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In the wake of the court-martial order this week, Colonel Nickerson was busily getting into step with heady speculations that the U.S. might have on its hands a new Billy Mitchell. At week's end he put out a statement "to clarify my intentions in taking the action I did," in which he reiterated the Army's claim that it ought to have its own intermediate-range ballistic missile. "Both technically and tactically this weapon is very similar to artillery," he said, "and very dissimilar to aircraft." Nickerson's attorney, Robert K. Bell, former law partner of Alabama's Senator John Sparkman, implied that during the trial he might well grill high defense officials, from Charles Erwin Wilson on down.