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Institute for Public Accuracy
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"NASA's Strategic Plan" * Military * Nuclear
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WASHINGTON
- April 17 - Today, NASA administrator and former Secretary of
the Navy Sean O'Keefe addressed the National Press Club about
"NASA's Strategic Plan." The following analysts are available
for interviews:
ALICE SLATER,
aslater@gracelinks.org,
www.gracelinks.org/nuke/starwars
Director of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment,
Slater said today: "NASA's strategic plan involves the acceleration
of militarizing space. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard
Myers was head of U.S. Space Command when it published its 1998
'Visions for 2020' report which talked of 'dominating the space
dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and
investment.' In January 2001 the space commission chaired by Donald
Rumsfeld affirmed the same vision -- to dominate the globe from
the high ground of space -- with the official imprimatur of an
incoming Secretary of Defense.... It's particularly troubling
that this strategic plan is being announced only days before the
convening of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee
meeting in Geneva." Slater will be going to Geneva for that conference.
She added: "The U.S. is sabotaging global disarmament. Hopes for
meaningful progress towards nuclear disarmament have been shattered,
particularly by the shameless grab to dominate space." [A PDF
file of "Visions for 2020" is at: www.gsinstitute.org/resources/extras/vision_2020.pdf
-- and the Rumsfeld space commission report is at: www.defenselink.mil/pubs/space20010111.html]
BRUCE GAGNON,
globalnet@mindspring.com,
www.space4peace.org
Director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power
in Space, Gagnon said today: "Immediately after his appointment
by George W. Bush, O'Keefe told the nation that all of NASA's
missions in the future would be 'dual use.' This of course means
that the distinction between civilian and military technologies
will be rubbed out. The military takeover of the space program
is near complete."
KARL GROSSMAN,
kgrossman@hamptons.com,
www.fair.org/extra/writers/grossman.html
Professor at the State University of New York, Grossman is
author of The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat
to Our Planet. He said today: "At all of our peril, O'Keefe is
moving to expand NASA's program of using nuclear power in space
-- including reviving the decades-old notion of building nuclear-powered
spacecraft. What if the Columbia shuttle had been nuclear-powered?
Nuclear debris would have spread over Texas and Louisiana. Still,
two days after the Columbia tragedy, NASA advanced its new $3
billion space nuclear program, Project Prometheus. It is being
pushed despite the development of new safe space energy systems,
including solar-electric propulsion and solar sails."
###
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