.
       None of his friends, even those who had worked closely with 
     him over the years, knew just how critically ill Gen. Graham 
     was in recent weeks. We had known for some time that he was 
     suffering from cancer and for the past few months that he was 
     unlikely to recover. But Dan Graham was never one to whine or 
     complain. In fact, the only time I ever saw Dan Graham truly 
     upset was at the funeral of his first wife, to whom he had 
     been married most of his adult lifetime, and who was the 
     mother of their two sons and five daughters. This nation owes 
     Gen. Graham a great debt of gratitude.
       I had gotten to know Gen. Graham more than 20 years ago. He 
     was chief of Defense Intelligence during the Ford 
     administration. The Democratic Senate, then controlled by 
     nearly a two-thirds margin, forced him into premature 
     retirement because he wasn't politically correct on Vietnam. 
     He was never bitter, even though he had every reason to be. 
     He continued his work for a strong defense on the outside, 
     just as he had done so ably from the inside for more than 30 
     years in the Army.
       It was in the early 1980s that Gen. Graham began to talk 
     about new breakthroughs in technology. The breakthroughs 
     would permit an effective missile defense system to be 
     constructed to defend this country from a massive attack from 
     the Soviet Union or from a surprise attack from some rogue 
     leader. We were going to build a primitive version of such a 
     system in the early 1970s, but President Nixon bargained that 
     right away.
       I know almost nothing about technology and certainly had no 
     knowledge about this sort of development, but Gen. Graham 
     gave me the full briefing anyway and then asked for my help 
     to find a home for his project, called ``High Frontier.'' I 
     called Ed Feulner, the president of the Heritage Foundation, 
     and explained that Gen. Graham was assembling a group of 
     scientific experts who intended to advocate a new type of 
     missile defense system. Ed quickly agreed that Heritage would 
     welcome the project as part of its public policy activities, 
     and thus was born what we now call SDI, the Strategic Defense 
     Initiative.
       Gen. Graham soon found a willing listener in one President 
     Ronald Reagan, who in 1983 delivered a nationwide televised 
     address that shook the leaders of the Kremlin. Mr. Reagan 
     committed the United States to research and deploy a 
     defensive missile system. Critics, in an effort to kill the 
     project, quickly labeled it ``Star Wars.'' But given the 
     popularity of George Lucas' trilogy, that label only enhanced 
     it.
       Despite near crippling opposition from the Democratic 
     Congress, SDI made significant advantages under the Reagan 
     administration, to the point where Soviet leaders were 
     convinced that the United States was serious about deploying 
     it. Some Soviet military leaders with whom I spoke early in 
     this decade said that this shift in U.S. strategy was a 
     contributing factor to the demise of the Soviet Union. SDI 
     received only lip service from President Bush, despite 
     the fact that Russian President Boris Yeltsin, in his 
     first appearance as the leader of that nation, urged the 
     United States and Russia to work together to develop SDI 
     for the good of all mankind. Bush advisors were not 
     enthusiastic about SDI because deployment would have 
     required a change in the so-called MAD strategy, Mutual 
     Assured Destruction, to which the United States has clung 
     for decades. Still, SDI limped along and made modest 
     progress.
       When Bill Clinton took office, he all but killed SDI. The 
     Republican controlled Congress, just a few weeks ago, passed 
     a defense authorization bill that would have required 
     deployment of a modified missile defense system by the year 
     2000. That was Gen. Graham's finest hour and thank God he 
     lived to see it.
       Unfortunately, President Clinton vetoed the bill precisely 
     because he said it would have required the construction of 
     that missile defense system, which he did not want. So 
     despite a decade and a half of work by Gen. Graham, this 
     country remains unprotected from a missile attack. Still, the 
     issue won't go away.
       There would have been no issue at all, and the technology 
     developments which have resulted in drastically reducing the 
     cost of an SDI system would not have occurred at all, but for 
     the dogged determination of Daniel Graham. In literally 
     thousands of meetings, public and private, Gen. Graham pushed 
     this idea. It was Gen. Graham who convened a special meeting 
     at my office to encourage opposition to John Tower as 
     Secretary of Defense under then President-elect Bush on the 
     grounds that Sen. Tower was an opponent of SDI. In Secretary 
     Dick Cheney, Graham found someone much more to his liking.
       All of this aside, Dan Graham was a decent, religious, 
     family man who had an endearing sense of humor and was 
     terrific at getting people, even opponents, to work together. 
     He could be tough as nails if he opposed you on policy 
     grounds, but Dan Graham was never mean spirited. He always 
     handled opposition with great dignity, which was part of his 
     military training.
       This nation owes Dan Graham a great deal. And one day soon, 
     we will have a system to protect us against some fanatic or 
     deranged leader who wants to blow up part of America to make 
     a point. When that day comes, and it almost came a few weeks 
     ago, it will be because of the good work of this one time 
     deputy director of the CIA. All of us who love America will 
     miss this true patriot.

                          ____________________