A Letter From the Publisher

By Richard B. Thomas

Last winter, looking ahead to the major stories of 1986, TIME's Washington bureau singled out a very thorny topic: the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative. SDI is better known, of course, as Star Wars, President Reagan's futuristic plan for a missile-defense shield that would render nuclear weapons obsolete. "It had already established itself as the most contentious issue on the Soviet-American agenda," says Washington Bureau Chief Strobe Talbott, who proposed a conference on the SDI controversy that would produce a "coherent, focused and expert debate for the benefit of correspondents and editors and, through a special report in the magazine, for TIME's readers." The conference, which took place in Washington on June 3, was the basis for this week's cover stories on SDI.

"Because of the President's personal commitment to the program," explains Talbott, "many sources of SDI stories had been willing to speak to the press only on background. We were determined to have our session on the record. One way to accomplish that was to invite the highest-ranking, most authoritative people on the subject." During a day that started at 7:45 a.m. and continued to 9 p.m., 30 TIME editors, writers, correspondents and reporter-researchers assembled in Washington to hear -- on the record -- a nonstop list of speakers, including SDI Director Lieut. General James Abrahamson of the Air Force, Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, and Paul Nitze, the Administration's special adviser on arms control. Prominent scientific and strategic critics of the concept spoke as well. As Pentagon Correspondent Bruce van Voorst, who was instrumental in planning the gathering, noted, "Our object was to put technology in balance with politics. By lunch everyone was talking of radio-frequency quadrapoles and optical phase conjugation."

The get-together produced illuminating sparks. Says Senior Editor Walter Isaacson: "Even within the Administration, there is still not a clear idea of what SDI is supposed to do." Indeed, forthright statements from Perle and Nitze defined basic disagreements over Star Wars among the President's men. Says Talbott: "It was exciting to have the dispute played out before us."

There was a consensus, however: that SDI called for decisions that might crucially affect the world's future. Said Nitze in his closing remarks: "I don't believe that the younger generation looks forward to having its grandchildren face the threat of mutual destruction. I don't believe that's a thing that generation after generation is going to want to live with."