The idea of a war against beings of another world also went back many years before Reagan became President. War hero General Douglas MacArthur spoke of "an ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy." Mayor Achille Lauro of Naples, Italy, quoted MacArthur as telling him, "the earth would have to make a common front against attack by people from other planets."
A few years after MacArthur’s statement, Brig. Gen. John A. McDavid, USAF, Director of Communications-Electronic for the Joint Chiefs of Staff made a similar statement about a possible conflict with extraterrestrials during an Air Force approved speech at Milliken University, Decatur, Illinois. "Before long, people may be forced to realize and accept as a fact that this earth is only an infinitesimal grain of sand in an infinite universe," declared McDavid. "The human is one of many forms of life with which God is concerned and others are superior to us. And if this is true, our meeting with other types of existence in other places in the universe quite likely will increase the potential element of conflict rather than reduce it."
The announcement of the SDI system by Reagan in 1983 was immediately responded to in many sectors of the scientific community as an expensive pie in the sky notion. Scientists declared that it would do nothing but escalate military spending and distrust among the super powers. Outside the Livermore Lab, where many of the systems were being developed, groups demonstrated for an end to the research.
Very few believed that a system could be developed to counter thousands of Soviet missiles being launched at one time. Most of the opinion sided with a statement made by Soviet Chairman Khrushchev back in March 1962.
We can launch missiles not only over the North Pole, but in the opposite direction, too. As the people say, you expect it to come in the front door, and it gets in the window...
Global missiles cannot be spotted in due time to prepare any measures against them. In general, the money spent in the United States to create antimissile systems is simply wasted.
In the UFO community, the SDI system was viewed as a system set up to destroy not Soviet missiles as Reagan was claiming, but to protect earth from a perceived alien invasion. The "alien invasion" remarks that Reagan made after his 1983 announcement of the SDI program, was heralded as further proof that the alien/SDI hypothesis was correct.
The concept of aliens from elsewhere attacking the earth was also not an idea that began in the Reagan administration. Even back in early fifties in movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, images were portrayed of military attacks on the earth by extraterrestrials.
A 1960 report prepared for NASA by the Brookings Institution, claimed that, the discovery of extraterrestrial life could cause the earth's civilization to collapse. The report stated, "societies sure of their own place have disintegrated when confronted by a superior society, and others have survived even though changed."
During the Nixon administration, there was open discussion inside the government about the potential threat from aliens coming to Earth. An article written by Michael Michaud, a career diplomat in the State Department, pointed out the Nixon administration’s worry about extraterrestrials:
Aliens from other solar systems are a potential threat to us, and we are a potential threat to them. Scientists and others have often postulated that extraterrestrial societies more advanced than ours would be less warlike. Regrettably, the stereotypes of the benevolent, super intelligent alien may be as unrealistic as the stereotype of the bug-eyed monster carrying off shapely human females. Even if a species had achieved true peace within its own ranks, it would still be worried about us, and would take the measures it felt were necessary to protect itself. This includes the possibility (not the inevitability) of military action ... Our basic interest will be to protect ourselves from any possible threat to Earth’s security... "
The "evil alien" philosophy was furthered in the Ford administration with a 1975 report produced by the Library of Congress for the House Committee on Science and Technology. It also warned about the possible threats of open contact with extraterrestrials. The report stated, "Since we have no knowledge of their nature, we may be aiding in our own doom"
The alien/SDI speculation has also augmented by a group of witnesses who declared that SDI type weapon systems, both land and space based, were being used to track and target extraterrestrial vehicles as the approach earth. These witnesses include:
In a June 1995 Bay Area Lecture Dr. Steven Greer announces information leaked to him from the North American Air Defense Command in Colorado shows that the Air Force tracks an average of 500 "fastwalkers" (term used for UFOs) entering the earth atmosphere every year.
New York Times Pulitzer prize winning author Howard Blum reports that NORAD deep-space radars track many UFOs.
Two Aerospace engineers working on the AeroJet’s DSP spy satellite claim UFOs are detected coming from deep space two or three times a month.
Author Whitley Strieber, in his book Breakthrough, stated that he had seen part of a document which revealed that the EG&G Corporation is involved in developing defense weapons against extraterrestrials.
Two further sources have told Greer that rogue units within Unacknowledged Special Access Programs, have directed black budget funds to develop SDI weapons to down UFOs. Further the sources have stated that they have been successful in shoot downs.
Bruce Maccabee, a UFO researcher and a scientist involved in meetings dealing with Star Wars, however, stated that he had seen no evidence for this view. Following Reagan’s March 1983 speech announcing the Star Wars program Maccabee stated that:
Special panels got together to try and figure out how they would put together what’s called an architecture or structure of weapons that could actually handle the ballistic missile threat from the Soviet Union... In 1984, I was on a panel, a little group of people from the Naval Surface Warfare Center. We went traveling around to various military bases to find out what other people were doing about space... should the Naval Surface Warfare Center in particular get involved. That connected me up with the government’s Star Wars architecture study, I guess you could call it. For a period of time, I was working on the various aspects of Star Wars.
In all the meetings that Maccabee attended there was no indication that the Star Wars system would be used for anything other than missiles. In an interview with investigative reporter and UFO researcher Linda Howe Maccabee stated:
Well, I can tell you from experience, and I would take lie detector tests on it and swear on a stack of Bibles, a discussion of anything other than Soviet attack never occurred during any of the talks, lectures, discussions, that I participated in... They had long range, short range, intermediate range, missiles launched from submarines. That was always the threat discussed, missiles. And all of the satellites, there was a bunch of satellites supposedly up there that would be monitoring the earth. There ARE satellites up there monitoring the earth. All their sensors are directed toward the earth. None of the sensors are directed away.
If on the surface, there was no plan to use the Star Wars defense to "attack aliens," there was, under the surface, evidence among those who were the designers of the Star Wars system that such uses for the system could be part of the future uses for the system.
Most of the Star Wars weapons components were being designed by a young group of physicists at the Livermore Lab in Livermore California. One of the brilliant physicists working in the skunk works "Special Projects Office" group headed by Lowell Wood, was physicist Peter Hagelstein. Hagelstein went on to invent a critical element of the Star Wars Defense system - the nuclear X-ray laser.