Tag Archives: Donald Rumsfeld

Profile in Courage #1: Donald Rumsfeld Calls for Missile Defenses, an End to A.B.M. Treaty Impediments

February 1, 1999Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): On the 28 January edition of The NewsHour with Jim
Lehrer, Donald
Rumsfeld made a signal contribution to the debate over defending America against ballistic missile
attack: The influential former Congressman, White House Chief of Staff, U.S. Ambassador to
NATO and Secretary of Defense declared that the United States needed to deploy anti-missile
defenses.

This statement is all the more powerful for it coming on the heels of Secretary Rumsfeld’s
most
recent act of public service — as chairman of the blue-ribbon, congressionally mandated
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. Under his leadership, the
Rumsfeld Commission unanimously concluded that the Nation likely would have “little or no
warning of emerging ballistic missile threats.”

Among the highlights of Mr. Rumsfeld’s appearance — together with, among others, Robert
Bell,
a senior member of President Clinton’s National Security Council staff responsible for defense
programs and arms control — were the following comments:

“I do [think a national missile defense…is necessary.] There is no question but that the threat
is
there. And I was very pleased to hear Secretary Cohen state that fact, that the threat is here
and now. I think that the decision on the part of the administration to put some money behind
that decision was also important, as well as the decision to recognize the fact that the A.B.M.
Treaty is inhibiting development of and deployment of such a program….”

“The argument that we shouldn’t do anything until we can do everything simply doesn’t
work.
Throughout the whole history of mankind there have been advances in military technologies
where there is an improved offense and then an improved defense and an improved offense.
It’s never been static; it will not be in this instance.”

“There just isn’t a doubt in my mind. If we relieve ourselves of the restrictions of [the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty so that we do not have to do contortions to do what is the
quickest, cheapest, most effective way of doing this [developing a missile defense system], and
organize to do it in an effective way, that the United States will be able to do it.”

The Bottom Line

The American people owe a debt of gratitude to Secretary Rumsfeld for his strategic vision,
his
commitment to principle and his forceful leadership. It is these qualities — and the myriad
achievements they have made possible — that prompted the Center for Security to recognize this
“Profile in Courage” with its 1998 Keeper of the Flame award.

Despite Purported Addition of ‘Out-Year’ Dollars, Clinton Still Balks at Deployment of Needed Missile Defenses

January 8, 1999Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): There he goes again. Yesterday’s New York Times
revealed that President
Clinton has decided to “pledge about $7 billion over the next six years to build a limited [national]
missile defense system.” The article hastens to add, however, that “he will leave a final decision
on whether to build it until later.” In other words, the President wants to take credit for
doing
something about the Nation’s vulnerability to ballistic missile attack without actually doing
anything to mitigate it.

Sound familiar? In fact, the Clinton announcement concerning missile defenses fits the profile
of a
classic Dick Morris-style political “triangulation” maneuver. As the
Times article reported:

and to head off growing criticism from Republicans in Congress that Mr. Clinton
was not doing enough to defend the Nation from a missile strike

Threat? Oh, Yes, the Threat

Not until the end of the New York Times report is there mention of the fact that
the danger of
such a strike is growing to the point where deployment of a missile defense is necessary.
The article says:

Gen. Shelton: ‘What, Me Worry?’

In fact, earlier this week the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh
Shelton, in
testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee once again displayed the
Administration’s insouciance about the threat of missile attack. This appearance follows a famous
one before the Committee on 29 September 1998 — in which Gen. Shelton and his fellow Chiefs
were severely upbraided by Senators of both parties over their failure of leadership concerning the
Nation’s preparedness for conflict. 1

In particular, General Shelton was taken to task for his assertion in a 24 August letter to the
then-chairman of the Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee, Senator Jim Inhofe
(R-OK), in which
he declared: “We remain confident that the intelligence community can provide the necessary
warning of the indigenous development and deployment by a rogue state of an ICBM threat to the
United States.”

On that occasion, the JCS notoriously insisted on characterizing as “an unlikely development”
a
key conclusion of the blue-ribbon, congressionally mandated commission led by former
Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 2 — namely, the
prospect that “through unconventional, high-risk
development programs and foreign assistance, rogue nations could acquire an ICBM capability in
a short time and that the intelligence community may not detect it.”

Three days later, however, the Armed Services Committee took testimony from
Deputy
Secretary of Defense John Hamre, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joseph
Ralston and Lieutenant General Lester Lyles, the Director of the Ballistic
Missile Defense
Organization. These senior officials were forced to admit that they could no longer
sustain the
central tenet of the Administration’s resistance to the prompt deployment of missile defenses:
The ballistic missile threat from a rogue state like North Korea is now recognized as likely to
emerge before the U.S. can deploy effective anti-missile systems to defeat it. 3

This week, though, Gen. Shelton was back to describing the threat as a future
problem. In
Tuesday’s hearing, he declared that the decision about investing funds to deploy missile defenses
would depend on “Whether or not the threat, when measured against all the other threats that we
face, justifies the expenditure of that type of money for that particular system at the time when the
technology will allow us to field it.”

More Smoke & Mirrors

If there were any lingering doubt that the Clinton Administration’s missile defense
announcement
amounts to a political gambit, it should be dispelled by the fact that whatever funds it
earmarks
for “deployment” of a National Missile Defense will appear in the Pentagon’s “out-year”
budgets. Like desert mirages, such allocations have a funny way of disappearing as the
out-years
become the current budget year. The phenomenon is much in evidence in President
Clinton’s
announcement last Saturday that he would be adding $110 billion to the defense budget — the vast
majority of any new money coming far in the out-years and after (under the most optimistic
scenario) he leaves office.

More to the point, the program that the Administration wants us to believe it is
committed
to deploying at some future point remains a less flexible, less effective, less near-term
and far
more expensive approach to defending the United States against ballistic missile attack
than an alternative recommendation by another blue-ribbon commission — the Heritage
Foundation’s Missile Defense Study Team (Team B) — which could promptly begin
deployment. 4 Thanks to the fact that the taxpayer has
already invested some $50 billion in the
U.S. Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system, essentially the entire infrastructure needed
to
begin defending the American people — as well as their forces and allies overseas —
against
missile strikes is in hand. For what the Navy has confirmed would be an
additional investment
of just $2-3 billion total spent over the next five-years, the Nation could start to field
sea-based
missile defenses that meet what the Joint Chiefs have described as their two requirements: a
system that is technically “feasible” and “practical” (read, affordable).

The Bottom Line

The American people should be under no illusion: The Clinton Administration remains
determined to defer any decision to deploy the defenses needed to protect the Nation, its citizens
and territory against the growing danger of ballistic missile attack. In the continuing absence of
presidential leadership and in the face of an increasing threat, the 106^th
Congress must move
with dispatch to make it the policy of the United States government to deploy defenses
against missile attack as soon as technologically possible. 5

1See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Wanted: An End to the ‘Hollow’ Military — and a
‘Feasible,’ ‘Practical’ Missile Defense (No. 98-D
167, 29 September 1998).

2See Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for
Beginning Deployment of Missile Defenses ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_133″>No. 98-D 133, 15 July 1998) and Wall Street
Journal Lauds Rumsfeld Commission Warning on Missile Threat; Reiterates Call for Aegis
Option in Response (No. 98-P 134, 16 July
1998).

3See So There is a Missile Threat, After All: Clinton
Pentagon Confirms Rumsfeld
Commission’s Central Finding (No. 98-D
169, 6 October 1998).

4The Heritage Foundation’s study can be accessed via the world
wide web at the following
address: href=”http://www.heritage.org/nationalsecurity/teamb”>www.heritage.org/nationalsecurity/teamb.

5 See Senate Should Vote to Defend America ‘As
Soon As Technologically Possible’ (No. 98-D
79, 6 May 1998), Shame, Shame: By One Vote, Minority of Senators
Perpetuate America’s
Vulnerability to Missile Attack (No. 98-D
84, 14 May 1998) and Shame, Shame Redux: As
Clinton Presidency Melts Down, 41 Democrats Continue Filibuster of Bill to Defend
America
(No. 98-D 160, 9 September 1998).

Mission Impossible: Wye Deal Poses Threat to U.S. Intelligence — As Well As Israeli Security, American Interests

October 30, 1998Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): On Monday, the Director of Central Intelligence took an unusual, if not
unprecedented, step: He issued a public defense of a CIA operation. The fact that
George Tenet
felt obliged to write an op.ed. column in the New York Times on behalf of President
Clinton’s
decision — as part of his recent Mideast “Wag the Dove” peacemaking gambit — to put the
Agency formally and squarely betwixt the Israelis and Palestinians is but the most recent cause for
concern about this initiative. If allowed to go forward, Americans and their friends
around the
world are likely to look back on this decision as one of the most insidious of the Clinton
Administration’s counterculture attacks on the integrity and capability of U.S.
intelligence.

Over the years, the Center for Security Policy has warned about many of the previous
manifestations of this counterculture campaign.⁽¹⁾ Among
the most worrisome of these have been:
the politicization of intelligence⁽²⁾; a disregard for
the most fundamental information and
personnel security practices⁽³⁾; the purposeful compromise
of sensitive information — even
where doing so jeopardizes perishable “sources and methods” href=”#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾; and dubious appointments
to key posts.⁽⁵⁾

Given this appalling track record, the Clinton Administration’s present intelligence
initiative is
especially troubling for, among others, the following reasons:

The ‘Dumbing Down’ of U.S. Intelligence

The “honest broker” role the Wye deal contemplates for the CIA will exacerbate the problem
of
getting honest intelligence. After all, history suggests that a simple axiom is at work:
To the
extent sensitive information suggests the failure of policy, it will be unwelcome by those
responsible for the policy. Recognizing this reality, the intelligence community
sometimes
becomes self-censoring; rather than submit unwelcome data, it is suppressed or presented in a way
that its political masters deem acceptable. In other instances, when the intelligence community
does speak truth to power, policy-makers choose to suppress the unwanted intelligence, or to
ignore its ominous implications. Consider illustrative examples of this phenomenon over the past
three decades:

The 1990s:

The Clinton Administration has repeatedly politicized the U.S.
intelligence community’s
products — and even the processes by which they are developed.

Item: Denying the Missile Threat. For example, in
December 1995, the CIA injected into a
Senate debate on missile defenses a highly controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
on the ballistic missile threat to the United States. In order to reach a preposterous, but
politically desired, conclusion — namely, that the U.S. would face no threat of missile attack
for at least fifteen years — the intelligence community permitted three, highly debatable
assumptions to drive its analysis: 1) Russia and China would not pose such a threat; 2) neither
they nor anyone else would assist rogue states to acquire missile-related technology and
know-how; and 3) only the threat to the continental United States would be addressed since the
states of Alaska and Hawaii were inconveniently located too close to potential adversaries with
access to shorter-range missiles.

CIA Director Robert Gates

⁽⁶⁾

⁽⁷⁾

New York
Times

Item: Ignoring Chinese Proliferation. Other prime examples
of the Clinton team’s
manipulation of U.S. intelligence have arisen in connection with Chinese sales of sensitive
technology to Pakistan. Despite hard evidence to the contrary, the State Department insisted
in 1996 that “there is not a sufficient basis” to charge Beijing with proliferation of nuclear-related
equipment “to warrant a determination that sanctionable activity occurred.” Having
determined that the Chinese had not done anything sanctionable, the Administration added
insult to injury: It declared that Secretary of State Warren Christopher had extracted a
promise from the Chinese government that they would not engage in such activities again! href=”#N_8_”>⁽⁸⁾

⁽⁹⁾

The 1980s:

An interesting permutation on the phenomenon of self-censorship of
intelligence occurred
during the Reagan Administration. Despite the President’s demonstrated willingness to speak
candidly about the dangers posed by potential adversaries and a CIA Director of impeccable
integrity, William J. Casey, elements of the U.S. intelligence community
consistently balked at
reaching warranted determinations which would support the policy finding that the USSR was in
violation of key arms control obligations. In particular, the CIA’s Arms Control Intelligence Staff
(ACIS) proved adept at finding ambiguity and uncertainty in virtually every instance where
common sense and the totality of the evidence pointed to a systematic Soviet program of
deception and cheating. (Remarkably, the Agency has continued to exhibit a willingness in Mr.
Gates’ words “to hedge, soften or otherwise alter its assessments” about such violations
even
after the breakup of the Soviet Union led to revelations confirming the validity of charges
that,
for example, the Kremlin had deployed an illegal territorial defense against ballistic missiles and
maintained an active biological warfare program.)

The 1970s:

Particularly relevant to a discussion of the implications of the Wye deal for U.S.
intelligence is an episode of politicized dumbing down of intelligence during the Nixon
Administration. As Dr. Irving Moskowitz recounts in a monograph published
in 1993:

Yet the Nixon Administration, which had sponsored the ceasefire
talks and pressured the Israelis to accept the terms of the agreement, was
reluctant to acknowledge the Egyptian violations.

Defense Secretary Melvin Laird declared that it was ‘impossible
to prove or disprove Israeli charges” about the missiles. He said that the
U.S. would undertake a ‘study’ of the Israeli allegation.

Jerusalem Post

All that really mattered, the
‘sources’ insisted, was that with the ceasefire in place, Israel should agree to
broader Arab-Israeli negotiations sponsored by U.N. Secretary General
Gunnar Jarring

State Department spokesman Robert McCloskey asserted
that the Administration’s ‘primary interest’ was the Jarring talks, not the
missile crisis

“The problem was not that the U.S. had acted in bad faith, nor that it was
indifferent to the threat posed to Israel by the Egyptian violations. The
problem was that by injecting itself between the Arabs and the Israelis, the
U.S. was soon compelled to balance conflicting global interests that quickly
dragged it into a conflict with an ally.

Violating the Most Basic of Intelligence Security Practices

The insertion of U.S. intelligence personnel into a situation where such conflicting global
interests
are once again virtually sure to arise is doubly reckless since it may prove to be hazardous to their
health. At a minimum, the covers will be blown of CIA officers charged with interfacing
with
the Palestinian secret service. This is especially troublesome since there is every reason
to
believe the United States will, in the future, have an increasing need for the services of skilled
professionals with the experience and language abilities able to operate effectively in the Middle
East. Worse yet, such an arrangement may jeopardize the lives of liaison officers in circumstances
where their true identities are known to people whose commitment to fighting what the U.S. and
Israel may regard as “terrorists,” but Arafat and his lieutenants routinely describe as martyrs and
comrades, is — at best — uncertain.

Not least, the need will only grow for intelligence about the danger posed by
terrorists
operating in, from or through areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. While the
official line is that close working relations with the PA will give the U.S. intelligence community
access to more and higher quality information than the latter could otherwise acquire, this strains
credulity. Just as it is ludicrous to believe that the successor to the KGB — which has spawned
and is intimately connected to much of the Russian mafia — can be a reliable partner in combating
international organized crime,⁽¹⁰⁾ the price of doing
business with PLO/PA is likely to be relying
upon their sources and methods and compromising any independent ones the U.S.
may have. On
net, this is a formula for less, and certainly less reliable, intelligence about the evolving capabilities
of the terrorist threat to American and Israeli interests.

Finally, Israel has grounds for concern that its intelligence capabilities
will be degraded —
not just those of the Americans. The Clinton Administration’s penchant for sharing
sensitive
information, including that provided by Israel, without regard for the effect such sharing
might
have on the future availability of such information was clearly demonstrated late last year.

Deeply concerned that the United States was not taking seriously the strategic implications of
Russian assistance to Iran’s ballistic missile program, the Israeli government shared intelligence its
secret services had obtained. This information pointed to an intimate involvement on the part of
senior officials in Russia’s Space Agency and related organizations with transfers of
missile-relevant technology to Tehran. The American response was to dispatch a special envoy to
confront at least one of those implicated, Yuri Koptyev, head of the Russian Space Agency, with
this intelligence in the interest of persuading him to cease and desist. Not surprisingly, while
Russian assistance to Iran does not appear to have stopped, information about it has become
harder to acquire.⁽¹¹⁾

In a way, even more outrageous is the role the Clinton Administration reportedly played when
Israel shared intelligence with the UN Special Commission on Iraq — intelligence former chief
inspector Scott Ritter has described as “invaluable” to his effort to penetrate Saddam Hussein’s
efforts to conceal ongoing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction activities. According to Ritter, the
CIA and State Department objected to his cooperation with the Israelis. Not content with
interfering with the “Operation Shake the Tree” snap inspections made possible by such
Israeli-supplied intelligence,⁽¹²⁾ the Clinton team has taken
to impugning Scott Ritter’s integrity and
loyalty by smearing him as an Israeli spy. The hard feelings, not to say distrust, engendered by
such behavior is poisonous for effective intelligence cooperation with the “partner” that counts —
Israel’s intelligence services.

The Bottom Line

The business of collecting intelligence is an art, not a science. Those involved in this task —
and
in analyzing its products — are overwhelming conscientious, courageous and patriotic individuals.
Their job of providing support to policy-makers in a way that contributes to the adoption of
sound and realistic security policy decisions is all-too-often a thankless one. The foregoing
critique is intended to recognize these realities and to discourage courses of action that will
greatly complicate the business of intelligence collection — and perhaps make it substantially more
dangerous — in an important part of the world. It is also intended to warn that, by so doing, the
quality of U.S. intelligence stands to suffer and, with it, the contribution the CIA and its sister
agencies can make to this country’s national security and that of its most important and reliable
friend in the Middle East, Israel.

– 30 –

1. Unfortunately, American intelligence has not been the only target
of the Clinton
Administration’s counterculture agenda. The U.S. military has been a special target as evidenced
by the combined effects of: sustained and draconian budget cuts; social experimentation and other
assaults on the armed forces’ culture, esprit de corps and code of conduct; and a leadership crisis
in the uniformed services thanks to the systematic promotion of officers in whom their
subordinates often lack confidence by dint of a perceived, undue willingness to hew to a
dishonest, but politically correct, party line.

2. See, for example, the Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled It Walks Like a Duck…: Questions
Persist That Clinton C.I.A.’s Missile Threat Estimate Was Politically Motivated
(No. 96-T
122, 4 December 1996) and Well Done, Weldon: Senior Legislator Refuses to
Accept Factually
Incorrect ‘Political Correctness’ From Gen. Lyles ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_167″>No. 97-D 167, 6 November 1997).

3. See, for example The Clinton Security Clearance
Meltdown: ‘No-Gate’ Demonstrates ‘Its
the People, Stupid (No. 94-D 32, 25 March
1994), Sex And Insecurity: Is Clinton’s
Misconduct Endangering More Than His Presidency? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_27″>No. 98-D 27, 10 February 1998) and
An ‘Environmental’ Disaster: Clinton Insecurity Policies Are Creating Conditions
That Invite
Intelligence Fiascos (No. 96-T 116, 21
November 1996).

4. See, for example S.O.S.: Save Our Space Station —
and More Tax-Dollars — From Being
Squandered in Al Gore’s ‘Russian Cooperation’ Scam ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_164″>No. 98-D 164, 21 September 1998) and
Good News, Bad News For U.S. Intelligence: State I.G. Clears The Gatis; Rep.
Solomon Asks
FBI Investigation of John Huang (No. 97-D
12, 23 January 1997).

5. See, for example, In Lake’s Wake, A Higher
Standard For D.C.I. (No. 97-D 41, 18
March
1997), ‘In Lake We Trust’? Confirmation Make-Over Exacerbates Senate Concerns
About
D.C.I.-Designate’s Candor, Reliability (No. 97-T 04, 8
January 1997), and The Intelligence
Failure In Iraq: What Did George Tenet Know — And When Did He Know It?
(No. 97-D 62, 5
May 1997).

6. See It Walks Like a Duck…: Questions Persist That
Clinton C.I.A.’s Missile Threat
Estimate Was Politically Motivated (No. 96-T 122,
4 December 1996).

7. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
So There Is A Missile Threat, After All: Clinton
Pentagon Confirms Rumsfeld Commission’s Central Finding ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_169″>No. 98-D 169, 6 October 1998)
and Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld Commission Add Fresh Impetus to
Case for
Beginning Deployment of Missile Defenses (No. 98-D
133, 15 July 1998).

8. See the Casey Institute’s Perspective entitled
Clinton’s Flim-Flam on Chinese Proliferation:
Even the Washington Post Can’t Conceal Its Contempt ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-C_46″>No. 96-C 46, 14 May 1996).

9. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
‘There You Go Again’: More Chinese Proliferation,
More Clinton Politicization Of Intelligence (No.
96-D 56, 12 June 1996)

10. Incredibly, just such a scheme is being pursued by the Clinton
Administration’s FBI.

11. See The Buck Stops With Al Gore:
Veep-Approved Rip-Off By Russia of U.S. Taxpayer,
Technology Now Threatens An Americans Life ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_89″>No. 97-D 89, 27 June 1997).

12. See the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Sauce For The Goose: Madeleine Albright’s Lies
About Iraq Make Her Another Candidate For Resignation, Impeachment ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_153″>No. 98-D 153, 27
August 1998) and Bipartisan Initiative to Liberate Iraq Offers Effective Alternative
to
Clinton’s Unraveling Containment ‘Strategy’ (No. 98-D
168, 1 October 1998).

1998 Keeper of the Flame Award: Donald Rumsfeld

October 26, 1998Center for Security Policy

In the company of roughly 350 fellow policy practitioners — top legislators and congressional staff, executive branch officials (past and present), senior military officers, corporate leaders, diplomats and other admirers — former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last night was honored by the Center for Security Policy for his lifetime of service to the Nation. For his service spanning more than three decades and marked by distinction in both the private and public sectors, the Secretary received the Center’s prestigious “Keeper of the Flame” award for 1998.

Secretary Rumsfeld’s most recent contribution, and the focus of much of the evening’s acclaim, was made in his capacity as Chairman of the congressionally chartered Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. This blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel recently unanimously concluded that the U.S. now was faced with the prospect of “little or no warning” of emerging missile dangers.

The following were among the highlights of Secretary Rumsfeld’s forceful remarks:

“It is not an accident that there are some 25 or 30 countries that have or are seeking and developing ballistic missiles. They are attractive. They are cheap. They are versatile. They can be launched from land and sea. They are versatile in the sense that they can carry chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads.”

“They are particularly attractive because they will arrive at their destination. There is no defense.”

“I am from Chicago, and those of us from Chicago here recall that wonderful statement by Al Capone when he said, ‘You get a lot more with a kind word and a gun than you do with a kind word alone.'”

“You can substitute the word ‘ballistic missile’ and put in the name of some regional Al Capone, and it is every bit as appropriate today.”

“We [the Commission] concluded unanimously that the emerging capabilities are broader, more mature, and evolving more rapidly than had been reported, and that the intelligence community’s ability to provide timely warning had been eroding….There are two important reasons for this. One is deception and denial, and the fact that the countries of the world are very successfully keeping us from knowing what they are doing. They do a great deal underground. Because of espionage, they have learned a great deal about our sources, and methods, and they are quite successful….Second is foreign assistance and trade among these countries that assist them in their development programs.”

“Leaders have to create an environment that is hospitable to the truth. Whether it amounts to bad news or good news, not an environment that forces subordinates to trim, to hedge, to duck, and to fudge….If we know anything from history, it is that weakness is provocative. Weakness invites others into adventures they otherwise would avoid.”

“In short, we are in a circumstance that is new and the policies and approaches that were appropriate when we could rely on extended warning no longer apply.”

The black tie award dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel also marked the Center for Security Policy’s celebration of its tenth anniversary. Among those commemorating the establishment in July 1988 of this unique “policy network” — built upon a large and influential Board of Advisors supported by a small but industrious core staff — and paying tribute to Secretary Rumsfeld were:

Senators Thad Cochran of Mississippi (who introduced Secretary Rumsfeld) andJon Kyl of Arizona (the recipient of the 1994 “Keeper of the Flame” award who expressed his appreciation for “ammunition” provided by the Center to him and others who serve in the “front lines” of the security policy battlefield).

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, Honorary Chairman of the Center’s 10^thAnniversary Gala, who read excerpts of congratulatory messages for Mr. Rumsfeld written by President Gerald Ford, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Steve Forbes, and former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole. (Messrs. Gingrich, Weinberger and Forbes received the Keeper of the Flame award in 1996, 1990 and 1993, respectively.)

New York Times columnist, author and pundit William Safire who provided highly entertaining congratulatory toasts to the Center on its birthday, to Sophia Casey(the widow of William J. Casey and Honorary Chairman of the Center’s 10^thAnniversary Dinner) and Bernadette Casey Smith (Mr. Casey’s daughter), and to Secretary Rumsfeld and his wife, Joyce Rumsfeld.

Other notables present during the evening’s festivities were: former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger; former Secretary of State Al Haig; the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Terrence Dake; former Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming; Representatives Phil Crane of Illinois and Dana Rohrabacher of California; former Secretary of the Navy Will Ball; Kevin Klose, director of the International Broadcasting Bureau; Dr. Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation; and Mrs. Julie Finley. Secretary Rumsfeld paid a personal tribute to two members of the Center’s Board of Advisors who served as Commissioners on the Missile Threat Assessment panel: former Science Advisor to the President William Grahamand former Under Secretary of State William Schneider.

So There Is A Missile Threat, After All: Clinton Pentagon Confirms Rumsfeld Commission’s Central Finding

October 6, 1998Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): Last Friday, top uniformed and civilian Pentagon officials made
something
of a spectacle of themselves on Capitol Hill.

It’s not just that the officials — Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre,
Vice Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Ralston and Lieutenant General Lester
Lyles, the Director of
the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization — were forced to admit to members of the Senate
Armed Services Committee that they could no longer sustain the central tenet of the
Administration’s resistance to the prompt deployment of missile defenses: The ballistic
missile
threat from a rogue state like North Korea is now recognized as likely to emerge
before the
U.S. can deploy effective anti-missile systems to defeat it.

Nor was the spectacle primarily a function of this hearing’s juxtaposition with one the
Committee
had held three days before.⁽¹⁾ On the
earlier occasion, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and each of the four Service Chiefs hewed to the old party line. They parroted the
JCS’s position laid out in an August 24 letter from their chairman, General Hugh Shelton, to the
chairman of the Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee, Senator Jim Inhofe (Republican of
Oklahoma): “We remain confident that the intelligence community can provide the
necessary warning of the indigenous development and deployment by a rogue state of an
ICBM threat to the United States.”

In particular, the JCS dismissed as “an unlikely development” a key conclusion of the
blue-ribbon,
congressionally mandated commission led by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld —
namely, the prospect that “through unconventional, high-risk development programs and foreign
assistance, rogue nations could acquire an ICBM capability in a short time and that the
intelligence community may not detect it.”⁽²⁾

See Some Evil, After All

Then on 2 October, Secretary Hamre and the generals accompanying him were obliged to
acknowledge that they and the intelligence community had in fact been surprised by
North
Korea’s test on August 30^th of a third-stage on its Taepo Dong 1 missile.
Indeed, this
demonstration of the inherent capability to manufacture intercontinental-range ballistic missiles
came along years before it had been expected by the Clinton team. It
happened to validate,
however, the Rumsfeld Commission’s warning that the United States was likely to have
“little or no warning” of a ballistic missile threat from the likes of North Korea, Iran and
Iraq.

General Shelton and Company owe Secretary Rumsfeld and his colleagues an apology — just
as
the Nation owes the Commission a debt of gratitude for helping to shatter the Administration’s
cognitive dissonance about the escalating missile threat.

Fall Back to New Frauds

The real spectacle, though, came when the Defense Department witnesses
proceeded to assure
Senators of two propositions that make the systematic underestimation of the threat pale by
comparison. First, they asserted that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is in no way
interfering with the United States’ pursuit of effective missile defenses. And second, they
claimed that their work on such defenses is proceeding as quickly as possible.

The AEGIS Option Is Not Adequately Funded

The one exception Messrs. Hamre, Ralston and Lyles mentioned in the latter connection
was the Navy’s “AEGIS Option”: an evolution of the fleet air defense system
that is operational
on the world’s oceans, thanks to an investment of some $50 billion to date, so as to permit it to
shoot down ballistic missiles. They confirmed that this promising program was not
receiving
the funds it needs to proceed as quickly as technology would permit. href=”#N_3_”>⁽³⁾

Unfortunately, to correct this shortfall, the Pentagon is actively considering terminating
(either
formally or de facto) the Army’s important Theater High Altitude Area
Defense (THAAD)
program. Were such an ill-advised step to be taken, it would offer proof positive of the adage
that two wrongs do not make a right.⁽⁴⁾

The ABM Treaty is Impeding Sea-Based Missile Defenses

The Defense Department representatives went on to perpetrate another spectacular
fraud.
None mentioned that the AEGIS Option is a case in point of how the ABM Treaty is, in fact,
preventing effective anti-missile systems from being developed and deployed as soon as possible.

If the dead hand of this 26-year-old accord — with a country that no longer exists — were not
still
governing the Clinton policy toward missile defense, there is little doubt as to what would
currently be happening: The Nation would be rapidly evolving its AEGIS infrastructure
so
as to put into place within a few years a competent, world-wide defense against shorter-range
missiles (currently threatening our forces and friends overseas). Absent the ABM
Treaty, moreover, this program would also afford the beginnings of a missile protection
for
Americans here at home for a price tag estimated to total (thanks to the sunk costs) just
$2-3
billion, spent out over the next five years.

The Bottom Line

At this writing, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and General Shelton are about to appear
before the Armed Services Committee. Given the velocity with which these sessions are
producing dramatic changes in Administration positions, perhaps these witnesses will
reveal
that the truth is breaking out not only with respect to the threat, but also with regard
to
what can be done about it.

Under no circumstances should the witnesses be allowed further to insult Senators’
intelligence by promoting the absurd argument that a limited national missile defense
system that literally has to be built from the ground up can be brought on-line faster and
cheaper than one that is largely operational, apart from some relatively minor hardware
and software changes. This defies common sense. So does the line that the ABM Treaty —
which nominally permits the former and explicitly prohibits the latter, sea-based anti-missile
program — is having no impact on the effort to defend America against missile
attack.

Whether the truth on these fronts actually emerges from the Cohen-Shelton hearing or at
some
future event, one thing seems clear: It will become harder and harder to lie to the American
people about their vulnerability to ballistic missile attack and about the availability of near-term,
affordable options for reducing that vulnerability, provided the ABM Treaty is no longer allowed
to be an impediment to bringing defenses on-line. Hats off to Don Rumsfeld and his team for
creating conditions under which such momentous changes may yet result in the deployment of
missile defenses before they are needed, rather than afterwards. href=”#N_5_”>⁽⁵⁾

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Wanted: An End to the ‘Hollow’ Military — and A
‘Feasible,’ ‘Practical’ Missile Defense (No. 98-D
167, 29 September 1998).

2. In his own testimony before the Armed Services Committee on 24
September, Secretary
Rumsfeld scathingly dissected this statement, demonstrating the wishful thinking inherent in
General Shelton’s position. For a precis of this analysis, see Wanted: An End to
the ‘Hollow’
Military — and A ‘Feasible,’ ‘Practical’ Missile Defense ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_167″>No. 98-D 167, 29 September 1998).

3. See (No. 98-D 167, 29 September
1998).

4. See Only the Clinton Team Could Respond to
North Korean, Other Emerging Missile
Threats by Canceling Near-Term T.H.A.A.D. (No.
98-D 159, 3 September 1998).

5. The Center for Security Policy will do its part to celebrate
Secretary Rumsfeld’s immense
contributions by conferring upon him its prestigious “Keeper of the Flame” award at a black-tie
dinner in Washington tomorrow night.

Wanted: An End to the ‘Hollow’ Military —
and A ‘Feasible,’ ‘Practical’ Missile Defense

September 29, 1998Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): At a tempestuous hearing today, the Senate Armed Services Committee
heard the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and each of the four Service chiefs say the
unsayable: Thanks to nearly fifteen years of declining defense budgets (measured in real terms),
to sustained and exceedingly high operational tempos and to the attendant wearing-out of materiel
and hemorrhage of talented personnel, the U.S. armed forces are being hollowed
out.

In testimony that was provided too late to influence the Fiscal Year 1999 defense legislation
— a
point that greatly angered Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Bob Smith (R-NH), Dirk Kempthorne
(R-ID) and others — the JCS Chairman, Gen. Hugh Shelton (USA), and the
Army and Air Force
chiefs of staff (Gen. Dennis Reimer and Michael Ryan,
respectively), the Navy Chief of Naval
Operations (Adm. Jay Johnston) and the Marine Corps Commandant
(Gen. Charles Krulak) —
painted a desperate picture. To any layman, the symptoms they described (notably:
cannibalization of equipment to keep a fraction of the inventory combat ready; obsolescent
weapons; excessive “cross-decking” between incoming and outgoing ships; long-deferred
maintenance and modernization; and serious shortfalls in pilots and other skilled troops — and
acute difficulties in recruiting educated, motivated replacements) are all too reminiscent of what,
in 1979, then-Army Chief of Staff Edward “Shy” Meyer famously dubbed the “hollow”
military.

This ominous state of affairs is hardly surprising. As former Secretary of Defense
James
Schlesinger observed in an article entitled “Raise the Anchor or Lower the Ship” which
appears
in the Fall 1998 edition of The National Interest: “The United States now
spends just over $40
billion a year on procurement. Yet depreciation on our military equipment (at replacement
costs) runs to over $100 billion per year.” (Emphasis added.)

The problem is, of course, larger than a military procurement underfunded by some $60
billion per
year. As Dr. Schlesinger put it:

To continue to fulfill our present commitments and to re-equip the
approved force levels for the more challenging years of the next century would
require roughly 4 percent of the GDP.”

Defending America Against Missile Attack

Arguably, there is no more dramatic example of the grievousness of the shortfall
between
the U.S. military’s capabilities and what will be required of it in the future (and perhaps
the very near future, at that) — than the absence of any deployed national missile
defense
capabilities. This matter was pointedly addressed with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in
today’s
hearing with rather interesting results.

In particular, Senator Smith of New Hampshire asked the JCS whether they had any objection
to
the Senate debating legislation that would make it the policy of the U.S. government to deploy
effective national missile defenses as soon as technologically possible. This question was
prompted, in part, by the way in which the Armed Services Committee’s ranking minority
member, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) recently and shamelessly utilized a letter sent on
24 August
1998 by Gen. Shelton to Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) to justify Sen. Levin’s filibuster of a motion
to proceed to Senate consideration of S.1873, the bipartisan “American Missile Protection Act of
1998.”⁽¹⁾ None of the Chiefs expressed any
opposition to the Senate acting on such a
measure.

For that matter, each of the Joint Chiefs expressed his support for deploying
effective
national missile defenses. They each, more or less, stipulated, however, that there were
three
important conditions that had to be met before such a deployment was warranted: the emergence
of a credible threat and the availability of technology that would permit a “feasible” and
“practical” anti-missile system to be deployed.

Rumsfeld: ‘There is a Threat’

As it happens, on 24 September 1998, the Armed Services Committee took testimony from
another former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,⁽²⁾
who chaired the congressionally
chartered, blue-ribbon Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. On
that occasion, Sen. Inhofe asked Secretary Rumsfeld to react to Gen. Shelton’s correspondence.
The following were among the highlights of Chairman Rumsfeld’s point-by-point rebuttal of the
effort by the JCS Chairman to pooh-pooh the principal conclusion of this bipartisan panel:
We
now are likely to have “little or no-warning” of ballistic missile threats to the United
States.

“[General Shelton’s letter] says ‘After carefully considering the report, we remain confident
that the intelligence community can provide the necessary warning of indigenous development
and deployment by a rogue state of an ICBM threat to the United States.’

“We [the Rumsfeld Commissioners] don’t disagree with that. That is to say, if there
were such a thing as an indigenous development program, we probably would be able
to track it, and provide adequate warning. The problem with it is, an indigenous
development program doesn’t exist. What is stated here, is an illogical
premise.
And you can proceed perfectly logically, to an illogical conclusion. And that’s
where that would take you.”

“Next section. It says…that the Commission points out that ‘through unconventional
high-risk
development programs and foreign assistance, rogue nations could acquire an
ICBM
capability in a short time, and that the intelligence community may not detect it. We view this
as an unlikely development.’

“We do not view it as unlikely. We view it as a
fact. It’s all happened. First of all,
‘unconventional development program,’ is what all those countries are doing, if we’re
what is conventional. No country is going to do what we did. We had totally different
interests in accuracies, and survivability, and in volumes.”

“[Next, Gen. Shelton used the terms] ‘high-risk development programs.’ [The rogue states]
couldn’t care less about safety. Naturally it’s high risk. To characterize it as
high risk,
and therefore it doesn’t exist as a threat, would be wrong.”

“[Next, the General’s letter] says, ‘and foreign assistance.’ Well, of course there’s
foreign
assistance. It’s happening every day, it’s happening as we sit here.”

“[Chairman Shelton acknowledges that] ‘Rogue nations could acquire an ICBM capability.’
They ARE acquiring an ICBM capability. So, I underline: We [i.e.,
the Rumsfeld
Commissioners] do not view it as unlikely. We view it as a fact of life that’s happening
all across the globe.”

In light of this evidence, the Chiefs’ recommendation that action in response to the missile
threat be further deferred is as absurd as would have been the guidance at Bunker Hill in 1776 to
wait until you see the whites of their eyes before arranging to procure muskets.

There Is a Way to Get ‘Feasible’ and ‘Practical’ Missile Defenses —
the AEGIS Option

As the attached article by the Center for Security Policy’s director, Frank J. Gaffney,
Jr. —
which appears in the October 1998, 125^th anniversary edition of the U.S. Naval
Institute’s
Proceedings Magazine — makes clear the United States has at hand an option for
acquiring anti-missile defenses in the near-term. Thanks to the fact that the taxpayer has already
invested some
$50 billion in the U.S. Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system, essentially the entire
infrastructure needed to begin defending the American people, as well as their forces and
allies overseas, against missile attack is in hand. For what the Navy has
confirmed would be
an additional investment of just $2-3 billion total spent over the
next five-years, the Nation
could start to field sea-based missile defenses that are clearly technically “feasible” and eminently
affordable (read, “practical”).

In recent days, members of the Israeli Knesset and the Japanese
government (which has four of
its own AEGIS ships built under license from the United States) have underscored just how
feasible and practical they regard this option to be — and just how significant would be the
contribution made by such a sea-based missile defense system to the security of their respective
countries.⁽³⁾

The Bottom Line

In light of today’s hearing, there should no longer be any excuse for taking the steps necessary
to
increase the funding available to the Defense Department and to bring the AEGIS Option for
missile defense on-line as soon as possible. The former has now been explicitly endorsed (at
some, as yet undetermined level of funding) by President Clinton for action in an emergency
FY1999 supplemental appropriation.

Importantly, one of the most thoughtful leaders on national security issues in the Congress,
Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), has on 23 September 1998 written the Chairmen of
the Senate and
House Appropriations Committees — Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and
Representative Bob
Livingston (R-LA) — respectively, in connection with the latter initiative. Sen. Kyl has
urged his
colleagues to include in that supplemental an additional $250 million for the purpose of
making technological progress — not funding — the pacing item in readying sea-based
anti-missile capabilities for deployment aboard AEGIS cruisers. Sen. Kyl also makes
the sensible
suggestion that $169 million be included in this measure for the purchase of a third
battery
of U.S.-Israeli Arrow missile defenses to help protect the Jewish State — a country that
experienced a nearly fatal surprise attack on Yom Kippur twenty-five years ago and may be in
even greater danger of one delivered by missiles in the days ahead.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Shame, Shame Redux: As Clinton Presidency Melts
Down, 41 Democrats Continue Filibuster of Bill to Defend America ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_160″>No. 98-D 160, 9
September 1998).

2. On 7 October 1998, Secretary Rumsfeld will receive the Center
for Security Policy’s
prestigious “Keeper of the Flame” award in recognition of his lifetime of accomplishments on
behalf of the national interest, as well as his most recent and particularly laudatory service as
chairman of the Rumsfeld Commission. For more information about this extraordinary event —
which will also mark the CSP’s 10^th year of operations — please contact the Center.

3. See Critical Mass #4: Emerging Missile Threat
Concentrates the Minds of U.S. Allies;
Japanese Admiral Urges End to ABM Treaty (No.
98-D 163, 15 September 1998).

S.O.S.: Save Our Space Station — and More Tax-Dollars — From Being Squandered in Al Gore’s ‘Russian Cooperation’ Scam

September 21, 1998Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Is there no limit? Today’s, Washington Post reports that
the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration is about to seek authority to pour at least $660
million more down the black hole known as the Russian space program.

Over the past five-and-a-half years, the Clinton-Gore team and its G-7 allies have transformed
the
International Monetary Fund into a ready source of undisciplined, unconditioned cash for the
government in Moscow nominally led by Boris Yeltsin.⁽¹⁾
On a lesser scale, Vice President Gore
has been personally responsible for a similar corruption: the perversion of NASA’s budget into a
slush-fund for the former Soviet military-industrial complex’s Russian Space Agency — the folks
who bring us the Kremlin’s ongoing ballistic missile modernization and expanding missile
proliferation operations.

The latest proposal to advance the Veep’s “space cooperation” agenda would more than
double
the dollars that NASA has invested to date in a three-part agenda: 1) involving Russia in
the
International Space Station (in the process exposing U.S. astronauts to life aboard the
much
smaller and increasingly dangerous Mir space station⁽²⁾); 2)
offering financial support to
Russia’s scientists and engineers in the hope of dissuading them from pursuing lucrative
business opportunities in rogue states — where their expertise would likely translate into
proliferating weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems; and 3) ensuring that such
states cannot achieve a technological shortcut by simply buying Russian
rockets to meet their
ballistic missile needs.

Unfortunately, none of these initiatives has performed as advertised. Indeed, in each
case,
American national interests have been compromised at considerable expense to the
taxpayer.

Russia’s Sabotage of the International Space Station

The August 1998 edition of the American Spectator Magazine offers a powerful
indictment of the
Gore initiative to make Russia a partner in the ISS. Written by a man who knows whereof he
speaks — former NASA rocket scientist, James Oberg — the article entitled
“NASA’s Russian
Payload” demonstrates that the Veep’s directive added huge costs to Space Station program from
the “get-go”:

“Original plans called for the Freedom Station [the name given to the U.S.-led program
initiated by President Reagan] to be carried up in pieces by shuttles launching due east from
Cape Canaveral, taking full advantage of the eastward rotation of the Earth.
The
Station’s orbit would consequently range between 28 degrees North and 28 degrees South
latitude (i.e., an ‘orbital inclination’ to the equator of 28 degrees).

“The Russians, with their far northerly rocket bases, simply could not reach this
orbital
path due to esoteric, but immutable, laws of celestial mechanics; their missions circled
the
Earth with a much steeper north-south range of 52 degrees. So in order to allow the Russians
access to the new space station, NASA shifted its planned orbit northward.

“This caused a number of operational difficulties, since NASA engineers had based their
designs for the Station on the low-inclination orbit. Many parts of the Station could easily
overheat or freeze in the new orbit. Even worse, shuttles heading for the Station no longer
could fly due east from Florida, but instead had to head off toward the northeast, losing much
of the boost from Earth’s eastward spin. Because of this, the shuttle’s payload carrying
capability fell by one-third. NASA implemented a number of design changes to increase the
shuttle’s payload, but since these would have been possible no matter which orbit was aimed
for, there remained a one-third penalty for the Russian-compatible flight
plan.

“It’s easy to tally up the cost of doing it the Russians’ way. Over the planned 20-year life of
the ISS, NASA expects to fly about 120 shuttle missions to it. About 40 of these will be
needed merely to match the amount of cargo that the first 80 would have been able to carry
into the old west-to-east orbit. At an estimated half a billion dollars per flight, taking the
Russians into the partnership will cost $20 billion. Yet not a
penny of this appears in
NASA’s official space station budget.

“The change in orbital inclination had been a feature of the original Russian merger proposal
of
March 1993, but NASA officials had not drawn attention to it and Congress was caught
by surprise months later.” (Emphasis added.)

As early as 1994, the General Accounting Office was warning: “Most of the savings
from
Russian participation comes from an optimistic schedule that may not hold up. If the schedule
slips, any savings will quickly evaporate.” Shortly after the release of this scathing GAO report,
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin countered by claiming: “The fact is every nickel is accounted
for in the NASA budget, and Russian cooperation will not cost the U.S. taxpayer one
penny
more — in fact I believe it will save us billions.” It is hard to top this statement as an
example
either of irresponsible naivete on the part of an experienced former
aerospace-executive-turned-senior-government-official or of cynical “buying-in” to a program
certain to prove an excuse
relentlessly to increase NASA’s top-line (even though most of the agency’s other priority
programs would suffer grievously to defray ISS cost-growth).

So Much for Preventing a Hemorrhage of Talent

Mr. Oberg dissects with similar, devastating effect the Clinton-Gore Administration’s claim
that it
was curbing proliferation via the migration of the best minds of the old Soviet military-industrial
complex:

“By saving the Russian space industry from collapse, Western money — both from NASA
and
from the private sector — was supposed to keep otherwise-unemployed Russian rocket experts
from assisting weapons development programs in rogue states around the world.

“An example of what’s really happening is the Energiya Rocket and Space Corporation,
which
builds and operates Russia’s manned space vehicles and thus will play a crucial role in the
International Space Station….Its 1997 commercial earnings were placed at $350 million. That
broke down to: $160 million for foreign guests aboard Mir, mainly NASA,
with some
French payments. $100 million for sales of Space Station hardware, some paid
by NASA
and some still owed by the Russian Space Agency. $50 million from investment in ‘Sea
Launch,’ a plan with Boeing to launch a Ukrainian-Russian rocket from a ship in the
Pacific
Ocean. $20 million in sales of a commercial third stage used on ‘Proton’
rockets for Western
satellites. $20 million in sales of the Yamal communications satellite to a
Russian bank.

“Yet during the last ten years, Energiya has laid off more than 40,000 space workers, and it
pays the remaining 22,000 engineers and technicians less than generously.” In other words,
the money is going someplace else — perhaps, as part of the massive capital
flight from
Russia to Swiss or Cypriot bank accounts, or perhaps into what amounts to the subsidizing of
the other side of Russia’s space program: the Kremlin’s substantial effort to maintain and
modernize its strategic forces that pose an abiding threat to the United States.

What ‘Restraint’ on Russian Missile Transfers?

The third objective advanced by Vice President Gore and other Administration officials was
to use
the influx of U.S. cash to the Russian space industry as leverage to thwart the export of rocket
engines, guidance systems, materials and designs.

Here again, though, the record has been dismal. Notably, Washington Times
National Security
Correspondent Bill Gertz revealed in September 1997 that Israeli intelligence had tied the Russian
Space Agency to sales of missile technologies to Iran. Indeed, Yuri Koptyev, the head of the
Russian Space Agency, and the aerospace director of the Russian state arms exporting agency
(Rosvoorouzhenie) were among those implicated in a major effort to assist Iran acquire the ability
to manufacture long-range ballistic missiles.

According to the Times, these missiles — two derivatives of the North Korean No
Dong, dubbed
the Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 — will have ranges between 800 and 1,200 miles and could be capable
of delivering chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to targets as far away as the European
continent within two-to-three years.⁽³⁾

The help that the Russians have given Iran (and presumably others) underscores the findings
of
the congressionally chartered Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United
States, chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This panel rejected the
politically dictated assumptions that underpinned a 1995 National Intelligence Estimate that
arrived at the predetermined and pollyannish conclusion that the U.S. would not face a missile
threat for “at least 15 years.” Specifically, the Rumsfeld Commission took exception to the
notion that countries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea would not benefit from access to other
nations’ ballistic missile technology greatly to foreshorten the timeline to intercontinental
capabilities.⁽⁴⁾

The Bottom Line

There is no excuse for throwing good money after bad in the further, vain pursuit of such
policy
will-o’-the-wisps. As things stand now, even without the Russian fiasco, NASA will be hard
pressed to find the money required to complete the International Space Station. href=”#N_5_”>⁽⁵⁾ Matters will
only be made worse if the space agency is allowed further to jeopardize this important initiative.
That would be the predictable effect of a reaffirmation at this juncture of the Administration’s
commitment to keep a defaulted Russia in the “critical path” of the ISS. After all, doing so will
simply ensure that still more millions (if not billions) will disappear like water into the sand as the
flight date for the Service Module and other components to be supplied by the Moscow recede
into an unraveling Russian economy and as concerns intensify about the reliability of any products
that might miraculously belch forth many months, if not years, from now.

As Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Science
Committee,
demonstrated in a pivotal series of hearings last year, the enormous investment being made in this
project must no longer be permitted to be held hostage to Russian programmatic shortcomings
arising from the Kremlin’s technological, financial and/or political problems. It now falls to him
and his colleagues to bring to an end, at long last, the fraud that has been perpetrated by Vice
President Gore, NASA’s top management and other Administration officials who have papered
over the Kremlin’s chronic shortfalls and concealed from the American taxpayer the true costs
associated with Russian partnership in the ISS.⁽⁶⁾

Specifically, Congress should launch a comprehensive investigation into the extent to which
Administration misfeasance — if not outright malfeasance — in conjunction with
Russian perfidy
has led to the present pass in which a preeminent national priority, the ISS, has been needlessly
put at risk of failure or yet more, unjustifiable cost-overruns. No further funds should be
provided to Russia pending completion of such an investigation and plans reluctantly initiated in
response to earlier congressional pressure for a non-Russian back-up plan must be implemented
forthwith.

– 30 –

1. See The Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Restoration Watch # 10: Consolidation of Power
by Primakov Marks the End of the Line for Reform in Russia ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_161″>No. 98-D 161, 10 September
1998) and the Casey Institute’s Press Release
entitled President Clinton Should Heed Security-Minded Advice,
Not Strobe Talbott’s (No. 98-R 154, 28 August
1998).

2. For more information on the recent problems with Mir, see the
Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled: Pull The Plug On Mir (No. 97-D
100, 18 July 1997) and Clinton Legacy Watch # 6:
Crises Involving U.S.-Russian Space ‘Cooperation’ Show Clinton-Gore Errors, Need for
Changes (No. 97-D 139 ,18 September 1997).

3. Mr. Gertz wrote: “The Israelis have identified Mr. Koptyev and
[a] Rosvoorouzhenie official
as the only two senior Russians linked directly to the Iranian program. Some U.S. officials
believe they are ‘free-lancing’ for cash rather than carrying out deals approved by Moscow. The
report identified Mr. Koptyev, as well as the aerospace director of the Russian government arms
export agency, as being involved in Iran’s Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missile development program.”

4. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Critical Mass #2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for Beginning Deployment of Missile
Defenses (No.
98-D 133, 15 July 1998), ‘My God, the Threat Is Right Now’ (No.
98-D 155, 1 September 1998)
and Only the Clinton Team Could Respond to North Korean, Other Emerging
Missile Threats
by Canceling Near-Term T.H.A.A.D. (No. 98-D
159, 3 September 1998).

5. For example, a GAO report issued on 22 May 1998 observed that
there is a potentially huge —
and unbudgeted — cost associated with providing the space surveillance
necessary to protect the
ISS from space debris. According to an Air Force study tasked by Congress in FY1998, the price
tag for a system capable of monitoring 1-centimeter debris could be on the order of $400
million
to $2.5 billion. Given the Clinton-Gore Administration’s hostility to technology that
could lend
itself to space control and ballistic missile defense (which would surely be the case of such a
tracking system), however, there may be more than the standard official dishonesty about the
costs of the ISS at work here.

6. Particularly egregious has been the role played in this regard by the
erstwhile Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission. See The Buck Stops With Al Gore:
Veep-Approved Rip-Off By
Russia of U.S. Taxpayer, Technology Now Threatens An Americans Life ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_89″>No. 97-D 89, 27
June 1997).

Critical Mass #4: Emerging Missile Threat Concentrates the Minds of U.S. Allies; Japanese Admiral Urges End to ABM Treaty

September 16, 1998Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Samuel Johnson’s phrase that hanging “concentrates the mind
wonderfully”
is an apt metaphor for the effect palpable missile threats are having on those most immediately at
risk. The question is: What will it take and how soon will it be before the Clinton
Administration is compelled to take this danger seriously — and to act to defend the
American people against it.

Taepo Dong 1.5

The State Department acknowledged today that U.S. intelligence has reexamined data
collected in
the course of North Korea’s recent test flight of its Taepo Dong 1 missile and concluded that the
missile’s projected range should be increased by a factor of four. It now appears that
this ballistic
missile, whose trajectory caused it to overfly Japan, is a three-stage missile, rather
than a two-stage device as originally believed.

While the Taepo Dong’s third-stage — assessed to be a solid-fueled rocket — did not perform
properly (unlike the first two, liquid-fueled stages), the mere fact that Pyongyang is flight-testing
such systems suggests the North Korean regime is not only now capable of striking the Japanese
Home Islands, South Korea, Taiwan and U.S. bases in the Western Pacific. It will shortly be able
credibly to threaten attacks against Alaska and parts of Hawaii. href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

Key Allies Are Getting It

This reality, and the larger trend towards missile proliferation of which the Taepo Dong is just
one
example, has begun to concentrate the minds of key U.S. allies who now find themselves in the
cross-hairs of enemy targeteers. For example, representatives of three allied governments
participated this morning in an important seminar addressed by House Speaker Newt
Gingrich
(R-GA) and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA). Sponsored by the Jerusalem-based
Institute for
Advanced Strategic and Political Studies and held in the Cannon Caucus Room, this
event
benefitted from remarks by the Japanese, Turkish and Israeli defense attachés —
Admiral Fumio
Ota, General Volkan Tiryakiler and General Zeev Livne,
respectively. Among the more
important comments from these allied officials were the following:

Japan: Admiral Ota warned that the Taepo Dong 1 had demonstrated the
ability to deliver a
warhead at speeds up to 8 kilometers per second — speeds associated with intercontinental-range
ballistic missiles — and, therefore, can probably develop such a weapon at any time. The
Admiral noted that, if Japan’s development of a sea-based anti-missile system derived from its
U.S.-designed and -licensed AEGIS fleet air defense assets were unencumbered by the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a single vessel could protect all of Japan. If on the other
hand,
this system’s capability had to be dumbed-down in order to adhere to treaty-imposed limits on
the velocity of interceptors (i.e., kept to speeds less than 3.5 kilometer per second), three or
four ships would be required to protect all the Home Islands.

Evidence of the seriousness with which the Japanese are now confronting the danger
posed by North Korean and other missiles could be found in Admiral Ota’s courageous
closing intervention. He expressed the view that the ABM Treaty was bad for
Japan and very bad for the United States, and the hope that the United States
would get out from under this treaty very soon.

Turkey: Gen. Tiryakiler warned about the threat posed to his country
and others in the region
by Iran’s ballistic missile program. He stressed that the Shahab-3 missile recently tested by
Iran is but a stepping stone to the development of the Shahab-4 missile. The latter system is
expected to have a range of some 2,000 kilometers — sufficient to put at risk much of the
Middle East, South Asia, the Caucasus and parts of Europe.

Israel: General Livne underscored the multiplicity of missile threats his
country is increasingly
facing — from the proven ability of Iraq to attack Israel, to Iran’s emerging capability to do so,
to the large and menacing Syrian arsenal. The last includes older Scud missiles, former Soviet
SS-21s and new Chinese M-11 missiles. All of these could be fitted with chemical and
biological warheads and may have the capability to be used with radiological and/or nuclear
weapons, as well.

The Israeli attaché expressed particular concern at the prospect that the Iraqi
missile
threat is likely to become still more serious in the event the multilateral sanctions
regime comes unraveled.

The U.S.-Israeli Parliamentary Commission

As it happens, the Institute’s symposium coincided with the inaugural activities in Washington
this
week of an extraordinary U.S. Congress/Israeli Knesset Interparliamentary Commission on
National Security. This commission — co-chaired by Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
and Joseph
Lieberman (D-CT) and Reps. Weldon and Neil Abercrombie (D-HI)
for the United States and
by MK Uzi Landau and Dan Meridor (of the Likud Party),
Ephraim Sneh (Labour) and Ran
Cohen (Meretz) for Israel — held joint hearings in the Rayburn Office Building on
Monday.
Witnesses included: the Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and the former
commander of the U.S. Patriot anti-missile system missile assets deployed to Israel during
Operation Desert Storm, Lt. General David Heebner; Capt. Paul Lombardi, a Desert Storm
veteran, who was wounded in action; and Israelis and Americans whose lives were shattered by
Saddam’s Scud missile attacks.

In the course of these hearings and during meetings held separately with members of the
Rumsfeld
Commission and other American officials (past and present), the Israeli parliamentarians made
clear their central concern: On the one hand, the timeline associated with existing and emerging
ballistic missile threats to the Jewish State (e.g., missile systems in neighboring and highly
unfriendly hands that are being augmented with respect to their numbers, accuracy, throw-weight,
etc.) is short and growing shorter. On the other hand, the timeline for effective programmatic
responses is long and, in many cases, getting longer. The gap between the two translates into
significant vulnerability for Israel.

Particularly noteworthy, given the diverse composition of the Israeli delegation (representing
the
political spectrum from the right side of Likud to Meretz, a party to the left of Labour), has been
its extraordinary cohesiveness concerning the missile threat and the need for immediate action to
deal with it. The Members of Knesset made a point of impressing upon their various
American interlocutors that the danger is sufficiently grave — and present — as to require
partisan differences in this country to be subordinated to the need to deploy effective
anti-missile defenses at the earliest possible moment.

Key Americans Are Getting It, Too

Interestingly, a model for just such a “concentration of the mind” among Americans of
varying
political perspectives took place in the course of the Rumsfeld Commission’s deliberations.
Despite significant policy and political disagreements among the Commissioners, they proved that
honorable people prepared to face up to the harsh facts about missile proliferation would come
unanimously to the conclusion that the United States could have little or no-warning of a
ballistic missile threat.⁽²⁾ Their dire assessment
has subsequently been vindicated by North
Korea’s rapidly maturing missile program, a program U.S. intelligence judged could not reach its
present status, in light of Pyongyang’s impecunious condition, for years to come — if ever.

In their remarks to today’s seminar, Speaker Gingrich and Rep. Weldon issued their own calls
for
an end to partisan objections to defending America. They made clear their confidence that U.S.
technology can bring the present, reckless U.S. posture of assured vulnerability to an
end. (N.B.
In this connection, the Speaker made specific reference to the possible contribution that might be
made by the Navy’s AEGIS system — an approach for national missile defense of compelling
interest to the Japanese).⁽³⁾

Messrs. Gingrich and Weldon also underscored the impediment the ABM
Treaty currently poses
to the development, to say nothing of the deployment, of effective anti-missile
systems and urged
that this obsolete accord no longer be permitted to stand in the way. Toward this end, Speaker
Gingrich indicated that Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA), href=”#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾ the highly regarded chairman of the new
House select committee examining U.S. technology transfers that appear to have aided the
Chinese ballistic missile program, will also be developing recommendations for dealing with the
ABM Treaty.

Finally, Rep. Weldon expressed bitter disappointment in the failure
of the leadership of the
U.S. military — notably, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton
(USA) — to provide real independent and truthful advice to the Congress about the missile
threat and the need to take urgent steps to address it. Mincing no words, Mr. Weldon
made
clear his disgust at such politicization of the military and his determination to press for the truth
from those responsible for supplying the common defense. href=”#N_5_”>⁽⁵⁾

The Bottom Line

The American elite can not afford to ignore — let alone to contemplate
retaliation against —
messengers like Rear Admiral Ota, the Israeli parliamentary delegation, the Rumsfeld
Commissioners and key legislators like Reps. Gingrich and Weldon who are courageously
providing warnings about the missile threat. The truth is that “hangings” in the form of weapons
of mass destruction-borne missile attacks are a distinct possibility; perhaps they are even at
hand
for some American citizens, troops and/or allies. It is high time our minds were concentrated and
engaged so as to take steps to alleviate, and perhaps actually effectively to remove
this appalling
danger.

– 30 –

1. As the Center noted on 1 September, Dr. Daniel Fine, an
internationally renowned expert in the
economics of energy and natural resources has warned that, if credible, the mere
threat of a
nuclear missile attack against the $32 billion infrastructure at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North
Slope could cost the U.S. economy $4-6 billion in just 10 days. Dr. Fine believes that — in the
absence of missile defenses — weapons like the Taepo Dong offer impoverished regimes a
valuable instrument for economic blackmail and strategic coercion. See The Center’s
Decision
Brief entitled ‘My God, the Threat is Now’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_155″>No. 98-D 155, 1 September 1998).

2. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Critical Mass #2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for Beginning Deployment of Missile
Defenses (No.
98-D 133, 15 July 1998) and ‘The Most Important Thing’: Columnist Safire
Asks Why
Television Media is Largely Ignoring Rumsfeld Warning? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_136″>No. 98-D 136, 20 July 1998).

3. See It’s About Time: Increase in Defense Budget
Should Be Matched By Course Corrections on
Tech Transfer, Missile Defense (No. 98-D 162, 14
September 1998), Wall Street Journal Lauds Rumsfeld Commission
Warning on Missile Threat; Reiterates Call for AEGIS Option in Response ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-P_134″>No. 98-P 134, 16 July 1998) and
Validation of the AEGIS Option: Successful Test is First Step From Promising
Concept to Global Anti-Missile
Capability (No. 97-D 17, 1997).

4. Rep. Cox was the 1997 Recipient of the Center for Security
Policy’s prestigious “Keeper of
the Flame” award. This honor will be bestowed upon Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in October
1998.

5. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has taken a similar
initiative on the Senate side. See Give the
Military a Voice — and Heed It — On Landmine Policy ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_156″>No. 98-D 156, 1 September 1998).

‘My God, The Threat is Right Now‘

September 1, 1998Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): In a recent interview, the Chairman of the House National
Security
Committee, Rep. Floyd Spence (R-SC) declared with palpable frustration: “The first
warning
you have of a heart attack is a heart attack….And that’s the way it is [with the missile threat].
The [Clinton] Administration’s response to all this is that we are working on [an anti-missile]
system and we are going to experiment for about three years. And if the threat arises, we will
decide at that time whether or not to deploy. My God, the threat is right now here, this minute,
this moment, not some time in the future. And they refuse to make that commitment to
deploy.”⁽¹⁾

North Korea v. Alaska

Chairman Spence’s assessment — offered weeks before Sunday’s launch by North Korea of an
extended-range Taepo Dong 1 ballistic missile over the Japanese home islands — has
been
powerfully affirmed by that test. After all, the impressive technical achievement entailed in
developing and successfully flying such a missile removes the major impediment to fielding a
Taepo Dong 2.

The Taepo Dong 2 is expected to be capable of attacking not only Japan
and all of
America’s other Asian allies, but the U.S. states of Alaska and Hawaii as
well. According to
a report issued in July by the congressionally chartered, blue-ribbon commission led by former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, such a system could be tested within six-months of a
decision to do so and be deployed shortly thereafter.⁽²⁾

As it happens, Rep. Spence, who has long been one of the Congress’ most assiduous
advocates of
U.S. missile defenses, recently participated in a symposium in Anchorage sponsored by the
Institute of the North to address this subject. In the course of that event, he and some two
hundred other participants heard a sobering analysis of what could ensue from the mere
threat of
a North Korean (or Chinese or Russian) missile attack against Alaska’s energy-rich North Slope.

Here’s the bottom line of an impressive econometric analysis performed by MIT
Professor
Daniel Fine: If the $32 billion infrastructure in Prudhoe Bay — which produces 1.6
million
barrels of oil per day for export to Asia and the rest of the United States — is subjected to a
credible threat of a nuclear missile strike: “In ten days…the cost to the American
economy of
a missile threat as economic ‘blackmail’ could reach an estimated $4-6 billion.” This
staggering sum would reflect the rippling effect of world-wide efforts to hedge against the
financial, energy and economic impacts associated with a possible disruption of Alaskan
low-sulphur crude and the finished product derived therefrom.

Missile-enforced Blackmail

There can be little doubt that this sort of blackmail is the shape of things to come. As
Dr.
William Graham, a former Science Advisor to President Reagan who served on
Secretary
Rumsfeld’s Commission, and Dr. Keith Payne, an expert consultant to the Commission, href=”#N_3_”>⁽³⁾
observed in an op.ed. article published in the Washington Times on August 18, 1998:

“The leverage of a withheld threat on the will of Western leaders requires only
that those leaders anticipate the possibility of a missile strike.

Let us be clear: This coercive potential will only grow in the days ahead. Having
mastered
the art of ballistic missile staging,⁽⁴⁾ as Pyongyang’s
engineers have clearly done, it is a just a
matter of time before the North Koreans can put even the continental United States in their
cross-hairs. Since the North views missile exports as a principal source of hard
currency,
moreover, others — including such clients as Iran, Syria and Pakistan — will soon be
capable
of big league blackmail, as well.

Gen. Shelton: ‘What, Me Worry?’

The Clinton Administration’s response to the North Korean test has, thus far, been subdued,
to
say the least. Unnamed Pentagon officials were first reported to view it merely as a “serious
development.” The State Department spokesman averred that this test would not interfere with
the U.S.-led, multilateral appeasement of Pyongyang.

Worst of all, there has — as far as can be determined — still been no change in the
Administration’s pollyannish view that the missile threat remains years away. Most recently, this
irresponsible wishful-thinking has been expressed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff
General Hugh Shelton. The General responded dismissively to a letter from
Senator James
Inhofe (R-OK), in which the latter asked whether the grim Rumsfeld Commission
findings would
alter the Administration’s understanding of the threat and policy prescriptions:

We regard this as an unlikely development.”

href=”#N_5_”>⁽⁵⁾

The North Korean test on Sunday makes a mockery of Gen. Shelton’s last sentence.

How Not To Retard Proliferation

In addition to misperceiving and/or dissembling about the emerging missile threat, href=”#N_6_”>⁽⁶⁾ President
Clinton is pursuing policies that are adding to the incentives rogue nations feel to
acquire such
coercive weapons. On the one hand, the Administration is clearly demonstrating that
states
with threatening missile and WMD capabilities get priority attention.

Item: the danger of a renewed nuclear threat from Russia is
being cited to justify the President
proceeding with a summit in Moscow at the worst possible moment, and probably concessions
he will make there.⁽⁷⁾

Item: the State Department’s assurance that the U.S. will
continue to provide oil and other
assistance to North Korea, despite its Taepo Dong test and covert nuclear program. href=”#N_8_”>⁽⁸⁾ And

Item: the implicit rationale for why American missiles
destroyed a suspected chemical weapon
site in Sudan — but not those in Iraq.⁽⁹⁾

On the other hand, the Administration is simultaneously and deliberately
perpetuating
America’s vulnerability to blackmail by all comers. This is the ineluctable result of its
slavish
adherence to the obsolete Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty — signed under very different strategic
circumstances with a country that no longer exists — and by its concomitant refusal to deploy
missile defenses barred by that treaty. Oh yes, as Chairman Spence caustically notes, the Clinton
team is willing to conduct open-ended research on missile defenses, but only to the extent
that
such research and any system that might result are deemed compliant with the ABM Treaty’s
crippling restrictions.

One upshot of this hamstringing approach is to make the object of the Administration’s
national
missile defense program a system that would not be able to defend Alaska or Hawaii against
missile attack. It may not even do much for parts of the western “lower 48” that will, in due
course, be subjected to blackmail from North Korea’s second generation “Taepo Dong 2.”

Enter the Loyal Opposition

It does not have to be this way — and should not be much longer. As former Cabinet
members
William Bennett, Jack Kemp and Jeane
Kirkpatrick pointed out in today’s Washington
Times, the Senate leadership is expected before the week is out to ask that what has been
called
the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” be allowed to deliberate and act upon
urgently needed
legislation: the bipartisan American Missile Protection Act of 1998 (S.1873),
sponsored by
Sens. Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, and Daniel Inouye,
Democrat of Hawaii. This
bill would make it the policy of the U.S. government to deploy effective national missile defenses
as soon as technologically possible.⁽¹⁰⁾

Forty-one Senators, all Democrats, successfully filibustered this measure last May. That was
before Pakistan tested its nuclear weapons;
before Iran launched a medium-range missile
capable of striking Israel; before the Rumsfeld Commission
reported its frightening
findings; before the political and economic meltdown in
Russia; and before North Korea’s
“Taepo Dong 1” test. History will judge these Senators harshly if, in the wake of all
these
warnings and the blackmail they portend, they perpetuate any further America’s dangerous
vulnerability to missile attack.

The Bottom Line

The sponsors of the Senate Republican leadership and the bipartisan sponsors of S.1873 are
to be
commended for their efforts to defend America. The House of Representatives should follow suit
before the recess — an action that would seem to be portended by the decision to
devote last
Saturday’s GOP response to the President’s weekly radio address to this topic. Among the points
made in that inspiring response by Rep. Michael Pappas (R-NJ), a respected
freshman member
of Chairman Spence’s National Security Committee, were the following:

“Our government’s number one priority has always been to provide for the
common defense of its citizens. Our military has answered the call time and time
again. However we can not take for granted our past success, and we must
evolve to fight future challenges. Supporting missile defense is the logical way
to do so. Although some do not consider it a top priority, it should be. It is
important, and it needs bipartisan leadership.”

Amen.

– 30 –

1. This interview is one of dozens conducted in connection with a
documentary about America’s
vulnerability to ballistic missile attack currently being prepared by the Center for Security Policy.
For more information about this important project, contact the Center.

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for Beginning Deployment of Missile
Defenses (No.
98-D 133, 15 July 1998) and Press Release entitled Wall
Street Journal Lauds Rumsfeld
Commission Warning on Missile Threat; Reiterates Call for Aegis Option in
Response (No.
98-P 134, 16 July 1998).

3. The Center for Security Policy is proud to have both Drs. Graham
and Payne as long-time
members of its Board of Advisors.

4. Staging entails burning the fuel in one missile section, or “stage,” to
exhaustion, separating it
from a second stage without compromising the latter’s balance, then firing its motor to burn-out.

5. For more on the Inhofe-Shelton exchange, see the Center’s
Decision Brief entitled ‘Politically
Correct’ Joint Chiefs Are Dead Wrong on Missile Defense ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_151″>No. 98-D 151, 26 August 1998).

6. See The Clinton Lies that Count
(No. 98-D 142, 3 August 1998).

7. See What Can Possibly Come of a Moscow Summit
Under These Circumstances? More
Reckless U.S. Disarmament (No. 98-D 150, 24
August 1998).

8. See ‘Seize the Day’: Asian Financial Crisis Offers
Opportunity to End Dangerous
Appeasement of North Korea (No. 98-D 12, 21
January 1998).

9. See Clinton Legacy Watch # 31: Will This
Damaged Presidency Be Able to Mount, Sustain
Needed Anti-Terror Campaign (No. 98-D 148, 21
August 1998).

10. For more on the Cochran-Inouye bill, see Senate
Should Vote to Defend America ‘As Soon
As Technologically Possible’ (No. 98-D 79, 6 May
1998). and Shame, Shame: By One Vote,
Minority of Senators Perpetuate America’s Vulnerability to Missile Attack ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_84″>No. 98-D 84, 14
May 1998).

‘Politically Correct’ Joint Chiefs Are Dead Wrong on Missile Defense

August 26, 1998Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): On 24 August, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent
Senator Jim
Inhofe (R-OK) what is known in the Pentagon as a “Thank you for your interest in
national
security” letter — a dismissive response to a thoughtful missive sent five weeks before by the
latter, who serves as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Readiness
Subcommittee.

Sen. Inhofe wanted to know whether the JCS had reconsidered their position that
the United
States did not need to deploy effective national missile defenses as soon as possible in light
of changed circumstances. Specifically, Chairman Inhofe cited the recent, unanimous
finding of
the congressionally mandated, bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission chaired by former Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld that: “The warning times the U.S. can expect of new
threatening
ballistic missile deployments are being reduced. Under some plausible scenarios…the U.S.
might well have little or no warning before operational deployment.”

Writing on behalf of all the Chiefs, General Hugh Shelton told the Senator that “we remain
confident that the Intelligence community can provide the necessary warning of the indigenous
development and deployment by a rogue state of an ICBM threat to the United States.” He went
on to note that “The [Rumsfeld] Commission points out [ed.: correctly] that through
unconventional, high-risk development programs and foreign assistance, rogue nations could
acquire an ICBM capability in a short time and that the Intelligence Community may not detect
it.” Chairman Shelton pooh-poohed this carefully considered judgment, however, declaring “We
regard this as an unlikely development.” He does not deign to say why.

The General went on to recite the rest of the Clinton Administration’s party-line on why
missile
defenses need not be deployed as soon as technologically possible:

“These rogue nations currently pose a threat to the United States, including a threat by
weapons of mass destruction, through unconventional, terrorist-style delivery means.”
By this
extraordinary logic, the Army would not need tanks, the Navy aircraft carriers, the Air
Force F-22 fighters as long as an adversary could “pose a threat” using weapons against
which such systems would be of little or no utility.

“The current National Missile Defense policy and development readiness program…is a
prudent commitment to provide absolutely the best technology when a threat warrants
deployment.” In other words, since we disagree with the Rumsfeld finding that the
“threat” may already be at hand, we can continue to pretend that the anti-missile
technology currently available need not be deployed at the earliest possible
moment.

“…Under current conditions, continued adherence to [the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty]
is
still consistent with our national interests. The Treaty contributes to our strategic stability with
Russia….” This may be the most egregious evidence of the Chiefs’ unseriousness about
the
missile threat. The Rumsfeld Commission makes clear that — even if one sets aside the
apparently growing possibility of accidental or unauthorized missile launches at the United
States by Russia — there are a host of other potential adversaries who either now have or
are actively acquiring ever-more-capable ballistic missiles with which to deliver
chemical,
biological and/or nuclear weapons. If anything, Russia is contributing to strategic
instability, properly defined, through the assistance its missile technology
transfers are making
to exacerbating this frightening trend.

“For the immediate future, [the ABM Treaty] does not hinder our development program.”
This is a transparent tautology. By design, the so-called 3-plus-3
deployment readiness
program the Chiefs claim to favor will not conflict with the Treaty since, as Gen. Shelton put
it, “We currently intend and project integrated system testing that will be both fully effective
and Treaty compliant.”

the ABM Treaty was crafted specifically to prevent
any
missile defense from being both “fully effective” and “Treaty compliant.”

can

the compromise will always
be made in favor of remaining compliant at the expense of system effectiveness.

The Bottom Line

The one sentence that rings true in the whole Shelton letter is the following: “The Chiefs and
I
believe all [the] threats must be addressed consistent with a balanced judgment of risks and
resources.” (Emphasis added.) At root, the Joint Chiefs’ opposition to doing
what common
sense dictates in response to the present and growing danger of missile attack is a question
of money. The Pentagon budget is not providing anything remotely approach what is
needed to
pay for existing missions and priority modernization programs. The prospect of adding a major,
new and potentially quite expensive task quite understandably is anathema to the Clinton
appointees now leading the U.S. military.

The Nation can no longer afford to duck this issue. Rumor has it that
even the Clinton
Pentagon is anticipating that it will have to seek more funding in Fiscal Year 2000, halting
at
long last a fifteen-year decline in defense spending. Worried that such an increase may come too
late to halt the steady erosion in military readiness and the hemorrhage of talent from the armed
forces, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) has asked the Senate
Armed Services and
Appropriations Committees to hold a new round of oversight hearings this fall,
presumably in
anticipation of an emergency supplemental for the Defense Department. This initiative follows
appeals for additional resources for the military from House National Security
Committee
Chairman Floyd Spence (R-SC) and Speaker Newt Gingrich
(R-GA).⁽¹⁾

Even if such augmented funding is forthcoming, however, both military and civilian
leaders
ought to adopt a programmatic approach to missile defense that would put effective,
flexible anti-missile systems in place — for the defense of both the United States and
its allies
overseas (notably, those at immediate risk in Israel, Japan and South Korea) — far faster
and for a fraction of the cost of the 3-plus-3 program.

Toward this end, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be well advised — and the Nation
well
served — if they were not only to treat the Senator Inhofe’s determined effort to defend
America against missile attack⁽²⁾ with the seriousness it
deserves, but to emulate it.
Importantly, the Chiefs may find themselves more free to do so were they to embrace the
Senator’s oft-repeated call to begin building such a defense via the most military- and
cost-effective way: from the sea, by exercising the Navy’s AEGIS
Option.⁽³⁾

– 30 –

1. For more on the hollowing out of the U.S. military and
congressional calls for corrective
action, see the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled Secretary
Cohen Implicitly Confirms That
Gender Integration Conflicts With Good Military Order, Discipline And
Readiness (No. 98-D
103, 9 June 1998); Clinton Legacy Watch #27: A Counterculture Assault On
The U.S.
Military And The National Sovereignty It Safeguards ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_121″>No. 98-D 121, 29 June 1998); and
U.S.S. ‘Babe’: More Evidence That The Counterculture’s Sexual Assault On The
Military Is
Taking Its Toll On Morale, Readiness (No. 98-D
138, 21 July 1998).

2. Fresh evidence of the Senator’s commitment can be found in his
press release of today (see the
attached).

3. For more on this Option — which would, for a cost of
approximately $2-3 billion, build upon
the $50 billion investment the Navy has made in its deployed AEGIS fleet air defense system to
provide within roughly three years world-wide anti-missile protection — see the Center’s
Decision
Brief entitled Validation Of The Aegis Option: Successful Test Is First
Step From Promising
Concept To Global Anti-Missile Capability (No.
97-D 17, 29 January 1997)