Word: brennan
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Wholesale Intrusions. In the Davis case, the state contended that because the detention occurred during the investigatory rather than accusatory stage, there was no need to establish probable cause. Not so, wrote Justice William Brennan; to allow such investigatory seizures "would subject unlimited numbers of innocent persons to harassment and ignominy. Nothing is more clear than that the Fourth Amendment was meant to prevent wholesale intrusions on the personal security of our citizenry, whether these intrusions be termed 'arrests' or 'investigatory detentions.' " Since the seizure was improper, Brennan continued, the resulting fingerprints could not be used...
...format of the book is a panel discussion, with Jerome B. Wiesner and Senator George S. McGovern arguing against development of the ABM and Donald G. Brennan and Leon W. Johnson, General, USAF (retired), arguing for it. The introduction by former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey is a reasonably effective though slightly rhetorical attempt to place opposition to the ABM in the context of general unclear disarmament. The epilogue, by Associate Justice William O. Douglas, is similar, arguing against the ABM from the standpoint of a man committed to total disarmament and the rule of international law. It is much less...
...Brennan-Johnson position has two major arguments. The first is that an anti-ballistic missile system would considerably reduce U.S. Casualties in the event of nuclear war. Brennan believes that an ABM deployment costing between $10 and $20 billion could reduce casualties from 80 to 120 million to something like 20 to 40 million; a reduction from almost half the population to less than a fifth. He further contends, incontestably, given the urban concentration of American industry and assuming his previous statistics are accurate, that the nation's loss of productive capacity in a nuclear exchange would be reduced...
Wiesner disposes of the first argument in short order. The figures Brennan cites are highly suspect on technological grounds, and he admits they are applicable only "assuming that the Soviets do not make a major increase in their offensive forces in response to our improved defense." The ABM would be the most incredibly complex electronic-mechanical system ever built, with all the fallability such complexity implies. The ABM's reliability could never be tested under conditions approximating those of a nuclear attack, simply because there is no way of simulating all the conditions of a nuclear attack. For example...
...Brennan replies, that argument presumes that the U.S. and the Soviet Union will maintain their present definitions of the minimum loss they are willing to inflict upon each other...