The American Spectator

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In Memoriam

(Page 2 of 2)

Many authors have paid tribute to his generosity. Also among Baen Books's charities were large donations of books to U.S. servicemen overseas and in the Navy.

But before that, Jim Baen, Larry Niven and others had been responsible for something else.

In November, 1980, with President Reagan in the White House, a group of science-fiction writers including Poul Anderson, Greg Bear and Robert Heinlein (they coincide to some extent with the Man-Kzin writers), astronauts including Buzz Aldrin, Pete Conrad and Philip K. Chapman, space scientists and engineers, aerospace industry executives, computer scientists, military officers and others, met, initially at Larry Niven's California house, hosted by his wife Marilyn, to form the Citizen's Advisory Council on National Space Policy. Jim Baen was a major formative influence on the council.

It was to be, in terms of its effect and outcomes, one of the most extraordinary private initiatives of modern times. The caliber of some of the members meant that, with the coming of the Reagan Administration, it had direct input into government at the highest level.

The Council held regular meetings and reported to the National Security Advisor until 1988, after which there was electronic conferencing. Jim Baen attended all meetings from the council's inception and was an important part of the council and its work and direction.

A POSITION PAPER BY THE COUNCIL was instrumental in convincing President Reagan that it was technically feasible to intercept ballistic missiles in flight. With General Daniel O. Graham's High Frontier organization it prepared much of the Strategic Defense Initiative materials that led to President Reagan's speech announcing the development of the SDI as policy in March, 1983.

Leftish science-fiction writer Norman Spinrad, not invited to the council meetings, later claimed the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy was a sort of Trojan Horse devised to get the U.S. government to spend more money on space. Dr. Jerry Pournelle, a major member of the council, replied roundly:

"Although the Council wrote parts of Reagan's 1983 SDI speech, and provided much of the background for the policy, we certainly did not write the speech. Mr. Reagan was a better speechwriter than any of those working for him. By far.

"Norman's open and publicly expressed dislike of Reagan was certainly reason enough not to invite him to a meeting of a group that was first called into existence to write the Space and high-tech Defense portions of the transition team papers...many of those at the Council meeting had not voted for Reagan (some Democrats, some Libertarians) but all of them had sufficient respect for him to be able to work with the group...

"We were not trying to boost space, we were trying to win the Cold War, and we were all agreed that the West ought to win the Cold War. NASA exists now primarily to pay the NASA bureaucracy and keep it busy ($100 billion for a couple of cans they call a space station that won't do what SKYLAB did a long time ago?). Giving NASA more money would not have build a space program.

"But then we always thought winning the Seventy Years War was a good idea ..."

Many presidents would not have had the genius and imagination Reagan showed in accepting so utterly crucial and radical a policy from such outre sources, but as a result, and in the face of all manner of criticism and attack from every left-wing pressure-group including the World Council of Churches, the Strategic Defense Initiative was born.

The Soviet Union tried to match SDI and couldn't, either technically or economically. Gorbachev recognized there was no way out. That was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. It would be simplistic to claim too much. When the end actually came it had many causes, and was due to many people. But the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy with its science-fiction writers and publishers as well as others played its part and more. It was a story worthy of a science-fiction plot itself, but real, and Jim Baen was there on St. Crispin's Day.

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Books, Military