I knew early on that SDI was a boondoggle after listening
to none other than Edward Teller saying in a radio interview that it wouldn't work
because, very simply, even if it could stop, say, ten missiles, the Soviets
would send 100, and if even one, two, or three got through, that would trigger the doomsday scenario. And SDI never actually worked. Some people still
don't realize that all it was was a way of funneling vast sums
of taxpayers' money to Reagan's military-industrial complex
supporters in California and elsewhere. Frances Fitzgerald's
book misses this economic point even as she mocks the
scientific flaws of SDI. She traces the crazy concept partly back to
Hitchcock's TORN CURTAIN and a movie in which Ronnie played a Secret Service agent.
Reagan tended to fantasize that he had actually been in events depicted in scenes from old movies;
CBS did a hilarious and disturbing review of such claims. So calling it STAR WARS,
initially a term of derision after the juvenile Lucas movie, was apt.