As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mississippi Democrat John Stennis smoothly guided Defense Department appropriations through the Senate with only desultory debates. Expecting similar treatment in this session, the Pentagon sent up one installment of its customarily laconic request for funds.
This time the request was for $22 billion, a part of the military's total budget of $80 billion for fiscal 1970. The bill was a mere five pages long, which figures to about $22 million a word. Included in the Pentagon package was the Nixon Administration's controversial ABM system,...
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