The definitive account of the biggest national security issue of our time: the precipitous and politically charged revival of national missile defense. The new Bush administration has wasted no time in making national missile defense the centerpiece of its national security policy and is expected to move forward with testing and eventual deployment of a system to destroy incoming missiles in flight-even though the Russians, the Chinese, and our own European allies have expressed alarm at such action. The system's defenders say that we must press forward if America is to be secure against nuclear, biological, and chemical threats in the decades to come. There's only one problem: No one has ever shown that such a system would actually work. In Hit to Kill, Bradley Graham, a longtime military and foreign affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, tells the behind-the-scenes story of how national missile defense-once considered a discredited relic of the Cold War-was revived during the 1990s to address an emerging Third World missile threat. Graham recounts the political battles surrounding national missile defense during the Clinton administration and the technological trials and tribulations of the major defense firms involved in the project. He reports on the experts who have mobilized in the last year to question the system's unworkability and examines the scientific evidence for and against it. Over the past half century, no proposed weapons system has drawn more argument or more dollars than national missile defense, and Graham explores the reasons for the enduring debate and the costs to the nation of having failed to resolve it.From BooklistThe World Trade Center disaster made, all too vividly, a point that opponents of the Star Wars missile defense system have long stressed: the threat to the U.S. from terrorists using low-tech weapons is far greater than that of a rogue nation launching an intercontinental ballistic missile. But national missile defense remains a cornerstone of Bush administration policy, so this thorough analysis of the program's history, political support, and scientific feasibility is particularly timely. VeteranWashington Post reporter Graham, a foreign and military affairs specialist, follows missile defense from the Johnson administration's ABM Treaty in the '70s, Reagan's Star Wars system in the '80s, and the initially skeptical position of the Clinton administration. But in the late '90s, the Rumsfeld commission's critical report and North Korea's surprising missile success convinced Clinton to support a limited defense system. That change forms the core of Graham's book; he traces the political, diplomatic, and technological developments that shifted many members of the Clinton administration from doubters to believers.Mary CarrollCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reservedReview"Graham weaves a compelling narrative of America's quest for invulnerability, a quest we now know to be an elusive dream." --Publishers Weekly, October 29, 2001"Graham...provides a balanced and disturbing overview of America's capacity to protect itself against incoming missiles." --Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2001About the AuthorBradley Graham has spent more than twenty years working forThe Washington Post in various reporting and editing assignments focused on foreign and military affairs. Most recently, he completed a six-year stint covering the Pentagon. He lives near Washington, D.C.