“The Democratic alternative in the house is a far more responsible answer to the real defense needs of our nation than the misleading red scare tactics and reckless Star Wars schemes of the president.” 
-Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA)
(Terence Hunt, The Associated Press, March 23, 1983.)

“President Reagan's desire for a missile-proof shield around America and its allies expresses the deepest longing of the nuclear age - for a place to hide. But it remains a pipe dream, a projection of fantasy into policy.” 
-New York Times Editorial
(“Nuclear Facts, Science Fictions,” The New York Times, March 27, 1983) 

In the Democratic Party's official response, Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, criticized Reagan's effort ''to raise the specter of a Soviet armed nuclear attack, and to divert our attention from the dismal failure of his economic policies.''  ''A gathering majority (in Congress) is preparing to reduce the extraordinary defense expenditures proposed by the president,'' he said. ''America is getting weaker on the Reagan program,'' he added, pointing to cuts in social programs.
-Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI)
(Patricia Koza, United Press International, March 24, 1983) 

Even if the system worked, “either side would have to shoot down what the other side had in space - it would be the beginning of a nuclear war.” 
-Dr. Victor Weisskopf, MIT
(Hedrick Smith,. “Would A Space-Age Defense Ease Tensions or Create Them?”  The New York Times, March 27, 1983) 

“I was deeply troubled by the president's statement. He has suggested that the Soviet Union has overwhelming military superiority yet no responsible military official would trade our military for theirs. The president's advisers must be called to account for these terrifying proposals. This is not, as the president suggests, a shifting of our national genius away from war; it is a call to siphon off the meager and inadequate commitment which now exists to rebuild America and serve the cause of humanity.” 
-Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR)
(Terence Hunt, The Associated Press, March 23, 1983) 

Said Reagan's program will “buy the wrong kinds of things... Spending more on a military that doesn't work just buys a bigger military that doesn't work.” 
-Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) 
(Terence Hunt, The Associated Press, March 23, 1983) 

Said Reagan went on television “to try to scare the American people and Congress into spending more money than is necessary to defend our country and our allies.” 
-Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) 
(Norman Sandler, United Press International, March 24, 1983) 

Said the president's plan - offered without details or a pricetag -- is “literally pie in the sky.” 
-Former Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara
(Patricia Koza, United Press International, March 24, 1983) 

"The force of evil is the Soviet Union and they are Darth Vader,'' Markey said, referring to the villian in the blockbuster movie. “We are Luke Skywalker and we are the force of good. We will follow the original 'E.T.' -- (nuclear scientist) Edward Teller -- to outer space to fight some pinball nuclear war between the force of evil and the force of good.” 
-Representative Edward Markey (D-MA)
(Patricia Koza, United Press International, March 24, 1983) 

“The president ... suggested that our military commitments should not be related to overall economic considerations. The key to American military power is not just our strategic weapons but our economic power -- and we must never forget that fact.” 
-House Speaker Thomas O’Neill (D-MA)
(Patricia Koza, United Press International, March 24, 1983) 

Called the president's speech a “dangerous hoax,” and said Reagan “is deliberately misinforming the American people to justify the implementation of his ‘Star Wars’ military buildup.” 
-Randall Kehler, national coordinator of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign
(Patricia Koza, United Press International, March 24, 1983) 

Accused Reagan of presenting “an unbalanced view of Soviet military strength with his exaggerated rhetoric and use of one-sided information,” referring to Reagan's decision to use top secret intelligence photos to support his arguments. 
-Senator Carl Levin (D-MI)
(Patricia Koza, United Press International, March 24, 1983) 

“I see no prospect of deploying on ground or in space with missiles or lasers an effective defense of the nation, of the people, of the cities. I know of no development that changes the predominance of the offense. This is a fact due to the enormity of the destructive power of the nuclear weapons that we're dealing with.” 
-Dr. Sidney Drell, professor of physics and deputy director of Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center
(“Reagan: Space Defense,” The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, March 24, 1983.) 

“I think that a lot of people perhaps last night as they watched the President might have been mildly alarmed or confused, but I think in the final analysis most people in this country feel that we are -- that we are spending colossal sums on defense, which we are. And it's very difficult, as other persons review and critique the President's speech last night and point out, for example, that weapons procurement will be up 97% in 1984 over 1981; that by the year 1987 -- by the year 1988, 87% of all the income taxes collected in this country will be spent on defense; and it's very difficult to believe that 535 members of Congress are expected to believe that somehow or other if we don't spend a $1,600 billion on defense, if we cut that back $100 billion, that somehow or other we're fatally jeopardizing our national defense. I just don't believe the American people are going to believe that.” 
-Senator Dale Bumpers (D-AR)
(“Reagan: Space Defense,” The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, March 24, 1983.) 

Defensive systems are more complicated and expensive than offensive weapons, Garwin says, and each defense can be countered with a quicker, less expensive offensive weapon. 
-Richard Garwin, former defense consultant and IBM consultant
(Paul Raeburn, “Give Reagan’s High-Tech Defense Idea A Chance: Scientists,” The Associated Press, March 26, 1983) 

“I think it would be extremely difficult and maybe impossible.” 
-Hans Bethe, physicist at Cornell University and developer of the atomic bomb
(Paul Raeburn, “Give Reagan’s High-Tech Defense Idea A Chance: Scientists,” The Associated Press, March 26, 1983) 

“We are seeing a more exaggerated and disingenuous presentation of the Soviet threat than we have seen it in the past.” 
-Representative Les Aspin (D-WI)
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

“To inject and hurl out this new idea while the whole world is waiting for the U.S. to come up with a reasonable arms control proposal I find bizarre.  Can you imagine the reaction here and abroad if Yuri Andropov had made this speech?” 
-Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

Labeled Reagan's characterization of the Soviet threat as “huckstering misimpressions,” said that by “raising the remote possibility of a sci-fi defense against Soviet missiles, he risked destabilizing the U.S.-Soviet military balance -- already dangerously tenuous.” 
-Atlanta Constitution Editorial
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

Called the speech “an appalling disservice.” 
-Chicago Sun-Times Editorial
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

“Reagan's vision of a 21st century in which the U.S. will be hermetically sealed against all nuclear attack provides no answer to the problem of how our national security is to best be addressed now and in the next couples of decades.” 
-Detroit Free Press Editorial
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

“Who says that this technique will be used only to knock out missiles in the sky? If it's such a good technique, why not use it to knock out things on the ground?” 
-Simon Ramo, scientist at TRW, Inc.
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

“The cost is unlimited,” he says, “because what we try to do in defending the country, the Russians will attempt to negate by penetrating the system.” 
-Jeremy Stone, director of the Federation of American Scientists
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

“It is possible to develop a system that can shoot down one missile, but that is a long cry from developing a system that does not leak,” he says. Such shortcomings in a nuclear defense system clearly would be disastrous. Even if a system were 90% effective, the leakage of just a fraction of Moscow's 8,500 or so warheads could be devastating. 
-Wolfgang Panofsky, physicist at Stanford
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

“The critical failure of all these defensive systems is that they must be perfect. Less than that and they are ruinous. What the President is offering is a cruel hoax.” 
-Kosta Tsipis, scientist at MIT
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

Prepared a petition of leading scientists opposing space weaponry.  It concludes: “If space weapons are ever to be banned, this may be close to the last moment in which it can be done.” 
-Carl Sagan, astronomer at Cornell
(Walter Isaacson, “Reagan for the Defense: his vision of the future turns the budget battle into a star war,” Time, April 4, 1983) 

“For strategic forces, we need weapons such as cruise missiles, Trident and Stealth bombers that will ensure a survivable, stable deterrent, not "Star Wars" fantasies or excessively expensive B1s. There is no acceptable way of deploying the MX missile. We should move on to a smaller, mobile, single-warhead missile.” 
-Walter Mondale
(Walter Mondale, “Walter F. Mondale: Maintain Prudent Increases,” Washington Post, April 5, 1983) 

“It's really a declaration of a new arms race.” 
-Jerome Wiesner, former White House science adviser and past president of MIT
(R. Jeffrey Smith, “Reagan plans new ABM effort,” Science, April 8, 1983) 

Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), a distinguished member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pointed out on the ABC television program “This Week With David Brinkley” that it will be 10 years before any practical decisions can be made about a space-based missile-defense program.  “Yet,” he went on, “here we are embroiled in this kind of debate at a period of time when we really need to be focusing on next week's budget, next week's military strategy and the question of whether we can achieve . . . arms-control stability within this decade. So it is the wrong debate at the wrong time.” 
-Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA)
(Marvin Stone, “Confusing the Defense Issue,” US News & World Report, April 11, 1983) 

“The first reason is that technologically it amounts to an impossible dream. But aside from that problem, there are many reasons why it's a bad idea -- even if the ABM system eventually could be made to work. Such a system would still leave the U.S. vulnerable to other kinds of nuclear threats, upset our allies, violate the 1972 anti-ABM treaty with Russia, possibly destabilize the superpower balance of power and cost a fantastic amount of money. I don't fault President Reagan for wishing to change the unsafe and fragile world in which we find ourselves. But let's not kid ourselves. This kind of plan would only make the world a more dangerous place.” 
-Jan Lodal, Former Director of Program Analysis, National Security Council
(“Can Reagan's ''Star Wars'' Plan Really Work? NO -- This system “amounts to an impossible dream,” US News & World Report, April 11, 1983) 

“I cannot take this proposal seriously. It is fundamentally flawed and just hasn't been thought out.” 
-Kostas Tispis, MIT
(Gregory M. Lamb, “Anti-missile defense is feasible now, says one advocate,” Christian Science Monitor, April 14, 1983.) 

In the meeting, Reagan tried to convince his party colleagues that he had won public backing for large defense increases with his star wars speech nearly three weeks ago outlining the Soviet menace. Dan Quayle of Indiana gaped at the President. “I found it hard to believe he was saying that,” Quayle commented later. “My state is conservative, but people don't see the Soviet threat. They just ask, ‘Why do we need these expenditures?’” 
-Senator Dan Quayle (R-IN)
(Walter Isaacson, “How the Defense Budget Crashed,” Time, April 18, 1983) 

“In his distaste for bilateral efforts to manage the superpower rivalry and his instinctive predilection for unilateral ones, Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end. The most striking, and questionable, theme in his star wars speech was his apparent belief that the U.S. could mobilize its scientific community and its economic resources in quest of an impenetrable antiballistic-missile shield over the entire nation without triggering perilously destabilizing countermeasures, both offensive and defensive, on the part of the U.S.S.R. Reagan's views notwithstanding, there is little reason to hope that the many handicaps of the Soviet economy will be decisively advantageous to the U.S. in the long run, allowing the U.S. to "beat" the U.S.S.R. in an arms race. There is no question that the Soviet economy is in crisis, but it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis, with which the U.S.S.R. has learned to live over butter. And guns may be bazookas, missiles or space-based antimissile lasers.” 
-Strobe Talbott
(Strobe Talbott, “Playing for the Future; Is the US making the right moves toward Moscow in arms control?” Time, April 18, 1983) 

“You will be opening a new phase in the arms race.” 
-Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the US
(CNN, Cold War, “Episode 22: Star Wars,” episode script, http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/22/script.html) 

“Engaging in this is not just irresponsible, it is insane…Washington’s actions are putting the entire world in jeopardy.” 
-Yuri Andropov, Soviet Premier
(“Andropov’s Replies to ‘Pravda’ on US Military Policy,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 28, 1983) 

“The scientific community knows that it will not work.” 
-Stephen Budiansky
(Stephen Budiansky, “US strategy: President Reagan opts for anti-missile defence,” Nature, March 31, 1983)

The prospects for missile defense were “so remote that it should not serve as the basis for public expectations or national policy.” 
-Office of Technology Assesment
(William Doerner, “Shooting for the Stars,” Time, January 14, 1985)