Editor’s Note: This article was first published in the weekly LaRouche movement newspaper, New Solidarity, Vol. 13, No. 90, January 28, 1983.

Jan. 18, 1983—Speaking at a forum on the topic of anti-missile beam weapons at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. today, world-renowned nuclear physicist Dr. Edward Teller blasted government secrecy regulations for keeping from the American people knowledge which the Soviet leadership already has.

In a speech which itself was constrained by government classification, the man widely known as the “father of the H-bomb” said that new developments in science and technology have made an end to the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) possible. Defense from nuclear attack “is not impossible,” Dr. Teller said. In answer to a question, the scientist estimated that a rudimentary beam-weapon ballistic missile defense could be developed within five years, and a more complete system could be built within ten years.

This was one of several speeches Dr. Teller has made over recent months in which he has urged the crash development of defensive weapons systems capable of knocking down or disarming intercontinental ballistic missiles in flight.

Secrecy vs. Security

When the moderator introduced Dr. Teller, he said that the scientist would answer all questions at the end of his speech. “Indeed, I will answer any question provided I am permitted to do so by the rules of secrecy often and wrongly called security,” Dr. Teller said.

“Here is my first difficulty. It has been printed that I shall talk about beam weapons; I am not allowed to talk about beam weapons. Trouble! The President has said—and very rightly—that the American people are certainly entitled to know whatever the Soviet leadership knows, in general terms. What I could possibly tell you in a semi-technical manner about one topic or the other is certainly known to the Soviet leadership. I therefore should not be restricted in what I can talk about. I am—because the bureaucrats who still exist have not completely understood or implemented the President’s correct and general statement. This is an exceedingly serious matter; how serious it is will become clear while I am talking....”

Defense Is Not Impossible

Remarking that his speech is well-timed, Dr. Teller praised the vigorous leadership of the new head of the U.S. Department of Energy, Don Hodel, and expressed the hope that there would be a shift in the policy of exaggerated secrecy.

Attacking the notion that nuclear weapons can only be used for offensive purposes, he said: “Defense is not impossible. We know—and part of the evidence is even publicly available—that the Soviets have made great strides towards civil defense, an area where we do much too little, to our greatest danger. There are indications that the Soviets are also deeply involved in active defense....

“So, behind the idea of nuclear weapons being just offensive weapons, there are good, thoroughly worked-out, generally accepted arguments. These arguments have culminated in the MAD doctrine, in the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction. There is no help except the possibility to prevent war by deterrent. And once you begin to think in that direction, you are apt further to exaggerate the consequences of nuclear war, considering the end of mankind, call it unthinkable, and lose touch with reality. That Mutual Assured Destruction—the idea that the people of the opposing nations should be mutually held hostage and thereby give assurance that war won’t occur—I don’t think this is an idea that anybody can be happy about, and nobody less than when we talk about a balance of terror. The terror is certain; the balance is not. Because one clear point about the developing, evolving technology is that it is full of surprises, and the next step can hardly ever be predicted, even by the best people....”

Admitting that the initiative rests with the offense, and that effective defense must be prepared for any eventuality, Dr. Teller reiterated that defense is still the best deterrence to war. He apologized because he was prevented from discussing the work of his colleagues at Livermore weapons laboratory in California, even though the Soviets have written about it in their journals, and have even offered criticisms about mistakes made by Livermore researchers.

He went on to give more examples of defense weaponry. “I told you that there are examples of truly remarkable and ingenious defense systems. These I am not allowed to mention, although I am certain that it has nothing to do with security. I hope that in a few weeks this difficulty will be cleared away; unless it is cleared away, I don’t see any way to stop the nuclear freeze movement. If the nuclear freeze movement succeeds, it will succeed here, not in Moscow, and the lack of balance will become complete, and I believe our very existence will have exceedingly poor chances. This is how important the question of exaggerated security happens to be.”

Soviets Ahead on EMP

“I would like to mention one more topic, seemingly unrelated, and this is a topic which at least I can mention,” Dr. Teller continued. “It is called EMP, which stands for electromagnetic pulse. I am not going to explain it, except for saying that connected with some nuclear explosions, very strong electric fields appear, electric fields in a very general way, and only in a general way, similar to the electric fields which accompany and precede lightning strikes. There are a couple of stories about EMP that I can tell you. We performed a test in the Pacific, a few hundred miles from Hawaii. As a result, the electricity in Honolulu failed. We were all surprised about it, and then we found out that the explanation had already been published in the Soviet open literature. So EMP is one of the topics where we have good evidence that the Soviets are ahead of us. We pretend that there are secrets, but they are only secrets from the American people.

“Another story. Do you remember the Soviet plane that was flown by a deserter to Japan? You may have seen news items about it—how primitive the Soviet electronics system is, that it still consists of tubes in the electronics age where every reasonable person works with transistors. Later, it was found, and less conspicuously published, that that MiG did have transistors—deep inside the plane in a well-protected place. On the outside there were these antiquated tubes. It so happens that the tubes are not sensitive to EMP; the transistors are. So, not only were the Soviet planes not less developed; they took into account an effect which we are just beginning to realize.

“These are some of the questions that make me uneasy, and should make, I believe, all of us uneasy. To publish facts about EMP is extremely important. We begin to realize—and this is public knowledge—that communications command and control, the cooperation of the whole military establishment in case of war, is not only important; it is also vulnerable, and should be defended. And one of the elements which endangers this command and control are these electromagnetic pulses; and we are beginning to do something about it. That is well-known.

“What is less well-known is that very big sectors of our civilian economy are likewise vulnerable, and in some cases more vulnerable. Even in war, our military structure is supported by our whole civilian economy, and if the latter collapses, the military will not function either.... On the other hand, private enterprise is helpless to defend itself against possible EMP effects unless they know something about it. So here again, the question of whether we can defend ourselves, depends on the availability of information.”

Dr. Teller concluded his speech by arguing that development of defensive weapons systems could provide a basis for peace, while the MAD doctrine never could.

“I have told you everything that I wanted to tell except two things,” the scientist continued. [The first is] “what if we developed defense and it failed completely? Even a few nuclear weapons could do a lot of damage....

“If we had a defense system about which the Kremlin is not sure whether or not it will work, they will not attack, because unlike Hitler, they are very cautious.... Even an incomplete system may at least postpone a nuclear holocaust.

“The other point is: ‘if we put up more defense, the Soviets will just put up more offense’—[this idea is] wrong. We must try to put up such kinds of defenses that the offsetting offense will be more expensive. This is the critical point, and I believe it can be done in such a way that the defense will win. Then there will be no more trouble.

“If we put up more defense, the only way the Soviets can go is that they, in turn, put up more defense. If both sides become defense-minded, not offense-minded, but real defense-minded, that is the stable situation. Out of that stable situation even peace may come. I don’t believe that peace is just the absence of war. To my mind peace is cooperation and understanding and lots more. But in order to have a chance for cooperation and understanding, one should have a minimum of security. Mutual Assured Destruction does not provide it. Defense weapons could.

“There was no time when I did not wish for defensive weapons. They did not come. But now, after a lot of labor, there is a real prospect—on which incidentally, only a very small fraction of our scientific community is working—that we should understand this possibility, that scientists and technical people should realize that peace can be stabilized by defense, that the public should realize that the ideas are the common ideas, which are surely known throughout the world but which take a bit of explaining, a bit of intellectual labor. If we understand, if we work, we may yet succeed in preventing the horrible eventuality of a third world war. Thank you very much.”