‘Catastrophic Failure’

Your editorial of April 28 (“Catastrophic Failure”) is the third negative editorial in the last few months regarding the Strategic Defense Initiative.

I find it strange that The Times should regard killing SDI to be of such overwhelming importance. It is, of course, a purely defensive program. No one has claimed that any defensive program would be 100% effective. Surely this does not mean that SDI would not be beneficial.

That the Office of Technology Assistance would find SDI to have some possibility of failure is not surprising since, as an arm of the Democratic Congress, it could hardly do otherwise.

The Soviets are known to have been working for several years on their own SDI system.

I detect a knee-jerk reaction on the part of liberal Democrats and the media to object to a Republican President’s program. I also suggest that The Times is taking a Luddite position.

I was struck by some of the letters you published in response to your previous editorials on SDI. One writer suggested that exploding an enemy nuclear warhead before it reached us was objectionable because of known atmospheric contamination. Perhaps he prefers it explode in his ground area.

JOHN W. BISHOP

Rolling Hills