GAGNON: The Global Network is an international grassroots organization that is trying to build the international constituency to protect space from warfare and from contamination and from this bad seed that I talked about. Most people have heard of the Cassini campaign, and I was the one that organized that. That would be our landmark, actually.

LOTTMAN: The two recent flight tests, the one this past October and the one this Tuesday—put those into perspective for us.

GAGNON: For me, the most important thing is that originally they were gonna have 19 of these tests of the NMD system. And now they're saying they're only gonna have three before they go and recommend to the President whether or not the deployment should occur immediately. And I think this is an indication that they're beginning to feel the pressure of a growing international movement against the reinvigoration of Star Wars. I'm very hopeful that we see this happening, that they're feeling that pressure.

But I think that the fact that they've had one success and one failure, it doesn't indicate much to us. We know that the first test, they had more trouble with it than they'd like to admit, and now with the second test, the failure, I think this indicates that they're moving much too quickly. They're trying to push this whole system much sooner than they really have it down technologically. And I think that's a clear sign of desperation on their part.

Again, they're hearing the footsteps, they're feeling the pressure of the growing movement to try to stop it. So they're really trying to circumvent that by pushing ahead with this idea of just having three tests, and moving towards early deployment as soon as possible.

LOTTMAN: The pressure building to stop missile defense—you think that's a reason they're trying to accelerate this program—what about the official line? That potentially hostile countries' developments in missile technology are just going faster than expected, and that's why we are in such a hurry?

GAGNON: I don't think that has anything to do with it, because we all know the fact of the matter is that there's no real enemy out there. They are kind of fabricating an enemy when they bring forward this very inept North Korea missile system. We know from satellite technology that it's a very primitive system. There's no real motivation at the present time that anyone can attribute to the North Koreans wanting to drop a nuclear weapon on the United States, knowing that they would be totally inundated in return. So the whole “rogue state” theory doesn't really hold up under close scrutiny.

So what you must look at then is what is the real reason for this push towards deployment, and I think, clearly, it's money. It's the aerospace corporations wanting to get a OK on moving the arms race into space. We know that ballistic missile defense is a trojan horse. The real weapons system that they want to establish in space are space-based lasers—offensive capability in space. And they know they can't come to the American people and say, “this is what we wanna do, please give us your dollars, please give us your acquiescence.” So they come up with this idea of ballistic missile defense. That they're gonna protect us from these rogue states, but it's a fraud.

The truth is, they're hearing the pressure, they have their ear to the railroad tracks, they hear the train coming. The train of sanity, if you will. The train that is saying, it is ludicrous to try to move the arms race into space. That's it's costly, it's destabilizing, and we should not do it. And so they understand that around the world, people are organizing, people around the United States are organizing to stop this. Governments in Europe are beginning to speak out against it, Russia and China are speaking out strongly against moving this arms race into space.

And I think the aerospace corporations and the Pentagon, desperate to deploy weapons in space so they can control and dominate space as they say they intend to do in their document, Vision for 2020, where they talk about taking control of space and not allowing other countries to have access to space. This is what's really behind this.

LOTTMAN: How do you see that progression, from this concept of homeland defense, to domination of space, to really offensive capability in space. How does that play out, starting from where we are today?

GAGNON: I was at a conference at Cape Canaveral last April, they have them every year, it's called Space Congress. And the Pentagon, the NASA, the weapons corporations, they all come and they hold this event every year.

And while I was there I went to a panel discussion on military space. And in it they talked about, they have the offensive technologies ready to deploy in space. Right now it's just a political problem. And they showed their vision for 2025, the first unveiling of it, publicly, there. And in there, clearly, they show that the call for the domination of space, the control of space, again, the ability to deny other countries access to space. They said clearly, the only problem they have today is that they need the American people to support this idea of putting weapons in space. And they said that it's only a matter of time, that someone will hit one of our satellites in space. And they said they are now planning for it, preparing for it, and will be ready to move, because following that, the American people will come on board with this issue.

And I couldn't help but think of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which was passed to make the Viet Nam war really begin to move forward, and that of course, we now know from the historical context, was a fabricated incident in order to create that political opportunity. And so I can't help but wonder if the Space Command, and the people in the Pentagon, are not moving toward this same kind of situation now.

LOTTMAN: As we go along this hypothetical progression, from an ostensibly defensive system to offensive weapons, and this competition to control space, or a potential competition, thinking of the various stages in that process, how is people's personal security affected by that. You see in a lot of the missile defense propaganda, it's this very touchy-feely, kids on the playground, TV ads and that sort of thing. So in the real world, as we put more and more military technology into space on an ongoing basis, what are the ways that really does affect people's security?

GAGNON: I can't imagine that putting weapons into space is gonna have an ounce of security for people. In fact I think it is only gonna make people and our planet more insecure. We all know that war on this planet has just gotten out of hand. And we've reached through technological advancements an unrestrained ability to destroy the Earth. And so the idea that putting this same kind of technology, and even greater technology, with even greater killing capacity, into space, and somehow equating that with security for people, for us here on this planet, for American people, is just ludicrous. And there's just no way.

And I think, as I've gone around and talked to people, people are real clear on this. They understand that putting weapons into space is not gonna make them more secure. They understand that it is only going to create tensions between countries, it is only gonna make warfare even more likely and even more possible, and it's even gonna make the United States—the government of the United States—more secure in thinking that we can go ahead and utilize these systems, because we have this control and dominance.

And so I think they'll be more likely to use these weapons systems, which will make a certain response, I believe, from people like Russia and China and others that are afraid of the United States becoming this unipolar power in the world. It's very clear that the Russians and Chinese want a multipolar, even the Europeans want a multipolar situation in this world.

So I think there's not gonna be any security. And I think there's a moral and ethical question here too. I think we have to ask ourself, what right does our present generation on this Earth have in extending this deadly arms race and this bad seed of war, greed, and environmental contamination into space? I think this is a very important question, and I think it's the most essential question of this whole discussion, about not only ballistic missile defense, but also weapons in space.

LOTTMAN: You mentioned last night that essentially, it is written that space belongs to everybody. What is that protocol, what is the meaning of missile defense in terms of that?

GAGNON: Well, the United Nations, for a long time, has been discussing this whole idea of ownership of space and control of space. And in 1967 they passed an outer space treaty at the UN, that said that space is the province of all humankind. That no country, no person, no corporation, shall control and dominate space, shall own space, no one shall own any of the planets, that they will all be the province of all humankind. A big national park, if you will. An intergalactic park, and that they must be preserved. They must be preserved from warfare, from contamination, from environmental spoilation, if you will. All those kind of concepts. I think it's very important, fundamental concept.

And right now, with the US saying that we are going to move into space, with Ballistic Missile Defense, and as a follow-on, Space-based Lasers, anti-satellite weapons, and other weapons technologies, that we will then be violating the spirit, if not the letter, of this Outer Space Treaty of 1967. The Moon Treaty also calls for no bases, no military on the moon. And we know that there have long been plans in the Pentagon to put US bases on the Moon, in order to control this gravity well between the Earth and the Moon, as to who can come off the planet, and get on and off the planet. So there are big plans in the future, in order to really create bases and stations in space that are controlled by the Pentagon.

LOTTMAN: A lot of the “new economy,” the information economy, does depend on the use of space, for communications satellites, and things like that. Is there a legitimate security concern, as far as the economic importance of those things? That they should be protected somehow? And if there is, what is a constructive way to address that?

GAGNON: Absolutely. There's a tremendous security concern for all the nations of the world. Not just the United States, but every country. Because of our reliance on satellite technologies for everything from telephones to TVs, and on down the line. We all have that concern. All the more reason that we want to ensure that no country, the United States or anyone else, puts any weapons in space. So it's in the interests of everyone, it's in the interests of all the nations and all the peoples, to ensure that no-one puts weapons in space.

Right now, the United States has a grand opportunity. The Russians and the Chinese are asking the United Nations disarmament commission to begin a series of negotiations on an international ban on weapons in space. The United States is refusing to participate in those UN discussions. I don't understand why. Clearly, this is the opportunity that we can seal off space to any country putting weapons in space, and it's the time to do that.

LOTTMAN: Would you propose something similar, as far as the missile threat, to the extent that it does exist, to the extent that there is vulnerability to that, what's another way to address that besides building a space-based missile shield?

GAGNON: I know this story about Greece. The way the Olympics started in Greece. All the nation-states, the city-states, were at war with each other. And so they created the idea of the Olympics, and after the winner each year, at the various Olympic games, they would have to go back, and all the cities had walls around them. And so they would have to go back, and the winner of the Olympics that year would have to go back and tear down that wall around the city. And that's the way they began to try to disarm Greece.

So I think it's a similar situation in today's world. Rather than saying, “In order to create more security, we're going to build our walls higher and thicker and stronger, using lots of resources that could be going for lots of other important things in our societies,” the best way to ensure security, in space and on the Earth of course, is negotiations, and bringing down the numbers of weapons. Being serious about CTB. Being serious about nuclear non-proliferation, and being serious about negotiating a ban on weapons in space. This is the way to ensure that we have security.

LOTTMAN: OK, I'm gonna backtrack a little bit, and get a little nitpicky, people will say that the system that they're talking about today, the weapons themselves, the interceptors and all of that, are actually ground-based. So, what is, I guess in terms of hardware, or in terms of actual plans that you know about for the evolution of this system, what's the link between what they're talking about today, and this notion of weapons in space, weapons deployed in space on a round-the clock basis?

GAGNON: The important point, again, is that BMD is the early technology. It is the first step. It is the Trojan Horse. And following that, already, right now, TRW, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, they're working on follow-on technologies. They have the funding. And they are developing them today. They will soon be deployed—space-based lasers, we're talking about—that will have offensive capability. That will have the ability to hit targets in space, and down to the earth. These are the technologies that they're most interested in. These are the technologies they talk about and envision for 2020, and other internal Space Command documents.

So the BMD system is the way to get the American people to support the idea of having space weapons. By calling them defensive. And then, the follow-on technologies that will soon be deployed thereafter, will be the way that they come in and begin the actual deployment of offensive weapons in space. This is the schedule, this is the plan—it's very well-articulated in their own documents. We don't have to make it up. It's there.