Editors Urged to Win Support for ‘Star Wars’

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, calling President Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative a “noble quest,” asked the nation’s newspaper editors Thursday to help build public support by clearing up misconceptions about the program.

Weinberger repeatedly stressed that Reagan’s effort to design anti-missile defenses that could be placed in space is only a research program.

In addition, Weinberger challenged what he called three “areas of misunderstanding.” He said the Administration’s approach would not be destabilizing because the Soviet Union has invested far more in such research than the United States; that strategic defense efforts can be the key that finally brings about reductions in the countries’ nuclear arsenals, and that the program would enhance the security of America’s allies as well as the United States proper.

“Technology offers us, I think, the hope of enhanced deterrence and assured security,” Weinberger told the American Society of Newspaper Editors. “We must be ever mindful that it is far better to have the ability to destroy a potential attacker’s weapons, than to threaten peoples’ lives.”