About
Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham, who had advised presidential candidate Ronald Reagan on national security issues, founded High Frontier in 1981. High Frontier is a think tank that lobbies for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars” program created during the Reagan administration to protect the nation and its allies from ballistic missile attack. Initially, SDI focused on mounting a national missile defense system but its scope has expanded to protect regional theaters in Asia, Middle East, and Europe. Today, SDI proponents speak of the need for global missile defense systems. Current chairman of the High Frontier’s board is Henry Cooper, who formerly directed George H.W. Bush’s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). (1) (2)
Edwin J. Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, wrote in National Review Online that “Joe [Joseph Coors] gladly joined a small group assembled by [H-Bomb inventor Edward] Teller that called itself High Frontier.” (13) The Heritage Foundation funded the first study that High Frontier published on missile defense.
Graham, who died in 1995, was military affairs adviser to Reagan during his 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns. In addition to his military background, Graham was also a high intelligence official, having served CIA Deputy Director (1973-74) and then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (1974-76). Even when working within the intelligence apparatus, Graham, the military hard-liner and right-wing ideologue, was a harsh critic of the CIA’s intelligence estimates, which in his own estimation underestimated Soviet military capacity and imperial ambitions. Graham, a militarist who was an early supporter of the flexible deterrence and nuclear weapons strategies proposed by RAND’s Albert Wohlstetter, believed that U.S. intelligence estimates about the purported Soviet threat on the United States should be driven by a policy analysis that assumed that the Soviet Union harbored intentions to defeat the United States. (3) (14)
As the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (1974-1976), Graham advocated that the task of preparing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) should be taken from the CIA’s portfolio and be handled directly by the president and his National Security Council. In 1976 Graham helped block the nomination of Paul Warnke, a supporter of arms treaties and détente, as the Secretary of Defense for the Carter administration. As part of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority’s Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament (which reflected Warnke’s position on arms control), Graham headed this group and brought together other hard-line neoconservatives such as Eugene Rostow, Paul Nitze, Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Paul Weyrich, Penn Kemble, and Joshua Muravchik to carry out the goals of the neocon coalition. (15)
Graham was a member of the Team B panel established in 1976 to provide an independent evaluation of the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates of the Soviet Union. Richard Pipes, who was brought to Washington by Richard Perle, selected the members (including Paul Wolfowtiz) of the Team B panel, which asserted that the Soviet Union was militarily superior to the United States and intent on a first-strike on the United States.
As Co-chair of the Coalition for Peace Through Strength (the political arm of the American Security Council), Graham spearheaded a public education, media, and policy advocacy campaign to support military budget increases during the first Reagan administration. During 1982-1983, he also served as a member of the board of directors on the Council for National Policy, which was a forum for militant anticommunists that, among other things, collaborated in providing private funding channels to the Nicaraguan contras. (16)
As Chairman of the Missile Defense Study Team that was sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, Henry Cooper has led the charge to reinvigorate the Star Wars programs. Advocates of missile defense have won one of their battles ever since President George W. Bush deserted the ABM Treaty. (4) (5) (6)
Cooper was the Chief Negotiator for Reagan during the Geneva Defense and Space Talks, where he advocated for SDI programs. Other positions held during Reagan’s tenure are Assistant Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force. In the George H.W. Bush administration, he ran the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) and previously conducted an independent review of SDI programs for Secretary of Defense Cheney. (1)
Cooper was a speaker at the 2001 conference sponsored by Rep. Curt Weldon (another associate of the Center for Security Policy) and the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis entitled “Defending the Northeast, America and Our Allies from Ballistic Missile Attack.” Of the 200 participants, at least 70 represented the top defense contractors: Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. Cooper himself is the chairman of Applied Research Associates, Inc., whose defense services include “penetration technology”—a euphemism for the design and testing of ballistic missile systems. Cooper is also a member of the Center for Security Policy’s National Security Advisory Council, labeled by Michelle Ciarrocca and William Hartung of the Arms Trade Resource Centers as the “Star Wars Hall of Fame.” (10) (17)
High Frontier and other proponents of missile defense systems contend that the September 11 attacks underscore the need for a global missile defense shield. However, several have noted that Star Wars systems have yet to be proven technically feasible. Regarding the revival of Star Wars during the current Bush administration, William Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca note that “given the serious technical, cost, and arms-control problems plaguing the proposed national missile defense system, Rumsfeld faces no small task. Technically speaking, there’s nothing to sell just yet. Serious question remain about the system’s ability to defend against real-world threats in which an attack would be accompanied by countermeasures and decoys.” (7) (8) (9)
