DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
SECTION: STATUS OF US MILITARY
SUBSECTION: DEFENSELESS AGAINST ICBMS
Revised 8/20/99
U.S. DEFENSELESS AGAINST ICBMS
11-12/98 Ambassador Henry F Cooper on spending money on catastrophic disease v. defense "...PRICE: Yes, but we already have the technology for defense. We need to quit spending it on defense. GREEN: Have you been listening? PRICE: Yes, I have been listening. AMB.COOPER: I agree with you that we already have the technology. The problem is that we haven't exploited the technology to build the defenses [against missiles]. PRICE: We are 30 years ahead of every other country. COOPER: But we have absolutely zero defenses today. PRICE: We also have zero health care. We can't figure out cancer and the cures for that. That is what we need to be spending money on. COOPER: I think it is a bit extreme to say we have no health care. You know, I am not arguing that we can't use more health care. But it is not extreme to say that we have no defense because we have absolutely none.... But we put together programs that end up spending a lot of money and not achieving anything because of...the ABM Treaty, which prohibits us from actually building an effective defense. PRICE: Yes, but we already have effective defenses. COOPER: No, that's the part you don't seem to understand, Sir. We don't have the ability to shoot down a single missile that is launched at us. PRICE: If you take a look at the Star Wars project - we could shoot out 98% of their missiles before they leave the ground. COOPER: I was the Director of that program, Sir, and I can assure you we have not the ability to shoot down a single missile launched at the United States. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Money has been spent on research and development, and you are correct that it was employed to gain the edge in technology and keep the edge in technology. And in fact our private industry is exploiting it. There are several companies using the technology that we developed in the Pentagon - by the Star Wars program as you referred to it - to make money: with communications, with remote sensing and with a host of other things. But the Pentagon is not using that technology to build defenses for you and your family at home...."
From High Frontier website www.highfrontier.org "...But one lingering threat that the American people can actively help to alleviate is that of our own government's rigid adherence to the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty. This treaty prevents the U.S. from deploying already existing technology to defend America. The current Administration vetoed the FY1996 Defense Authorization Bill which would have mandated the deployment of a nationwide ballistic missile defense system to protect the continental U.S., Hawaii, and Alaska by 2003. Alarmingly, a poll has shown that 60% of America's citizens are unaware that they are not protected from an attack. When the truth about our lack of a missile defense was presented to them, more than 80% expressed outrage and feelings of vulnerability.... According to a 1995 Defense Science Board Task Force Report, a particularly troublesome threat involves multiple warheads released early in a ballistic missile's flight - during its "boost-phase" - as its rocket engines burn out. This would render useless all of the missile defense systems currently being built by the Clinton Administration which aim to destroy a missile while it is en route. The only sure way to defeat such missiles is by destroying them in their boost phase, before they release their warheads. A defense system that is capable of destroying missiles during the boost phase should ideally be deployed in space, however, such space based defense systems are banned by the 1972 ABM Treaty with the Soviet Union which no longer exists...."
The Florida Times-Union 2/27/99 "...A military crisis may be developing in the South China Sea - one that, unlike the Serbian civil war, involves a legitimate U.S. interest. Recent photos from American spy planes indicate China is rapidly turning Woody Island, which has a 7,300-foot runway, into a giant military base. Woody is one of the Paracel Islands, which are located off Vietnam's coast. China also is buying 300 jets from Russia and is developing its own line of fighter bombers. It is believed that the Woody base will be used as a refueling station for fighter planes headed for the Spratly Islands to the south. China is one of several countries claiming the Spratlys, which have oil reserves and good fishing waters. Military intelligence officials say Beijing plans to slowly gain control of hundreds of tiny islands that form an arch stretching from Japan to Indonesia. Taiwan is one of those islands. China already is deploying large numbers of short-range ballistic missiles on its coastline, about 100 miles from Taiwan. And the Philippines is one of the countries claiming part of the Spratlys. The United States is obligated, under treaties, to defend both countries....Besides, American troops are scattered all around the world; there are not enough readily available military resources left to ''stare down'' China. Also, the United States lost a lot of maneuverability a few years ago when the Filipinos forced the closure of the last American military base on their soil. Now that they feel threatened by China, they are reaping what they sowed. Feelings have gotten so tense that the Philippines bombed Chinese installations on Mischief Reef, one of the Spratlys, in 1995. Once China's planes have greater range, that isn't likely to happen again....China in the past has not been shy about seizing islands. The Paracel Islands used to be Vietnamese property. China seized them when Hanoi and Saigon were preoccupied with the Vietnam War. In all probability, the United States is going to have to accept some Chinese domination of Asia. U.S. military resources are not limitless. ..."
Conservative News Service 8/13/98 Ben Anderson "The status of America ' s missile defense capabilities is rising to the forefront of national debate following a growing list of developments which indicate U . S . citizens are more vulnerable to foreign attack than previously believed . Representative Curt Weldon last week lead the passage of a bipartisan bill which says, in it's entirety, "That it is the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense." The bill passed last Wednesday evening by a vote of 240-188. Simple in form, the bill effectively blocks "funding for the implementation of modifications that the Clinton Administration has made to the to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty," according to a statement released by Weldon's office ."
Washington Times 12/3/98 ". A blue-ribbon Pentagon panel is urging the Clinton administration to improve U.S. nuclear forces for decades to come in the face of Russia's large arsenal and a growing Chinese strategic force. The report by the Defense Science Board Task Force on Nuclear Deterrence warns the direction of nuclear-weapons programs at the Pentagon and Department of Energy is weak and should be strengthened to maintain the balance of power in the years ahead. "While the declarations of senior Department of Defense leaders are very positive, the management attention to planning to sustain the nuclear deterrent does not match the declaratory policy," the task force report concludes. A copy of the report was released Thursday to The Washington Times.It states that U.S. nuclear forces are declining, while those of major strategic adversaries are improving. "There is a near certainty that, wherever arms control efforts take us, Russia will continue to be a nuclear superpower and China will continue to evolve to more capable nuclear forces," the report stated. Russia and China are both building new nuclear missiles. The task force findings represent an unprecedented public review of normally secret U.S. strategic forces and needs. They were presented to Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre in October by the task force chairman, retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch. The panel's findings challenge many of the arms-control plans and policies of the Clinton administration, such as its ban on nuclear testing, its reliance on arms-reduction agreements, and the effort to monitor nuclear-warhead reliability dubbed the Stockpile Stewardship Program. The report states that nuclear testing "could be a hedge" to maintain deterrence if the non-testing program suffers a "substantial failure." The report is likely to fuel Republican opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, now pending before the Senate."
China Post Newsday Patrick Sloyan 12/7/98 ".U.S. President Clinton is considering unilateral cuts in U.S. nuclear warheads that would match reductions in Russian arsenal disintegrating from a lack of money and manpower, senior administration officials said. A final administrative decision could come in time for Clinton's State of the Union speech next month to Congress in which he would outline cuts in U.S. strategic systems and resulting savings in defense spending. "We could save billions" a senior Pentagon official said. Support for strategic weapons reductions has grown among cash strapped generals on the Joint Chiefs of Staff who want to pay for new ships, planes and weapons while improving the quality of life for a shrinking military. One possibility would permit a halt in production of the D5 rocket for Trident submarines, a missile program costing U.S. $3.3 billion over the next four years. The warhead reduction program would allow scrapping four of the oldest Trident boats as well as 200 of the remaining 500 Minuteman III land based rockets.."
Wall Street Journal 1/5/99 ".If the New Year is the time for resolutions, we can't think of one we'd like more than a determination to provide America with a system to protect us from the increasing likelihood of a missile strike, whether from a rogue state like North Korea or a terrorist such as Osama bin Laden. Though Republicans have been asking for one since Ronald Reagan, and though Bill Clinton is in principle on board, the key component remains missing: a commitment to actually test, build and deploy. Unfortunately, a forthcoming Clinton Administration budget statement looks set to confirm an apparent Defense Department decision to defer any real protection against missile attacks further into the future. It will do this by taking the Army's Theater High Altitude Area Defense system and combining it with the Navy's Theater Wide program, effectively pulling the plug on THAAD and dissipating the latter..."
The Kathryn and Shelby Cullon Davis International Studies Center - Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org 12/14/98 ".After years of delay, it appears that President Bill Clinton may announce a decision to deploy a limited national missile defense, perhaps in his State of the Union message in January. Many supporters of missile defense will be tempted to view this as a victory. Their reason: Any defense of the American people from long-range missiles, however limited, is better than the current state of total vulnerability. They should be careful not to celebrate prematurely, however. All indications are that the national missile defense system envisioned by the Clinton Administration will be of doubtful effectiveness... The fact remains, however, that if President Clinton indeed announces a nationwide, two-site missile defense plan, he is doing so because he no longer can ignore the reality of the growing missile threat. This would represent a critically important concession. It would mean that the President and his supporters have been wrong in downplaying the missile threat and delaying the decision to deploy defenses against it. It also would mean that once the President has conceded the point for the need for a nationwide defense, the debate then should become how to make it the most effective defense possible..."
Philadelphia Inquirer 1/11/99 Richard Parker ".Pentagon officials have concluded it will take up to two years longer than expected to protect the country from a ballistic missile attack, possibly leaving the United States vulnerable to the increasingly long-range missiles of such states as North Korea and Iran. Despite intensive research since the early 1980s, the military so far has failed to master the technology of reliably destroying an incoming missile with another missile. President Clinton promised to decide next year whether the country needed a missile defense against accidental launches by Russia and hostile developing nations... Even if Clinton orders a system built, a delay of a year or two could leave the country open to missile attack by North Korea or even Iran early in the next century, according to intelligence officials and independent experts. "It means you could have a threat before the United States is prepared to deal with it," said Paul Wolfowitz, a former Reagan defense official who served on a panel that recently assessed missile threats. "We should have been treating missile defense as a matter of highest priority. If we'd done that, we wouldn't be in this position right now."
Washington Post 1/21/99 Dana Priest ".The Clinton administration yesterday pledged $6.6 billion over five years to field a national missile defense system, reversing years of official skepticism about whether it was necessary or even possible to build a weapon that could detect and shoot down enemy missiles racing toward the United States. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said the system was needed to respond to a growing missile threat from North Korea and other nations. He said the administration would pursue the program, an heir to Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" proposals, even if Russia were to charge that it violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed by the United States. ."
Washington Times 2/3/99 Harry Summers ". Homeland defense has been much in the news lately, as the Clinton administration announced it will add billions to the fiscal year 2000 defense budget for counterterrorism and national missile defense. As The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer commented, "Better late than never,'' for it is axiomatic that a secure base is the essential foundation for both offensive and defensive military operations.. But what made sense during the Cold War has become a dangerous anachronism today when the threat is no longer a massive nuclear exchange but the threat of nuclear attack by rogue states like North Korea or Iran, both of whom are well on the way to developing the capability to do just that. "Right now if an enemy fired just one nuclear missile at Los Angeles or New York,'' wrote Mr. Krauthammer, "there is nothing, absolutely nothing, the United States could do to stop it.'' Finally that's begun to change, with Defense Secretary William Cohen himself repudiating the obsolete ABM treaty. But, as usual with the Clinton administration, it's one step forward and two steps back. President Clinton himself proposed delaying deployment of missile defenses until 2005, long after he is out of office. And his State Department backtracked as well, saying we would deploy only what Russia would agree to under an amended treaty. As Mr. Krauthammer sarcastically asked, "What standing does Russia, of all nations, have to dictate how and whether the United States will defend itself? Russia is the principal supplier to Iran of precisely the missile and nuclear technology that could one day turn New York into Hiroshima."."Defense Daily 2/5/99 Sheila Foote ".President Clinton is threatening a veto of national missile defense legislation (S. 257) sponsored by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) "because it suggests that our decision on deploying this system should be based solely on a determination that the system is `technologically possible.'" In a Feb. 3 letter to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), National Security Advisor Samuel Berger says that a decision based only on technological feasibility "would ignore other critical factors that the administration believes must be addressed when it considers the deployment question in 2000, including those that must be evaluated by the president as commander-in-chief." "We intend to base the deployment decision on an assessment of the technology (based on an initial series of rigorous flight tests) and the proposed system's operational effectiveness," Berger says. "In addition, the president and his senior advisors will need to confirm whether the rogue state ballistic missile threat to the United States has developed as quickly as we now expect, as well as the cost to deploy." Further, "a decision regarding NMD deployment must also be addressed within the context of the ABM Treaty and our objectives for achieving future reductions in strategic offensive arms through START II and III." ..Cochran said he is "disappointed" by the letter from Berger, but does not intend to change the text of his bill. Cochran has 53 cosponsors, an aide said, including Hawaii Democrat Sen. Daniel Inouye, the ranking member of the defense appropriations panel.."
FundRaising letter 2/18/99 Republican Majority Leader - Senator Trent Lott ". And I am terrified by the grave jeopardy our nation is in today due to Clinton/Gore policies that have put America in a dangerously vulnerable position. Consider these facts: * 35 non-NATO countries now have ballistic missile capabilities; * China alone has 13 nuclear missiles fully capable of reaching U. S. targets; and * North Korea is selling its missiles to Iraq and other terrorist states, and just tested a ballistic missile over Japan. And if Communist China or North Korea, Iraq, or Iran, or some rogue terrorist fires a missile at our nation tomorrow, we have no way to stop it. That's right. Any Third World dictator or insane terrorist who can get his hands on a ballistic missile can "point and shoot" it toward the United States, and be virtually guaranteed of killing thousands or millions of Americans with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Right now. Today. Because Bill Clinton, Al Gore and the Democrats in Congress shut down development of our missile defense system. And last fall the Democrat minority filibustered to death our Republican "American Missile Protection Act of 1998"... Whether he doesn't know or doesn't care, the result is the same. Americans could die - by the hundreds, the thousands, or the millions - because of deals he may have make with the Chinese; because he refuses to work with Republicans to implement a missile defense system; and because he cares more about using the military as a political tool and social policy testing ground than as the proudest and strongest fighting force in the World.."
U.S. House Policy Committee http://www.policy.gov/ 2/18/99 Freeper A Whitewater Rsearcher ".House Policy Chairman Christopher Cox called today for the West to seek "the strongest possible missile defenses" against emerging international missile threats. "The overarching characteristic of the coming century will be a rapid and dramatic increase in the ability of comparatively small or poor nations to threaten the vital interests of even the wealthiest and most powerful countries-like ours...In sum, the West has no realistic option but to seek a shield against these emerging threats."...Rep. Cox, in addition to being the highest-ranking Californian in the Congressional Leadership, is chairman of the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. The Committee concluded in a classified report approved unanimously in December that technology transfers to the PRC harmed national security. A public version of the report is expected to be issued next month upon completion of the declassification process by the Administration.... "
Original Sources 2/25/99 Mary Mostert "... Legislation introduced by Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) committing the United States to deploy a national missile defense system cleared its first hurdle in Congress today. Weldon's legislation, one of the top ten legislative priorities for the House Republican leadership, was approved today by the House Armed Services Committee by a vote of 50 to 3. The legislation states simply 'that it is the official policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense' and will be voted on by the full House in March. "Hostile countries like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea are all aggressively pursuing the missile capability to strike American cities," stated Congressman Curt Weldon, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Research and Development Subcommittee. "Last month, CIA Director George Tenet announced that North Korea has recently developed missiles that can hit our families and a report issued last summer found that Iran may obtain that capability within the next five years. Americans are in danger today, and we need a defense now." "A recent poll found that an overwhelming 73 percent of Americans did not know that America lacked the ability to destroy even a single incoming ballistic missile fired on the United States," stated Weldon. "The American people expect their leaders to provide for their protection and defense. Up until now, we have failed them." "But while our potential enemies have grown stronger, the Clinton Administration has dithered, refusing to make any commitment to deploy a national missile defense to protect our families," said Weldon...."
National Review 2/22/99 Jeane Kirkpatrick ".A GOOD many Americans still have trouble understanding why the United States needs a missile defense-this despite the only slightly veiled threat made by a Chinese general during the Taiwan Straits crisis in 1996 to bomb Los Angeles. Since then the reach and accuracy of China's missiles have increased, with the help of generous infusions of advanced U.S. missile technology. At the end of January, news surfaced that the Chinese army had conducted exercises against Taiwan and--most remarkably--U.S. troops in the area. Reluctant to face, much less to publicize, China's new posture and power, the Clinton administration is said to be delaying a report to Congress on these developments... Nor is China the only power in the region breaking through to the production of long-range ballistic missiles. Since summer, North Korea has tested weapons capable of reaching Taipei, Tokyo, Alaska, Hawaii, and other U.S. bases in the Pacific.. In Iran, the long-range missile Shihab 3 was flight-tested last summer, and development is moving ahead on a still-longer-range missile, the Shihab 4. To its credit, the Clinton administration has worked hard to prevent Russia from aiding Iran's progress in missile technology and guidance systems. But this effort has failed. The administration has failed, too, in Iraq, which like North Korea has broken commitments to permit inspection. No one should have forgotten that inspections after the Gulf War revealed Iraq to be much closer-- dangerously closer--to production of a nuclear missile than the world had suspected. So too, India and Pakistan have established themselves as members of the nuclear club. The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission issued a report that details these developments (one version of which is unclassified). Obviously, Americans cannot entrust their future to arms-control efforts such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, conceived in 1968... Today, it makes no sense at all to grant Russia a veto over our capacity to defend ourselves. We should give notice and withdraw from the treaty. Without a national and theater missile defense, we are without protection from weapons of mass destruction targeting our cities and blackmailing our policymakers and allies. No president has the right to ignore the common defense...
National Review 2/22/99 Bill Gertz ".Since taking office in 1993, the Clinton administration has undertaken a systematic program that must be described as anti-anti-missile defense. Despite promising to build defenses against short-range missile attacks as soon as possible, President Clinton and his senior national-security officials have adopted a policy of delay and obfuscation intended to maintain the defenseless status quo. And it is not clear even now--in the wake of the administration's calls to renegotiate the ABM Treaty--that it is truly willing to abandon its arms-control orthodoxy.. The architect of Clinton's anti-anti-missile defense policy is Robert Bell, a former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee under Sam Nunn.. Bell joined the White House National Security Council staff in 1993 and at once carried out a major "review" of missile defense with the underlying goal of preserving the ABM Treaty. This review led to a secret directive signed by Clinton in 1993 that affirmed the treaty as the basis for U.S. missile defenses (such as they were) and strategic relations with Russia. The directive said that the United States would not deploy national missile defenses outside the ABM Treaty--which limits those defenses to a single site with 100 interceptors, a stricture that makes it virtually impossible to defend the entire United States against even a small attack. Clinton also agreed to add to the treaty four former Soviet republics that possessed nuclear weapons: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan..The CIA quickly figured out the method in the Russians' delaying tactics. In May 1996 a National Reconnaissance Office satellite snapped photographs from space of a Russian manufacturing plant at Verkhnaya Salda, about 650 miles southeast of Moscow. The photos showed that Russia had restarted large-scale production of SA-12 air-defense systems, and included images of at least 38 SA-12 missile systems being produced at the factory. The SA-12 can shoot down short-range missiles. .."
National Review 2/22/99 Bill Gertz ".President Clinton's handling of national missile defense--systems explicitly designed to knock out incoming long-range missiles--is just as discouraging. On several occasions in the 1990s he vetoed or used his Democratic allies in Congress to filibuster and defeat legislation calling for deployment of a limited missile defense against long-range attack. The White House insisted that a multi-billion "research" program without a definite deployment plan was the only policy it would follow. Yet in 1997 Pentagon documents revealed that the so-called National Missile Defense program was underfunded by an astonishing 100 percent--a discovery that was made by the same Pentagon officials who had been running the program for two years.. A single testing failure of a target missile in 1997 set back the program for an entire year. The reason: The Pentagon did not think to produce a back-up test missile in case the test failed. Civilian defense officials could provide no explanation when Congress demanded one. But the reason seemed clear enough: Without the support of the most senior administration officials, the program had languished. ..Cohen also announced that the administration's 1996 plan to develop a system in three years and then decide whether to deploy it in three years more was "a rush to failure," something no one bothered to mention when the plan was announced. Cohen said the three-plus-three plan would now become three-plus-five, with the earliest possible deployment slipping from 2003 to 2005. So the administration (or at least part of it) now acknowledges that the threat is real--but the president's response is further to delay deployment. ..The administration now says it will begin discussions with the Russians on modifying the ABM Treaty to allow for modest defense against long-range missiles, talks that will likely prove as fruitless as the negotiations on theater missile defenses. When asked what will happen if the treaty cannot be renegotiated, Cohen said, "Then we have the option of . . . indicating we would simply pull out of the treaty." For arms controllers like Bell, who have an almost theological devotion to the ABM Treaty, the defense secretary had committed a heresy, prompting Bell to hold a press conference the next day to repeat what national security advisor Samuel R. Berger had said only a week before Cohen's announcement: "We remain strongly committed to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty." The administration continues to argue that without the treaty there is the risk of a new arms race with Russia. I asked assistant defense secretary Ted Warner if he honestly believed Russia can afford an arms race, given that its economy is on the verge of collapse. He said, "Well, no, not right now," but perhaps in the future.."
Center for Security Policy 9/1/98 "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"."
AP Tom Raum 9/9/98 "A renewed Republican push to speed work on a national missile defense system faltered by a single vote in the Senate Wednesday. The 59-41 vote fell one short of the 60 needed to overcome Democratic opposition and move ahead with debate on the legislation. Even though Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., had made the bill a top part of his 1998 agenda, the vote was identical to one last May It was an election-year effort by Republicans to vent their frustrations with Clinton administration national-security policies.."
Washington Times 2/28/99 Curt Weldon Freeper Stand Watch Listen "…Amazingly, we in the United States have failed to learn from our mistakes. Eight years later, we have still not completed development of highly effective theater missile defense systems to protect our troops overseas. Instead, the Clinton administration continues to hamper these programs with inadequate funding and testing programs. The bottom line? With only modifications to the limited range Patriot system in place, most of our troops are no safer from the threat of missile attack than they were during the Persian Gulf war.....Contrary to the belief of the majority of Americans, the United States does not have the capability to shoot down even a single missile launched on one of our cities. Instead, the Clinton administration believes the threat of retaliation will dissuade any nation that would dare launch a missile attack on an American citizen…."
U.S. News & World Report 3/8/99 Michael Barone "…Bill Clinton likes to say that no Russian missiles are targeted at the United States. But we have every reason to believe that there are, or soon will be, North Korean missiles targeted at this country--missiles capable of delivering nuclear or chemical and biological warheads. In a few years, and without much warning, Iranian and Iraqi missiles could also be targeted at us and our allies. What can we do to stop such missiles once they are launched? Not a thing. None of this was clear eight months ago; it is undeniable now. The question is whether our government will build a missile defense system to protect our cities, military bases, and oil fields--and to block the kind of nuclear blackmail suggested by China's threat, during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996, to bomb Los Angeles. A full warning came from the report last July of the commission on missile threats headed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. This was a bipartisan commission, with members who have often disagreed on weapons issues. The panel had access to all U.S. intelligence sources, and its conclusion was unanimous: Rogue states could "inflict major destruction on the U.S." within five years of deciding to do so, and with little or no notice to us…."
Defense Week 3/1/99 John Donnelly Freeper Stand Watch Listen "…There is "little doubt" a new ballistic-missile threat to the U.S. will emerge by 2000, the director of the Pentagon’s missile-defense agency said in the most specific official reference yet to how soon such a capability could materialize. ....A commission chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last July said a "rogue state" could develop an ICBM within five years of a decision to do so. Until now, the most specific statement about when such a threat to U.S. territory could be realized was Lyles’ statement last month that the ICBM threat would emerge "in the next couple of years."…"
Center for Security Policy 3/03/99 No. 99-D 28 "…On 20 January, a top Clinton Administration official for the first time acknowledged what has become increasingly obvious to all but the most unreconstructed arms control ideologues. At a Pentagon briefing, Secretary of Defense William Cohen confirmed that there is an imminent ballistic missile danger to this country. He then told the American people that they would have to have a limited national missile defenses (NMD) to protect them against such a threat.
(1) Secretary Cohen even went so far as to indicate that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty would have to be changed in order to permit this defensive deployment. In response to a question, he averred that, if the Russians refused to agree to make such changes, the United States could always withdraw from that Treaty. Within hours, however, Mr. Cohen had been effectively repudiated on all three scores. On the record and not-for-attribution comments by, among others, the President's National Security Advisor, Samuel Berger, by one of his senior subordinates, Robert Bell, and by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made clear that the Secretary of Defense had deviated from the Administration's abiding party line on missile defense…. In other words, if left to its own devices, hell will experience a cold day before the Clinton Administration fields anything to protect the American people against ballistic missile attack. Although largely obscured by the press interest expressed in Secretary Cohen's apostasy about deploying anti-missile systems, the practical upshot of the programmatic actions the Administration is taking in this area will be to postpone by years the availability of ballistic missile defenses and to diminish the capability of any that might ultimately be deployed…."Reuters 3/5/99 "…President Clinton vowed Friday the United States will not abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty despite U.S. plans for a missile defense system. The Clinton administration has pledged $6.6 billion for development of a missile defense system in its fiscal 2000 budget, but would delay a presidential decision on building one until June 2000. Clinton said researching a missile defense does not violate the 1972 ABM treaty with the Soviet Union that limits both sides' ability to deploy anti-missile systems. Russia says it will not carry out strategic arms cuts unless the ABM Treaty is observed….. "
Washington Weekly 3/8/99 Robert Stowe England "…The Clinton Administration consistently opposed developing a limited missile defense system until last summer. An official national intelligence estimate prepared a few years ago by the CIA claimed the ability of states like North Korea to develop and deploy ICBM's was 10 to 15 years away. The CIA projection did not go over well in Congress. "Based on my classified briefings I said [at the time] that the report had been politicized. And that it really didn't look at the possibility of proliferation affecting nations who could build capabilities very quickly," Weldon recalls. Congressional doubts led to two independent reviews. "One, we asked the [General Accounting Office] to do an analysis of the CIA report. They agreed that it was faulty," Weldon says. Then Congress authorized a bipartisan blue ribbon panel to look at the emerging security threats from around the world. Headed by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the commission unanimously delivered a report last July that indicated that the emerging missile threat form rogue states was more imminent than previously claimed by the CIA. "Both Democrat and Republican appointees agreed that the threat is here now," says Weldon. …"
Washington Weekly 3/8/99 Marvin Lee "…America is defenseless against a missile attack from rogue nations that may recently have acquired the technology from China with the help of the Clinton Administration. Who is to blame for this national security disaster? Last Friday, Clinton said that doing research on a missile defense system would not be a violation of the ABM treaty with the former Soviet Union that his Administration is trying to uphold. Well, if that is the case, then why did his Administration early on cut exactly such research beyond the bone? So vehement and emotional has the opposition of liberal Democrats to missile defense (originally proposed by Ronald Reagan) been that it cut even the development of theater-based missile defense to protect our troops in the battlefield. The result of such irresponsible national security policy is that we are now years away from developing and deploying any national missile defense…."
US News Online 3/8/99 Michael Barone "…Bill Clinton likes to say that no Russian missiles are targeted at the United States. But we have every reason to believe that there are, or soon will be, North Korean missiles targeted at this country–missiles capable of delivering nuclear or chemical and biological warheads. In a few years, and without much warning, Iranian and Iraqi missiles could also be targeted at us and our allies. What can we do to stop such missiles once they are launched? Not a thing. None of this was clear eight months ago; it is undeniable now. The question is whether our government will build a missile defense system to protect our cities, military bases, and oil fields–and to block the kind of nuclear blackmail suggested by China's threat, during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996, to bomb Los Angeles… A new world. The case against rapid deployment rests on three arguments: (1) the threat isn't real, (2) the technology is impossible, (3) it is more important to maintain the antiballistic missile treaty signed with the Soviet Union in 1972, which bars most missile defense systems. The Rumsfeld report demolished argument 1. Argument 2 is still raised by some who note that we have spent large sums on missile defense since Ronald Reagan proposed it in 1983, with disappointing results. But stopping a few rogue-state missiles with the computers of 1999 is much easier than stopping hundreds of Soviet missiles with the computers of 1983. As for argument 3, the strategic environment in which the ABM treaty was adopted no longer exists. The argument for the treaty was that a missile defense system might provoke a Soviet or American first strike. But the proximate missile threats now come from states that might risk such a strike. The Clinton administration is split on missile defense. The president has called for more spending but a later date for possible deployment–a typical Clintonesque straddle…."
China Peoples Daily 2/12/99 Chinese Communist Party "…The US missile defense system (MDS) aims to render other nations' missile ineffective. It is a threat to other nations rather than for US self-defense….The United States has the biggest and most advanced nuclear and conventional weapon arsenals in the world. It will acquire a strategic position of averting missile attacks through the MDS….This will definitely break the existing world military and political balance and lead to a new arms race, which will yield serious side-effects on world peace and stability. …The US-Russian relationship is at the lowest point since 1991 due to the two nations' divergence over Iraqi and Kosovo issues. Someone worry that the MDS might resume Cold War, which is not uncalled-for….The United States has asked Japan and other nations to participate in the development of TMD. Some forces even attempt to include China's Taiwan into this system…"
NewsMax 3/12/99 Christopher Ruddy "…US DETROYS NUCLEAR ARSENAL, RUSSIAN ARSENAL EXPANDS Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been systematically destroying its nuclear arsenal. In 1991, the US had approximately 30,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. Under Clinton, that arsenal has fallen nearly 60%. In 1997, the United States had only 12,500 (tactical and strategic) nuclear weapons. Of these, only 8,750 were active, 2500 more were on reserve, and 1,250 were slated to be destroyed. Moreover, our nuclear arsenal has a limited "shelf life," and year by year, more and more weapons become unusable. The Clinton administration has only recently taken belated steps to produce tritium, a necessary component for the maintenance of nuclear weapons. In contrast, the Russians may now have as many as 50,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons -- ranging from small suitcase bombs to large warheads suitable for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM's). The lion's share of these weapons remain targeted at the US. And Russia is quickly building even more weapons. Never before has the strategic nuclear balance been so greatly in Russia's favor…."
Chicago Tribune 3/11/99 Michael Kilian "…A group of 14 Reagan and Bush administration defense officials on Wednesday urged President Clinton to shelve his proposal for a land-based "Star Wars" type of national missile defense shield and push ahead with a cheaper, faster, sea-borne Navy system instead. They also called on Clinton to scrap, revise or ignore the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with the Russians, calling it the biggest obstacle to development of a workable U.S. defense against the growing threat of missile attack from rogue nations. An intense fight over the anti-missile defense is expected in Congress, where support is strong for giving the issue top national-security priority. Outlining their views in a report commissioned by the conservative Heritage Foundation, Henry Cooper, former head of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") program, and the other defense experts claimed that Clinton's proposed land-based missile defense plan would leave the U.S. vulnerable to hostile missiles until at least 2005, if not longer, while the Navy plan could have protection in place in three years. "The only thing standing in the way of this affordable, effective and responsible (Navy) system to defend the United States is political will," the group said in the report. "The Clinton administration and Congress can end our vulnerability to attack, and they can do it for less than we spend in two years on the air traffic control system." …"
Drudge 3/14/99 "…The NEW YORK TIMES on Monday is set to report that China now has "roughly 20 nuclear missiles that can reach American shores, and perhaps 300 nuclear weapons that, aboard medium-range missiles or bombers, could hit Japan, India or Russia. "China has deployed five to seven of its longest-range missiles, called the DF-5, that can hit virtually any part of the United States. An additional dozen or so missiles, the DF-4, can reach the West Coast…The duo report that China currently has only one nuclear-equipped submarine, with 12 missiles that have a range of 1,100 miles. The sub's seaworthiness has long been doubted by intelligence experts, and it does not threaten the American mainland…"
South China Morning Post 3/12/99 Freeper Copycat "…Beijing confirmed yesterday that it had held talks with Russia on the US plan to create a theatre missile defence (TMD) system to protect its troops and allies in Asia. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said: "Both China and Russia have expressed their respective stands on the issue of TMD." Mr Zhu did not say where and when the talks were held or who was involved. The Japanese news agency Kyodo, quoting an unnamed Russian government source, said on Wednesday that security experts from the foreign and defence ministries of China and Russia had met every two months to exchange information about the anti-missile system. The talks began late last year at China's request, and the two sides would likely end up deciding on a united approach, possibly jointly asking that the US and Japan terminate development of the programme, the source said…."
New York Times 3/15/99 David Sanger Erik Eckholm "…It is a bare-bones arsenal compared with the thousands of warheads still maintained by the United States and Russia…. Despite continuing evidence of Chinese espionage abroad, most experts doubt that China intends to fundamentally change its largely defensive nuclear strategy or that it will try to alter the imbalance of weapons with the United States. But many experts outside the U. S. government -- including some who have talked at length with Chinese leaders and military officials -- say Beijing is clearly seeking to modernize its nuclear forces, with a 10-year plan to make them more accurate, easier to launch and far less vulnerable to attack than they are today. And it is hoping to use high technology to offset its outmoded conventional forces…. "With or without the W-88 warheads, China today is able to threaten the United States," William J. Perry, the former defense secretary, said last week in Washington, just after returning from a visit to China where he spent time with military leaders and China's president, Jiang Zemin. "You have to anticipate that ability will improve in coming years. They will evolve into a more global force. The challenge is how do we manage that?" …"
Associated Press 3/15/99 Tom Raum Freeper Brian Mosely "…Sixteen years after President Reagan called for a national missile defense shield, both houses of Congress are moving toward approval this week of legislation to commit the United States to such a system…."
Newsday 3/15/99 Roy Gutman "…The Republican-controlled Congress, in another test of strength against President Clinton, will attempt to force the administration to speed up deployment of a controversial missile defense. Clinton opposes bills that will come before the Senate today and the House later in the week, but proponents say the legislation has a good chance of passage…."
Washington Times 3/17/99 Bill Gertz Freeper Jolly "…Legislation calling for deployment of a national missile defense moved closer to final passage yesterday after President Clinton dropped a threat to veto the bill…."
Dallas Morning News 3/17/99 New York Times News Service "…The White House and Senate Democrats abandoned their long-standing opposition on Tuesday to a politically popular bill that calls for a national defense against limited long-range missile attacks. The actions all but assure overwhelming approval of the overall bill, which declares it to be U.S. policy to field an anti-missile system against ballistic missile threats as soon as "technologically possible." The administration dropped its threatened veto by President Clinton after the Senate passed a compromise amendment that Democrats say ensures that any anti-missile system will not interfere with arms-control negotiations with Russia…."
New York Times 3/18/99 John Broder "… The Clinton White House seldom lets a popular parade pass by without leaping to the front, or at least latching onto the last carriage. In years past, President Clinton was a late but fervent convert to Republican crusades on the balanced budget, IRS abuses and a federal law discouraging same-sex marriages. Clinton has once again joined a popular cause, this time national missile defense, the latest version of the much-derided "Star Wars" anti-missile program of the Reagan era. Clinton added $6.6 billion for missile defense to his Pentagon budget request in January and this week dropped his opposition to a bill he had threatened to veto. Clinton on Tuesday abruptly withdrew his objections to a Republican-sponsored Senate bill calling for the development of a limited missile defense system. He did so after Democrats drafted two face-saving amendments that allowed the White House to assert that the bill would not jeopardize arms deals with Russia or commit the United States to building an untested system…."
http://www.newsday.com/ap/rnmpwh0r.htm 3/18/99 Freeper Thanatos "…Russia and China on Thursday criticized the Senate's approval of a U.S. anti-missile defense system, saying the move would threaten the globe's strategic balance. The bill overwhelmingly approved by the Senate on Wednesday commits the Pentagon to building a national defense against limited ballistic missile attack ``as soon as technologically possible.'' ``That poses a serious threat to the whole process of nuclear arms control, as well as strategic stability, for which major international agreements have been worked out for decades,'' the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement…."
BBC 3/19/99 "…Representatives and Senate both supported the bill Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov has described the US Congress decision to resume development work on a national missile defence system as an "unpleasant surprise". Mr Primakov said in a US television interview that reviving the project - nicknamed Star Wars - would be in breach of an international weapons control treaty. "I don't believe we need to get involved in another race ... or bring back the infamous Star Wars," Mr Primakov told NBC Nightly News. China has also expressed "serious concern" over the vote, fearing similar technology could be used to forge a defence umbrella in Asia. The Star Wars project was first proposed by President Ronald Reagan 16 years ago, but it was abandoned because it was too costly and too complex to develop. But now the Congress has said the US must implement some kind of missile defence system as soon as possible…"
Wall Street Journal 3/29/99 "…Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic has the technology to build a modern air defense, and the brutality to conduct what increasingly looks like genocide in Kosovo. It seems, thankfully, that he does not have advanced missile and nuclear programs. The North Koreans and Iraqis, among others, do.With overwhelming votes in the Congress and the White House dropping its veto threat, it is finally U.S. policy to defend itself from ballistic missile attack. The next question is how best to do it…..The race to build a national missile defense is in some real sense a race against time. Two-dozen countries already have or are building ballistic missiles and there's a burgeoning export trade, not to mention spy trade, in missile parts. As the Rumsfeld Commission pointed out, we're likely to have little warning of an attack; it's an easy matter for a determined missile-maker to conceal his work from U.S. satellites and intelligence. One of the first objectives, then, is speed. Get something up there fast -- before a Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-Il decides to test his missiles on Los Angeles…Ultimately, an effective national missile defense will surely be a "layered" defense: on land, on sea and in space. The Heritage commission has made a strong case for deploying the Aegis option first, but that doesn't mean forgoing research into other systems….. At last week's conference, Dr. Kissinger said, "I cannot imagine what an American President would say to the American public if there was an attack and he had done nothing to prevent it." If the U.S. doesn't renounce this [ABM] treaty, a President may yet get that awful assignment in some future Kosovo…."
THE WASHINGTON TIMES Bill Gertz 3/26/99 Freeper Patriot "…The State Department is quietly informing overseas embassies that, despite Senate approval of a bill to establish a national missile defense, the administration does not have to deploy such a system. Two amendments added to the Senate bill last week prompted President Clinton to drop his veto threat and offer the administration a loophole to avoid deployment, according to an internal State Department cable obtained by The Washington Times…."
Claremont Institute 3/99 Brian T Kennedy "…the White House is working behind the scenes to ensure that missile defense won't be "technologically possible" for at least a decade……In this case, it's important to look past the public proclamations. Which brings us to the Space Based Infrared System, or SBIRS-Low for short. SBIRS-Low is a proposed constellation of 24 satellites that will employ infrared technology to pick up the heat signature of ballistic missiles upon their launch, track these missiles throughout their flight, and transmit data to whatever land- or sea-based anti-missile system the U.S decides to deploy. SBIRS-Low is the heart of any U.S. missile defense system, from the simplest--such as using our current fleet of Navy Aegis cruisers to launch anti-missile interceptors--to the most advanced space-based lasers. This includes any theater defense we could deploy to defend our troops abroad or our allies such as Taiwan and Japan. Even the missile defense system Israel is building depends for its success on SBIRS-Low. Without SBIRS-Low, the only missile-detection and tracking system currently being researched, any other advances in missile-defense technology will be worthless. On February 4, just two weeks after Secretary Cohen's announcement of a pro-missile defense policy, the Air Force cancelled its contracts with TRW Inc. and the Boeing Corp. for two SBIRS-Low demonstration projects. The reason for these cancellations, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology, was to "avoid cost-and-schedule impacts on the SBIRS-Low constellation." But this is nonsense. In fact, Boeing and TRW will be paid the lion's share of the contracts anyway, including the portion that covered the cancelled demonstration projects. And even prior to canceling the contracts, the Air Force moved back the proposed launch date for any part of the main SBIRS-Low constellation from 2004 to 2006. The excuse was that there was too much "technical risk" involved in launching at the earlier date. But how, one wonders, does the Air Force plan to avoid "technical risk" without demonstration projects? Right now, any further contracts for research and development of the SBIRS-Low program have been put on hold. And this looks more than anything like the tactic the Clinton administration will use to block missile defense surreptitiously, while publicly embracing missile defense to defuse it as a political issue…."
http://www.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,38448-61951-449966-0,00.html 4/14/99 Nando Media Freeper Thanatos "...Russia and China on Wednesday warned of a new arms race if the United States goes ahead with plans to develop a nationwide system to defend agai nst a limited missile attack. The U.S. Senate recently approved a bill calling for construction of the defense system "as soon as technologically possible." The Americans have grown concerned about the possibility of attack from countries such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Russian politicians have been unanimous in assailing the U.S. plan to develop anti-missile defenses, saying the move would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Moscow strongly opposes U.S. proposals to amend the treaty to allow for limited miss ile defenses...."
The Heritage Foundation 4/8/99 Thomas Moore "... The Clinton Administration's antipathy toward anti-missile protection for the American people apparently runs so deep that it soon may reject the most significant national missile defense (NMD) legislation put forth in recent years. In the face of overwhelming public and congressional support for this legislation, however, President Bill Clinton and his national security advisers are attempting to distort its meaning and nullify it by presidential decree rather than employ the veto, which is the proper way for a President to block legislation he opposes..... Despite the overwhelming show of sentiment in Congress for deploying a NMD, the Clinton Administration continues to oppose the legislation. On March 19, the White House sent a confusing cable to U.S. embassies informing diplomats that the two amendments added to the Senate bill meant "no deployment decision has been made" even if the Senate version became the primary source of the bill--which is the likely outcome of the House-Senate conference....Under the plain meaning of [S. 257], the United States would commit to deploy a national missile defense.... Now we learn that the Administration is telling foreign governments that those words do not mean what they obviously mean. ..... "
Washington Weekly 5/2/99 RICKI MAGNUSSEN AND MARVIN LEE "...QUESTION: But there has been some concern that the most important parts of the Cox report would be redacted before release. TIMPERLAKE: But my argument is that it's so bad that we can assume the worst, regardless. They can redact everything but honest credible journalists can no longer give the benefit of the doubt to the President of The United States. He's a known liar! There's no longer any excuse for any spin. It's too serious for that. This transcends Republicans or Democrats, this goes to the heart of the next century. So the worst case has to be assumed. It can be redacted but who cares. Regardless of how much they redact, the worst has already happened and it happened because of Bill Clinton. It's already to late. We now have to break the conspiracy and hope that we can move to the new generation of missiles like missile defense, new strategic weapons on the drawing board that may protect us, but we are not there yet so we really have to ring the alarm bell. I wouldn't speak like this if I didn't truly believe it. I don't want to scare America, but right now it's a wake up call and the fire bell is ringing. There's a fire right now and the fire is that all our nuclear secrets are open to the rogue nations and The People's Republic of China. ..."
Reuters 5/11/99 "...Russia and China lashed out Tuesday at U.S. plans to deploy a national anti-missile defense system, saying it would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and set off an arms race in space. Ambassadors Vasily Sidorov of Russia and China's Li Changhe also denounced NATO's missile attack on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last Friday, which killed three people. They were addressing the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, whose 61 member states opened their second 10-week session of 1999 in Geneva. U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Grey did not take the floor to respond to the attacks. .... Regarding the ABM treaty, Russian and Chinese officials expressed concern last month after joint talks in Moscow about U.S. plans to deploy a Star Wars-type missile defense umbrella. Russia says the scheme would force changes to the 1972 ABM treaty, which limits Russian and U.S. ability to deploy anti-missile systems. It would be land-based but probably use space sensors to provide early warning of enemy or accidental launches....."
NY Times 5/13/99 JAMES RISEN and JEFF GERTH "..."The DF-31 ICBM will give China a major strike capability that will be difficult to counterattack at any stage of its operation," a 1996 Air Force intelligence report on the DF-31 stated. "It will be a significant threat not only to U.S. forces deployed in the Pacific theater, but to portions of the continental United States and to many of our allies." Some United States officials say the new Chinese weapon will use design technology from the American W-70 warhead, a small bomb designed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in the 1970's. China stole secret design information about the W-70 from Lawrence Livermore in the late 1970's or early 1980's, Government investigators believe. A scientist was fired from Lawrence Livermore in 1981 in connection with the investigation into the suspected theft, but no one has ever been arrested in the case. The F.B.I. said it did not have evidence to bring charges in the case....The W-70 warhead is also known as the neutron bomb, a weapon that kills people with enhanced radiation while leaving buildings intact. But its "primary" can be used in other, conventional nuclear weapons as well...... Despite the debate, the broad conclusion that the DF-31 will come equipped with a warhead that uses stolen American technology is included in two new secret Government reports, officials said. Part of one report from a select House committee is soon to be made public. The other report is the result of a Government-wide intelligence assessment of the damage done to United States national security by Chinese nuclear espionage, according to officials. That Government-wide assessment, however, acknowledges the uncertainty..... Once the DF-31 and other advanced missiles are deployed, China is expected to begin to phase out its older and less accurate ballistic missiles. "The DF-31 ICBM will give China a major strike capability that will be difficult to counterattack at any stage of its operation, from preflight mobile operations through the terminal flight phase," the 1996 Air Force intelligence report predicted. The "road mobility" of the DF-31, the report adds, "will greatly improve Chinese nuclear ballistic missile survivability and will complicate the task of defeating the Chinese threat."
Washington Times 5/17/99 Bill Gertz Excerpts from Betrayal "...Clinton administration efforts to defend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty at all costs led to the death of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) -- the revolutionary concept of shifting from reliance on mutual offensive nuclear annihilation to a strategic defense against long-range missiles. For the administration, even theoretical or potential violations of the treaty could not be tolerated. Preserving the pact was more important than building defenses that could defend American troops or cities.....On Sept. 9, 1998, the Senate failed by a single vote to end a Democratic filibuster that blocked legislation calling for deployment of a national missile defense capable of hitting and destroying incoming missiles like the Taepo Dong. .... But all Mr. Biden had done was to revive the Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction, a doctrine irrelevant in confronting rogue states like North Korea. Several months after the test launch of the Taepo Dong, the Pentagon was shocked by new intelligence indicating China and its scientists were helping North Korea develop space launchers and satellites. The White House again ignored the danger, signaled by the National Security Agency's interception of communications between China and North Korea about the collaboration. The Pentagon, however, was not fooled. Satellite and space technology is virtually identical to the know-how needed to build long-range missiles and warheads. "I think the Chinese are helping them with the missile program, not just with satellites," a senior Defense Department official said. "The two are so closely intertwined, there is no way you can separate them." About a month before the Taepo Dong test, Iran had test-fired its first medium-range missile, the Shahab-3, which could travel 800 miles. And Pakistan had test-fired a medium-range missile that had come off-the-shelf from North Korea. By the end of 1998, the danger became too great for the president to continue to ignore.......In January, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen announced that the Pentagon would begin budgeting, but not actually spending, $6.6 billion over six years to deploy a national missile defense. For the first time, the Pentagon admitted it was wrong to think no threat of long-range missiles would emerge until 2010....... In March, Congress endorsed Mr. Weldon's stance when both the House and the Senate passed a bill declaring it U.S. policy to deploy a national missile defense. The bill won wide bipartisan support, so much so that the president could not veto it. Nevertheless, in private the White House remained opposed to deployment. In President Clinton's view, having an agreement limiting arms takes precedence over building systems to defend the nation against long-range missiles --whether from rogue states like North Korea and Iran or from nuclear powers like Russia or China...."
Philadelphia Inquirer 5/20/99 "...China, India, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea and Israel have now built missiles that can deliver biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Others will follow. As Bracken explains, this is changing the global security equation in ways our leaders haven't begun to think through. We got a glimpse of this new world during the gulf war, when Iraq hit Israel with Scud missiles, and could have put biological bombs atop them had Saddam dared. Near that war's end, intelligence reports suggested that Saddam would have used such weapons on Israeli civilians and U.S. bases if we marched to Baghdad. Maybe that explains why he's still around. The pattern since has been clear. North Korea shot a test missile over Japan. China has tested missiles near Taiwan. India and Pakistan have not only detonated their own nuclear bombs, but keep testing better missiles that can strike deep into each other's territory. Bracken argues that missiles and "weapons of mass destruction" (the umbrella phrase for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons) are "disruptive technologies." Just as Microsoft outflanked slow-moving IBM by competing with software, not hardware, so too have missiles changed the rules of the geopolitical game...."
WallSt. Journal 5/25/99 Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington "...Far more important, neither response even begins to address the threat the U.S. and its Asian allies will face if only half the Cox report's findings are true: a China that in 10 years could wield sufficient strategic clout to marginalize U.S. forces in Asia, intimidate our allies there, and propel Japan, Taiwan and South Korea into an arms rivalry with Beijing that would be sure to go nuclear and ballistic. Why is this likely? Right now China has no more than 20 nuclear warheads that can reach the U.S. and no more than 400 that can threaten Beijing's neighbors. Those that target the U.S. are on highly inaccurate intercontinental-range missiles, missiles that are so large and slow they make ideal ground targets and easy pickings for planned U.S. national missile defenses. A large portion of the remaining warheads can only be delivered by bombers, all of which are sitting targets on the ground and in the air. Because these forces have not grown much in the past decade, some have insisted that China has no interest in amassing an offensive force, only a retaliatory one against Russia, the U.S. and, lately, India. What the Cox report makes clear is that it would be a mistake to bank on this in the next century...... The bottom line: By 2009 the Chinese threat against the U.S. may no longer consist of a few slow-flying, vulnerable missiles. Instead we may have to face hundreds of accurate, fast-flying, and hard-to-intercept warheads and China's neighbors may face thousands. This is not a threat that firing an attorney general or national security adviser will avert. Nor will tightening security at the national laboratories or monitoring U.S. exports of sensitive technology to China have any significant effect. As the Cox report has made clear, most of the technology China needs to deploy the forces noted above it has already acquired...."
Washington Post 5/26/99 Walter Pincus "...The Cox committee recognizes that China up to now has followed a strategic policy of deterrence, which means it has maintained a small nuclear force, but one that could inflict unacceptable damage on an enemy in a retaliatory strike. The roughly 10 strategic ICBMs aimed at the United States, for example, have thermonuclear warheads in the megaton -- or 1 million tons of TNT -- range that could destroy any American city. However, the panel hypothesizes that China in the future could change its strategy, deploy many more than the 100 intercontinental missiles than currently estimated, build multiple warheads for each one and finally, "develop an early warning system in order to support a launch-on-warning posture." That is the strategy by which a country that believes itself under attack launches its missiles before they can be destroyed by incoming missiles....The report also suggests that Chinese strategy might change so radically that it would be the first country to prepare to use a nuclear weapon against invaders on its own territory. The panel cites the neutron warhead, designed to kill opposing forces without the widespread material damage caused by other nuclear weapons, the design for which it said China stole in the late 1970s...."
5/27/99 scmp "...China is gearing up to test an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of more than 8,000km this year, military sources in Beijing said yesterday. Preparations have started to test the sea-to-surface Julang-2 (JL-2) missile in the coming months, they said. The JL-2 is the successor to the JL-1 successfully tested from submarines, including the Xia, the navy's only nuclear-fuelled submarine, in the 1980s. China is hoping the JL-2 will be operational from next year. It would carry either one warhead of 2.5 megatonnes or three 90 kilotonne warheads...."
Center for Security Policy 5/26/99 "...The Senate Foreign Relations Committee took testimony today concerning one of the most important national security issues of our time -- the Nation's abject vulnerability to ballistic missile attack -- from one of this era's most influential policy practitioners, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Dr. Kissinger.... "I do not believe [the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)] could work in a world of many nuclear powers." The continued observance of the 1972 ABM Treaty has been a "deliberate policy choice." If the U.S. is attacked, "how could such a government explain to the American people" that we chose not to defend ourselves? It would be "difficult for any arms control system to reduce [potential damage from a nuclear exchange] to [levels] that are acceptable." Even if you could get to START III levels, that would still be "morally unbearable." "I cannot imagine what an American president would say to the American public if there should be an attack, and if he would have to explain that he did nothing to prevent or defeat the resulting catastrophe. I think the legitimacy of government would be threatened if such a condition existed." On the ABM Treaty "...the [ABM] Treaty was signed with an eye to an environment that simply does not exist today." The "ABM Treaty must not be allowed to stand in the way of national missile defense." "I am not in favor of attaching new significance to the ABM Treaty."...."I believe it is strategically and morally necessary to build a missile defense: strategically, because of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the missile technology to deliver them; morally, because the doctrine of mutual assured destruction which I have opposed in my writings for at least thirty years, is bankrupt." "I believe that we should proceed with the development of the best technology for the defense of the United States." "I believe we should create a national missile defense as soon as it is possible to do so" with a system upon which there is a consensus..... Negotiations with Russia, on such issues as nuclear reductions, should not be permitted to postpone the decision to proceed with an anti-missile defense. "I am more concerned about third countries that I am about Russia." On the question of Developing only Theater Missile Defenses "[It] isn't natural for us to protect our allies more than ourselves." ..."
Center for Security Policy 5/26/99 "...This session was preceded by a no-less-noteworthy hearing held yesterday at which the Chairman of the Board of the Center for Security Policy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and other legal experts established that America is no longer legally bound to adhere to this expired treaty.....The Center for Security Policy takes particular pride in the appearance before the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday of Mr. Feith and George Miron, a highly regarded attorney who served previously in the Department of Justice in connection with a comprehensive analysis they prepared for the Center concerning the legal status of the ABM Treaty..... Messrs. Feith and Miron were joined at the witness table by David Rivkin and Lee Casey of the law firm of Hunton & Williams, who last year authored at the request of the Heritage Foundation a legal memorandum that arrived at similar conclusions. Specifically, both of these studies found that, in the absence of Senate advice and consent to any agreement that would give the ABM Treaty renewed legal standing (e.g., its approval of the "succession agreement" signed with Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in September 1997 -- an agreement that has yet to be submitted to the Senate), the Treaty legally can only be said to have been observed since 1991 as a matter of U.S. policy. As Mr. Feith stated at Tuesday's hearing, "When the USSR became extinct, its bilateral, non-dispositive treaties lapsed. Hence, the ABM Treaty lapsed by operation of law - that is, automatically - when the USSR dissolved in 1991. It did not become a treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation."(2) The practical conclusion that must then be drawn from these analyses, according to Mr. Feith, is that the Clinton Administration's Multilateralization Memorandum of Understanding "is not simply an amendment of an existing treaty, but a new treaty. If approved, it would create the ABM Treaty of 1999. If not approved, it would preserve the status quo - that is, there would continue to be no binding international agreement prohibiting the United States from deploying a defense against ballistic missiles." ....."
Investor's Business Daily 5/28/99 "....While most of the debate surrounding the Cox report focuses on the past, the real issue is what to do about the future. The report makes it very clear that America needs a ballistic missile defense system. The Clinton White House counterattack never takes long. The administration has been working for months preparing for the release of the congressional probe of Chinese espionage. The first line of defense noted that Chinese espionage began as far back as the Carter administration. But the difference between the Carter, Reagan and Bush presidencies is the fact that these presidents didn't know what was going on. Some members of their intelligence forces suspected Chinese espionage. In March, President Clinton claimed he didn't know anything about foreign spionage - despite kaffee klatsches at the White House with Chinese agents and Russian gangsters. We now know this is a lie..... But even if the Clinton administration were as ignorant of Chinese espionage as earlier White Houses, Clinton is guilty in this regard: He has opposed the Strategic Defense Initiative since he took office. Rather, he has opted for meaningless treaties such as Start II, a pact between the U.S. and the defunct Soviet Union that sets limits on nuclear weapons. The even more unrealistic Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty risks the effective testing of our weapons...."
Salon 5/28/99 David Horowitz "....On many occasions over the past few years, including innumerable campaign appearances and three State of the Union addresses, the president of the United States has looked the American people in the eye and assured them that because of his policies, "There are no more nuclear missiles pointed at any children in the United States." For President Clinton, the truth of this statement probably depends on what the meaning of "are" is. But for the rest of us, it is imperative that we recognize the president's statement for the dangerous lie that it is. The tiny shred of truth out of which Clinton has woven this politically useful lie is a meaningless, post-Cold War agreement between Russia and the United States to stop targeting one another's cities. But even if Russia's government were not in a state of near dissolution, the stark military reality is that U.S. intelligence services simply have no way of telling what targets Russia's leaders have actually chosen for their nuclear warheads. In any event, it would take only 15 seconds for Russian commanders to retarget any of their hundreds of strategic missiles tipped with multiple nuclear warheads our way once again. More importantly, by every military index available, the Russians are in fact energetically planning for the possibility of future nuclear war with the United States. And they are not alone. Thanks to technology transfers courtesy of the Clinton administration, China and North Korea are also armed with long-range missiles capable of reaching the American mainland, and neither of those countries are parties to our non-targeting agreement with Russia. According to a recent CIA report, 13 of China's 18 nuclear warheads are known to be aimed at American cities. Nevertheless, after six years of tenacious, dedicated opposition by the Clinton administration to the Strategic Defense Initiative, America has almost no protection against incoming missiles and no prospect of deploying a new system for many years to come....."
WorldNetDaily 6/1/99 Charles Smith "...The Cox report also details for the first time the long ignored sea leg of China's strategic arsenal. "The JL-2 (Julang 2, or Great Wave 2) is a submarine-launched version of the (Dong Feng, or East Wind) DF-31. It is believed to have an even longer range, and will be carried on the PLA Navy's Type 094-class submarine. Sixteen JL-2 missiles will be carried on each submarine." What does the Great Wave 2 mean to the U.S. homeland? The Cox report noted "The JL-2's 7,500 mile range will allow it to be launched from the PRC's territorial waters and to strike targets throughout the United States." On May 27, 1999, the South China Morning Post reported that the People's Liberation Navy (PLN) had begun preparations to test the Great Wave 2 (JL-2). PLN officials reported that the JL-2 is scheduled to be deployed on the nuclear submarine Xia by 2000. The sub-launched missile is slated to carry a single 2.5-Megaton, thermonuclear warhead, or three 90-Kiloton warheads. "If the JL-2 were to employ a shroud to protect its warhead as do the majority of submarine-launched ballistic missiles today," states the Cox report. "This would be the first use of a shroud or fairing on a PRC missile."
Fox News Wire 6/2/99 Tom Raum "...If ratified, a nuclear test ban treaty that has languished before the Senate for 20 months could make it harder for China to advance its acquired nuclear-weapons capacity, arms-control advocates say. But the pact - the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty - remains caught in a dispute between the Clinton administration and the Republican-led Senate over modifications to an earlier arms-control agreement, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., has refused to schedule hearings on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty until the administration sends the ABM amendments to the Senate for ratification. Helms had given the White House until Tuesday to submit the ABM legislation - threatening to put a freeze on all treaties if it failed to do so. The ABM modifications, which concern how the treaty affects other former Soviet republics as well as Russia, were agreed to by Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. But the administration doesn't want to submit them to the Senate until the Russian parliament ratifies a later arms control regimen - the so-called START II treaty..."
Oklahoman Online 6/04/1999 MARK GREEN "...Rummaging through the Cox Report's synopsis of the deadly toys Red China is building with the help of stolen U.S. design secrets -- a mobile-launched this, a submarine-launched that -- I ask myself: "And Bill Clinton says it will be how long before we can have a missile defense system?" Our complete vulnerability to missile attack is the sobering reality behind U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox's detailed report on Chinese spying. I think utter terror is a perfectly appropriate reaction to news that two decades of espionage have let the communists acquire nuclear weapons designs "on a par with our own," as the Cox Report states it, simply and grimly. Many Americans remember the "duck-and-cover" school drills and the bomb shelter frenzy of the early 60s, when everyone thought Castro had a missile aimed at their town. It's stunning to see surveys that show most Americans believe the U.S. military has a secret laser- guided gizmo stashed in a hangar somewhere, capable of picking off incoming missiles. Only in video games. At the bottom of page ix of the Cox Report's overview it says "Neither the United States nor the PRC (People's Republic of China) has a national ballistic missile defense system." That hits in the pit of the stomach. Bill Clinton's faith in the United Nations, "the international community" and his own gift of gab is an inadequate shield against the increasing likelihood of missile attack. Worse, if we're ever attacked by Chinese missiles, the added insult to injury will be that the weapons were essentially of our own design....."
Orlando Sentinel 6/6/99 Charley Reese "...Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford, co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, had some alarming things to say after recent meetings in Moscow and Sweden. She said that, because of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's attacks on Yugoslavia, the world is much closer to nuclear war than is understood by the Western press, which dismisses Russian warnings as just rhetoric. She quoted Dr. Aleksander Arbatov, deputy chairman of the Defense Committee of the Russian State Duma, as saying the following: U.S. Russian relations are at the "worst, most acute, most dangerous juncture since the U.S.-Soviet Berlin and Cuban Missile Crisis." The anti-U.S. sentiment is deep, and the slogan, "Serbia today, Moscow tomorrow," is deeply planted in the Russian mind. Disarmament treaties are dead, and nuclear re-armament is back on the agenda. Other Russian officials told her that Russia would not allow the bombing to continue and that, because its conventional forces are in such disarray, it would have no choice but to rely on nuclear weapons. ..."
House Small Business Subcommittee on Government 6/01/99 Mr. Ron Wiltsie "...I am Ron Wiltsie, The Program Manager for Strategic Systems at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, located in Howard County, Maryland...... Discussion of the effects of a nuclear attack on the United States has, for the most part, focused on the effects such attacks would have on our defense capabilities, on our ability to function militarily in such a situation and to prevail on favorable terms.... A nuclear detonation also changes the surrounding environment, causing radio and optical propagation disturbances which adversely affect communications over an extremely wide range of frequencies. An additional, and very important, effect of a high-altitude detonation, particularly for airborne and ground systems, is the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that results from the conversion in the Earth's ionosphere of weapon gamma-ray energy to radio-frequency energy which propagates toward the Earth's surface. The detonation of a nuclear weapon produces high-energy gamma radiation that travels radially away from the burst center. When the detonation occurs at high altitudes where the mean free path of the gamma photons is very long, these photons travel long distances before they interact with other particles. Gamma rays directed toward the earth encounter the atmosphere where they interact with air molecules to produce positive ions and recoil electrons which are called Compton electrons after the man who discovered the effect. The Compton recoil electrons also travel away from the detonation point but are deflected by the earth's magnetic field.... The gamma radiation interacting with the air molecules produces charge separation as the Compton recoil electrons are ejected and leave behind the more massive, positive ions. The earth's magnetic field interaction with the Compton recoil electrons causes charge acceleration, which further radiates an electromagnetic field. High Altitude EMP (HEMP) is produced by these charge separation and charge acceleration phenomena, which occur in the atmosphere in a layer about 20 kilometers (km) thick and 30 km above the earth's surface. The effective source region covers the earth within the solid angle subtended by rays from the detonation point that are tangent to the atmosphere.........The EMP threat is unique in two respects. First, its peak field amplitude and rise rate are high. These features of EMP will induce potentially damaging voltages and currents in unprotected electronic circuits and components. Second, the area covered by an EMP signal can be immense. As a consequence, large portions of extended power and communications networks, for example, can be simultaneously put at risk. Such far-reaching effects are peculiar to EMP. Neither natural phenomena nor any other nuclear weapon effects are so widespread...."
Curt Weldon Website 6/8/99 "... Secondarily, Mr. Speaker, we have just learned that later on this year China will be testing the newest version of their long-range ICBM missile with a range of 13,000 kilometers that can be launched from a submarine that has the potential for a MIRV or a multiple reentry capability. This rocket, this long-range ICBM, the JL-2, is beyond anything they have had in the past, and it is almost a replica of the trident class ICBMs that we have used in this Nation. We did not think China would have this capability until several years down the road. We now have word they will test that missile, that ICBM, this year. Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious issue. The American people need to understand what is happening to their country. They need to understand the blame game cannot stop by firing lower level employees who are only following directions. The blame game cannot stop by saying it was industries' fault...."
WorldNetDaily.com 6/9/99 Jon E. Dougherty "...Bill Gertz, a defense reporter for The Washington Times and author of the new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security," said that not only does China pose a national security threat to the United States, but that Beijing is building up military forces for other than regional security interests. "The Chinese are engaged in a pretty serious strategic and conventional military buildup," Gertz told WorldNetDaily. "The alarming part of that is that it doesn't appear as though they're building up forces just for a regional conflict. It appears as though they're developing forces [strictly] to oppose the United States." Gertz said the People's Liberation Army "is building nuclear missiles and new types of warheads," based in large measure on technology robbed from U.S. weapons labs. "Throughout the '90s, that gleaning of technology was also based on technology transfers" with the cooperation and approval of the Clinton administration...... Beyond that, he added, "based on the U.S. technology they've attained from us," the Chinese are in the process of building two road-mobile missiles that will have the capacity to deliver weapons "within three years." He said these weapons "are expected to have multiple warheads." Gertz said that was important "because the U.S. is planning -- we haven't done it yet -- but we're planning to have missile defenses, and those multiple warheads would be aimed at defeating any [U.S.] defenses." "The U.S. decided not to build mobile missiles," he said, "but our country does have submarine-launched nuclear missiles, which are the backbone of our nuclear triad." That triad, he said, consists of land, air and sea launched weapons. ..... "Theoretically, you could put a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile like that on the deck of a freighter, park a couple hundred miles off the U.S. coast, and launch one of them at an American city," he said. "In my book I make the point that that's the real reason you need to have missile defenses, and this administration has steadfastly refused to" build them. The author also said the negotiated agreements between Russia and China are endangering national security.."
Front Page Magazine 6/1/99 David Horowitz "...Pennsylvania representative Curt Weldon, who is chair of the National Security subcommittee on military research and development, and is fluent in Russian, and who took the care to tabulate the presidential lies mentioned at the top of this article, has characterized the six years of Clinton's Administration as "the worst period in our history in terms of undermining our national security." In May, Weldon traveled to Russia, in company with ten other congressmen. On that trip, in his presence, a Russian General threatened the assembled congressman, warning that if the United States put ground troops in Kosovo, Russia "could" detonate a nuclear device in the lower atmosphere off the eastern United States. The resulting magnetic pulses would "fry" every computer chip in the country, shutting down phones, airplanes, electrical grids, and so on until the country was thrown into absolute chaos. This threat was not made during the Cold War by a ruler of the former Soviet Union. It was made by a Russian General, within the last month...."
Associated Press 6/10/99 "...An expensive experimental antimissile missile did today what it had been unable to do on six previous attempts -- hit a flying target. A white puff of smoke in the southern New Mexico sky marked where the Army's Theater High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile struck a target missile. Before today, the $3.9 billion system had missed its target on six consecutive attempts. The weapon's prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, was fined $15 million after THAAD's sixth failure to hit its target on March 29....."
6/10/99 Reuters "....The United States Thursday destroyed a missile with another missile high over New Mexico in the first successful intercept test of its troubled ``THAAD'' anti-missile defense system, the Pentagon said...... The missile hit and destroyed a Hera test rocket in flight over the military's White Sands, New Mexico, missile test range in the intercept at 5:19 a.m. local time (1119 GMT), Irwin said. The military's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization said Thursday's Hera flight simulated that of a Scud ballistic missile such as those fired by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War and that the intercept took place high over the central portion of the sprawling test range...... More than $3 billion has been spent on the THAAD system since 1992 and the Clinton administration faces pressure from Congress to put in place both a system like THAAD against medium-range missiles as well as an even more ambitious national missile defense system. Thursday's test was the 10th of a series of 13 scheduled flights for the Lockheed Martin system. Defense officials have cited a number of reasons for THAAD's earlier failures, including problems with the target-seeking system on the interceptor rocket. The U.S. Senate, alarmed at reports that China acquired sophisticated U.S. weapons technology and North Korea and Iran were testing ballistic missiles, passed a bill in March committing the United States to deploy an ambitious national missile defense system ``as soon as technologically possible.'' ...."
Centre for Defence and International Security Studies 6/13/99 "….On 12 June 1999, a high-ranking Chinese military delegation visited a Russian Topol (SS-25) Intercontinental-range Ballistic Missile (ICBM) unit in Novosibirsk in central Russia. Moscow's ITAR-TASS, the main government information agency, commented on the significance of the visit by noting: For the first time in the history of Russian-Chinese military cooperation, a delegation of top representatives of the People's Liberation Army [PLA] of China has visited a unit of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the last years....The Chinese delegation reportedly was shown the Topol missile "and explained its possibilities in overcoming the air defense of a 'potential foe,'" according to ITAR-TASS. The Topol (SS-25) is the world's only operational road mobile ICBM… We recently reported that Russia had flight tested the Topol-M (a follow-on system to the Topol) that is currently deployed in small numbers in a silo-based configuration, but which also may be deployed in the future in a road mobile configuration. During this recent flight test, Russian commentators praised the system's maneuvering reentry vehicle (MARV), stating it could help overcome ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems (see Russia Tests Topol-M ICBM)….A ballistic missile with a MIRV can place nuclear warheads on multiple enemy targets in different locations. A ballistic missile with a MARV enables the warhead to perform preplanned maneuvers during reentry in an attempt to evade missile defenses. Both systems represent high levels of technology currently only mastered by the United States and Russia….."
Salon 6/21/99 David Horowitz "...As a result of the 1993 Clinton decision to terminate the COCOM security controls that denied sensitive technologies to nuclear proliferators and potential adversary powers, the Chinese communists have been given the secrets of our intercontinental ballistic missile systems, along with previously restricted computer hardware. This allows them for the first time to target cities in the United States. In the past few years, therefore, the Chinese communist dictatorship has been able to close a huge technology gap, and to destroy a security buffer that had kept America safe from foreign attacks on its territorial mainland for more than a century...... America's new vulnerability to nuclear attack is a reality now not merely in respect to China, because of the absence of an anti-ballistic missile defense system. This, the Clinton administration has steadfastly refused to develop, despite the emergence of rogue states armed by China or Russia. These two are the chief distributors of nuclear, missile and satellite technologies to other governments. The governments that have benefitted are notorious stockpilers of biological and chemical weapons and among the most dangerous and dedicated enemies of the United States: Libya, North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Syria. ..."
Washington Post 6/21/99 Thomas Lippman "...There are limits, it seems, to the detente Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright forged two years ago with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), and the administration crossed one of them June 1. That was Helms's deadline for the Clinton administration to submit for Senate ratification modifications negotiated with Russia to the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Helms believes the amendments would fail to receive the two-thirds vote required for ratification, an outcome that in his view would scuttle the entire ABM treaty, which he and other congressional conservatives have long sought to abandon. The administration is required by law to submit the amendments, but for political and strategic reasons is not prepared to do so now. So it ignored the deadline. Helms is trying to force the issue. His staff has drafted legislative language to make future treaty ratifications -- not just on arms control but on any issue of Helms's choosing -- conditional upon submission of the ABM amendments. The language, which Helms as committee chairman has the power to attach to any future ratification measure, would prohibit the White House from putting any new treaty into effect until the ABM amendments go to the Senate...."
Center for Security Policy 6/21/99 Decision Brief 99-D 72 "... if left to their own devices, the Clinton-Gore Administration and its friends in the Kremlin will almost certainly try to use the pretext of these discussions further to fend off such a deployment. [missile defense] ....This gloomy prognosis is based not only the fact that -- as Mr. Berger suggests -- the Administration has made no decision to deploy a missile defense. (Such a statement is particularly striking in light of President Clinton's announced intention to sign legislation recently enacted by veto-proof congressional majorities that makes it U.S. policy to deploy effective limited missile defenses for the territory and people of the United States "as soon as technologically possible."..... If the United States were serious about deploying missile defenses, it need not negotiate the matter with the Russians.... Under international legal practice and precedent, when the other party (the Soviet Union) became extinct, this treaty had to lapse..... Neither the Russians nor the Clinton Administration really want the United States to have effective protection against missile attack. For the former, this is a matter of strategic advantage: The former Soviet Union illegally deployed territorial defenses, the U.S. has none and Russia prefers to retain that unilateral advantage. ...The ABM Treaty is the proverbial sow's ear. There is, as a practical matter, no way to "modify" a treaty that is designed to prevent effective anti-missile defense of the United States into one that will allow this country to be protected in a cost-effective, robust manner..... Instead, the Clinton Administration and the Russians are apparently preparing to discuss changes to the treaty that would only allow the U.S. to field some number of ground-based missile defense sites. This approach costs the most, has the greatest environmental impact, provides the least comprehensive defense and would take longer to field, certainly than sea-based defenses and possibly even longer than space-based ones. For these reasons, repeated efforts to deploy ground-based missile defenses have come to nought and this one is likely to, as well. ..."
The Heritage Foundation 6/3/99 James H Anderson, PhD "...China's relentless effort to acquire sophisticated U.S. nuclear weapons designs is part of a larger strategy to promote its position as Asia's hegemonic power. A key element of this strategy is China's determination to threaten other countries with ballistic missiles, as Beijing did in 1996 during Taiwan's first presidential elections. Since then, China has positioned more than 100 short-range missiles within striking range of Taiwan. Unless the United States and its Asian allies move quickly to deploy credible missile defense systems, China will continue to flex its "missile muscles" to intimidate its neighbors. China's role as a proliferator of advanced military technologies also has contributed to the spread of ballistic missiles in the Third World. The Cox report emphasizes that the "PRC has proliferated nuclear, missile, and space-related technologies to a number of countries." These countries include Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. The assistance to rogue states is particularly worrisome...China's potential to arm its next generation of mobile missiles with multiple warheads and penetration aids highlights the flawed nature of the Clinton Administration's proposed architecture for a national missile defense, which calls for two-ground based sites in the United States. The ground-based interceptors would be far more costly and less effective than sea- and space-based alternatives. They would have a more difficult time coping with multiple warheads and penetration aids, such as decoys. To counter the growing Chinese missile threat, the United States should develop sea- and space-based defenses that can identify, track, and shoot down hostile missiles shortly after liftoff and before they can release multiple warheads or decoys. This "boost-phase" intercept capability will offset China's ability to threaten the United States and its allies with ballistic missiles. The ability to shoot down missiles over an adversary's own territory also will make Third World tyrants think twice before attempting to attack the United States...."
Los Angeles Times 6/22/99 James Anderson "...The most disturbing--and overlooked--conclusion to be drawn from the Cox report on Chinese espionage is that China now has the technical information to build missiles capable of overwhelming the Clinton administration's proposed national missile defense. The White House will not decide until June of next year whether to field such a program. But the deployment timetable is now largely irrelevant because the administration's ground-based missile interceptors would be vulnerable to Chinese countermeasures from Day 1.....The Clinton administration's missile defense plan will be inadequate to meet emerging missile threats, whether from China, North Korea or any other state. The effort to build one, possibly two, ground-based sites would be far more costly and less effective than sea- and space-based alternatives. A ground-based system would have a narrow window of time to intercept missiles tipped with multiple warheads and decoys that have separated from their rocket boosters. Even if the intercept were successful, deadly fallout from a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon would occur. To counter this threat, the U.S. should develop defenses to identify, track and shoot down hostile missiles shortly after liftoff, when they are most vulnerable to interceptors and before they can release their payload. By developing this "boost-phase" intercept capability, the U.S. will offset the ability of China, or any other country, to endanger Americans with ballistic missiles....."
THE WASHINGTON TIMES 6/22/99 Bill Gertz "...The Clinton administration is heading for a confrontation with Congress over legislation that would make it U.S. policy to deploy a nationwide defense against missile attack. President Clinton is expected to sign the legislation as early as next week. Congressional backers say the measure will require missile defense deployment, but administration officials contend they are not required to do so. Mr. Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed in Cologne, Germany, on Sunday to continue talks this fall on possible changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The pact prohibits deploying missile defenses that protect either side's entire national territory. White House National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger told reporters in Cologne that a U.S. national missile-defense deployment decision will not be made before June 2000. Mr. Berger also said the administration softened its position on first requiring Russia's parliament to ratify the START II nuclear arms treaty before moving ahead with a START III pact. Negotiators will report to Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin by July 30 on a new arms pact. As for Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin's ABM talks: "What they have agreed to is to consider possible changes in the strategic situation that have a bearing on the ABM Treaty," Mr. Berger told reporters. Mr. Berger said that verbal formulation means, "in English," that U.S. and Russian officials will talk about a new strategic arms reduction treaty, or START III, and "modifications to the ABM treaty that may be occasioned by a national missile defense system, if we were to deploy one."....Senior White House officials have said the missile defense bill does not require deployment because it lacks language about funding, and because of several minor amendments added by Democrats. Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and the key House sponsor of the missile defense bill, said Mr. Berger should not be interpreting the will of Congress as stated in the legislation. "Until he runs for Congress, he's not the guy who interprets our legislation," Mr. Weldon said. "The interpretation is that it means deployment now. Our position is that it's the policy of this government to deploy a national missile defense now, when the president signs that bill." As for Mr. Berger's view that the administration will not be bound to the deployment legislation, "he is wrong and we're not going to stand for it," Mr. Weldon said..... Also, the missile defense bill passed both the House and Senate by large majorities, stating that it will be U.S. policy to deploy a national defense "as soon as the technology to do so is ready," the aide said. "The question of whether to deploy NMD is resolved, not withstanding Mr. Berger's statement," he said...."
WorldNetDaily.com 6/25/99 John Dougherty "...Clinton has signed Presidential Decision Directive 60, which changed the onus of our nuclear response. In the past the U.S. military has been able to "respond on warning" of a nuclear attack. No longer; Clinton has required our military commanders to receive direct approval from him before they can order the retaliatory launch of U.S. nuclear weapons against a country who launched at us first, even though U.S. commanders would know within seconds -- via satellite -- when an enemy's missiles were launched, and from where. Clinton has ordered that America reduce her nuclear warhead deployment to 2,500 warheads -- far fewer than Russia, and before Russia has even considering ratifying a treaty limiting warhead deployment. This means, essentially, that the doctrine of "MAD" -- Mutually Assured Destruction -- no longer applies because the Russians can destroy our retaliatory capability at once, and still have enough inventory in reserve in case they need to launch further nuclear strikes... Clinton has refused to acknowledge the absolute necessity of an advanced anti-ballistic missile defense system (ABM), even though the proliferation of these weapons has increased nearly 5-fold since he became president. Clinton has ordered all nuclear weapons production halted, while the Russians, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis and North Koreans continue to develop them. Our current top ICBM, the Peacemaker, is over ten years old and the technology is stagnant. There are reports that the new Russian Topol-M ICBM has technology incorporated within its warhead that scrambles U.S. radar signals necessary to target them with an ABM system. Without new research and testing, the U.S. cannot possibly develop the necessary countermeasure to defeat this technology, which leaves us vulnerable. ..."
House Government Reform and Oversight Committee 6/24/99 Prepared Testimony of Congressman Curt Weldon "...Later in 1995, the Administration released , NIE 95-19 "Emerging Missile Threats to North America During the Next Fifteen Years." This assessment flatly ruled out a rogue missile threat to the U.S. for the next fifteen years. On December 1, as the Senate was debating the Defense Authorization bill which directed the deployment of a National Missile Defense, the Administration in an unprecedented move released a letter citing these conclusions. Two weeks later, President Clinton vetoed the Defense Authorization bill, stating that the Administration did not see a missile threat to the United States in the coming decade. Previous intelligence estimates showed that threat could emerge much sooner, and many Members questioned assumptions in the classified assessment -- such as the exclusion of the missile threat to Alaska and Hawaii. I knew from my own monitoring of Russian security developments that the estimates ignored the disintegration of the Russian military and the breakdown of command and control. Given these doubts, my Committee tasked the GAO to evaluate the soundnes of NIE 965-19. GAO determined that its conclusions were overstated, and noted numerous analytical shortcomings in the report. Former Director of the CIA Robert Gates, who headed an independent review of NIE 95-19 said it was "politically naive" "rushed" and that the exclusion of Alaska and Hawaii from the threat analysis was "foolish from every perspective."..."
Washington Post Walter Pincus 6/29/99 "...The Clinton administration hopes to have an agreement with Russia by next June on modification of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that would permit the United States to go ahead with a limited national missile defense system, a senior State Department official said yesterday...... Once that decision on the "architecture" is made, Holum said, "Our intention is to complete an agreement on permitted national missile defense . . . by next June, when there would be a deployment decision" by Clinton. Holum added: "It's important that the decision on architecture will be made based on the threat, based on security considerations. Then we'll decide what amendments to the treaty are needed and how to approach the treaty. We're not saying protect the treaty, so tailor the defense to fit the treaty." ...."
FoxNews Tom Raum AP 6/29/99 "...Revised estimates of nuclear missile capability, particularly of North Korea and Iran, add new urgency to development of a national missile defense system, the Clinton administration's top arms-control official said. "Cold war disciplines are gone. Technology is more widely available," John Holum, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, told a Senate confirmation hearing. House Republican leaders were to rally on the steps of the Capitol Tuesday to applaud President Clinton's signing of a GOP-sponsored bill committing the United States to a national ballistic missile defense against limited attack, as might be launched by a small nuclear power....."
FoxNews Tom Raum AP 6/29/99 "...Since Congress passed that bill in May, two developments have occurred on the missile-defense front: - Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed, for the first time, to consider reopening the landmark 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to consider easing that prohibition against either American or Russian nationwide ballistic missile defense systems. - After six straight failures, a $3.8 billion experimental missile defense system scored its first hit in a test at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, shooting down an incoming test rocket....."
Associated Press 6/29/99 "...Standing by a huge map showing Chicago almost within range of North Korean missiles, Republicans sought Tuesday to remind Americans that legislation for a missile defense shield started as a GOP initiative. With President Clinton expected to sign the bill shortly, Republican leaders gathered outside the Capitol to credit President Reagan with getting the project moving in the early 1980s with his idea of arraying missiles to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. ``We usher in a new era of American security,'' House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said about the program Democrats once derided as ``Star Wars.''....And ardent missile-defense advocate Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., likened the moment to President Kennedy's vow to put an American on the moon within a decade. The bill would commit the nation to field a system against a limited missile attack as soon as ``technologically possible.'' Clinton vetoed a 1995 defense bill containing similar language. The turn in Democratic sentiment followed upward revisions in estimates of nuclear missile capability of both North Korea and Iran and reports of Chinese espionage at U.S. nuclear weapons plants. As a prop, the Republicans used an oversized map of the United States showing ``range'' lines depicting distances from North Korea. The most distant one, about 6,200 miles, crossed the country just west of Chicago. ``It might be aimed at Chicago and hit St. Louis, but surely they have that capability,'' Weldon said. The North Koreans tested a multistage ballistic missile last year, and U.S. intelligence officials have suggested they may soon test a more advanced one...."
Sen. James M. Inhofe Republican from Oklahoma. "...We used to think China was decades behind us in terms of building a modern advanced nuclear arsenal. Now we learn that, later this year, China is planning to test its new JL-2 long range ICBM, a submarine-launched ballistic missile with MIRV capability-meaning multiple independently targeted warheads on each missile-almost a replica of our Trident ICBM. This missile will have a range of over 13,000 kilometers and could reach anywhere in the United States from protected Chinese waters. In addition, we know that China has been helping North Korea, among others, with weapons and technology. North Korea is also expected to test its long range Taepo Dong II missile later this year. I remind my colleagues we have no defense against either of these potential threats, because of the policy decisions of the Clinton Administration. Some one very smart back in 1983 determined that we would need a national missile-defense system in place by Fiscal Year 98. We were on track to meet the deadline until 1993, when President Clinton, through his veto power, stopped this missile-defense system...."
Washington Post 7/2/99 Charles Krauthammer "...After 15 years, the Democrats have apparently given up their opposition to a "star wars" missile defense for the United States. A law committing the United States to building such a defense passed Congress by overwhelming majorities. And President Clinton, who had vetoed such legislation in the past, will sign it. This was no Democratic conversion to toughness. This was Democratic acquiescence to blinding reality. The reality is that: (1) Rogue states such as North Korea and Iran are building nuclear missiles soon to be aimed at the United States, and (2) The United States is utterly defenseless to shoot them down. For the better part of this decade, the Clinton administration has denied both ends of this reality. First, it claimed that the threat was distant....The administration now recognizes that its own CIA estimates of the threat were hopelessly wrong and that the congressionally mandated Rumsfeld Commission was right when it warned last July of the imminent capacity of rogue states to develop the means to attack the United States. The other feat of reality-denial involved American defenselessness. Democrats liked to argue, alternatively, that American defenselessness is (a) paradoxically a good thing or (b) divinely -- technologically -- ordained. Defenselessness was good because it made for "strategic stability" with the Soviet Union.....Less than three months later, on June 10, an Army THAAD missile intercepted a ballistic missile launched from 120 miles away. This was precisely what Baldwin claimed was unfeasible: destruction by collision, a bullet hitting a bullet. Reality bites, even for Democrats..... Is Clinton really serious? Former Pentagon expert Frank Gaffney, an ABM hero who has campaigned on its behalf for 15 years (we should name the first system after him), warns that a recent Clinton-Yeltsin agreement to renegotiate the ABM treaty has the makings of a trap. The ABM treaty, amended or not, can only hinder the building of an American defense. For example, because of the administration's interpretation of the treaty, THAAD could only test against a missile going no more than five kilometers per second. But North Korea's new missile goes seven to eight kilometers per second. This THAAD won't catch up to it. Even worse, the ABM treaty prevents the Navy's Aegis ships (which could carry mobile ABMs) from using satellite information to track incoming long-range missiles. This deliberately and unnecessarily degrades the Aegis system, our best hope for a cheap, fast, near-term national defense...."
Heritage Foundation 7/12/99 Jack Spencer "…The following quotations are taken from officials of foreign governments or from government-controlled media outlets. Americans who may be unsure about missile defense should note which foreign governments are opposing it so vehemently. They also should note the striking similarity between some of the arguments made by these governments and the arguments made by some U.S. opponents of missile defense…
IRIB Television First Program Network in Persian, Tehran
Unnamed Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Iran
Mohammad Mohammadi, Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Iran
Unnamed Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, North Korea
[North]Korean Central News Agency
Commentary in Nodong Sinmum (North Korean Newspaper)
Pyongyang Korean Central Broadcasting Network
Baghdad Al-'Iraq (Newspaper)
Unnamed Spokesman for the Ministry of Culture and Information, Iraq
Muammar Qadhafi, Head of State, Libya
Mustafa Tlass, Defense Minister, Syria
Li Changhe, Ambassador of China to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament
Zhu Rongji, Prime Minister, China
Sun Yuxi, Foreign Ministry, China
Sha Zukang, Director-General, Department of Arms Control and Disarmament, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China
Igor Ivanov, Foreign Minister, Russia
Leonid Ivashov, Senior Russian General
Vladimir Ryzhkov, First Deputy Speaker of the Duma, Russia
Yevgeny Primakov, former Prime Minister, Russia…"
Drudge/Washington Times 7/23/99 Bill Gertz "...A week ago the Clinton administration's top officials met at the White House for a National Security Council discussion of plans for a nationwide missile defense system - plans that run counter to the president's policy of strict adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The treaty prohibits protecting the entire country under missile defenses. At the State Department the day before, a meeting was held to prepare Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright for the NSC session. The problem of Russian opposition to building a system that can protect all 50 states against long-range missile attack came up. The issue was whether to defend some of the United States from a single site in North Dakota or anger the Russians with adding a second interceptor site in Alaska. At one point, State Department policy planning director Morton Halperin expressed his view. "A thousand people out there aren't worth upsetting the Russians over," Mr. Halperin said, referring to residents of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, which cannot be protected from a single U.S. site...."
Softwar 7/26/99 "...In 1997, USAF RC-135 "Cobra Ball" aircraft observed the successful test firings of the SS-27 (TOPOL-M).... The first deployment was reported to be in a SS-19 silo complex located at Tatishchevo in January of 1998..... The TOPOL is manufactured by the Moscow Institute for Thermal Technology. The new, truck mobile, SS-27 is reported by Russian officials to have Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle (MARV) capability designed to defeat any expected US deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems.....The mobile Russian SS-27 also raises serious proliferation questions since the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology is providing the SS-27 design to China. China intends to produce the TOPOL-M missile under the designation "Dong Feng" (East Wind) DF-41. ...."
The Economist 7/31-8/6/99 "...Within the next few weeks, a handful of metal tubes soaring into space at several miles per second could force some recalculations by military planners down on earth. At least two countries which the western world views as pariahs are preparing to prove their ability to inflict deadly missile strikes not just on neighbours but on distant targets as well. North Korea is getting ready to test a ballistic missile that could hit Alaska. If the warhead were small enough, it might reach Hawaii or even California. Iran is also assembling a new multi-stage missile which could reach most of Europe. It already claims to have deployed "in considerable numbers" a missile which can hit Israel and bits of Turkey....Meanwhile scientists, notably in America and Israel, are trying to refine the art of stopping missiles in mid-flight. Of course, the fact that a trouble-making regime has the capacity to carry out missile attacks does not mean it will do so. A direct attack on the United States, or a country America is obliged to defend, could be an act of self-destruction for a smallish state. Anyway, hastily assembled rockets are probably not viewed by their masters as military weapons in the strict sense; they are too inaccurate. More likely, they are seen by their owners as tools of intimidation, meant to concentrate minds in the neighbourhood and impress their own people. But even if ballistic missiles are not intended for immediate use, the western world cannot ignore them. Whether or not they threaten Los Angeles, the rockets of rogue regimes do pose an immediate danger to many American allies in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere, while rocket-wielding countries are often friendly with Russia or China. Just as international networks of missile proliferation have emerged, despite efforts to curb them, so too could international networks of anti-missile protection...."
CNSNews.com 7/29/99 Lawrence Morahan "...The United States is making unrealistic assessments of threats posed by enemy ballistic missiles, leaving the country vulnerable to attack by rogue nations such as North Korea, a freshman congressman told CNSNews.com. "We need to test against the threat we know is out there. The capability of missile attack is here now in the hands of the North Koreans," freshman Congressman David Vitter (R-LA) told CNSNews.com. .... Together with co-sponsors Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Curt Weldon (R-PA) - both senior members of the House Armed Services Committee - Vitter is proposing "Realistic Tests for Realistic Threats," or "RT2," a bill that would mandate the Navy and Army to test against missiles that replicate the velocities of missiles now in North Korean arsenals. The current Navy Theater Wide (NTW) and the Army's Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems are limited to anti-ballistic missiles with a velocity of five kilometers-per-second or less, Vitter said. "However, North Korea has missiles with velocities of between five and eight kilometers-per-second, depending on the size of the payload," he said. The higher velocity makes the current systems ineffective, defense experts have said. "The problem is we're testing our systems against missiles with velocities well below what we know a nation like North Korea has. North Korea has tested the Taepo-dong 1 and we know that the characteristics of that missile, specifically the velocity, are greater than what we're testing these theater systems against. "So obviously, if we're going to be prepared and develop those systems aggressively and intelligently, we need to test against the threat we know is out there," Vitter said...."
AP 8/2/99 "...An experimental antimissile missile apparently hit a simulated warhead over New Mexico today, the second success for a controversial $3.8 billion defense system that failed in its first six attempts. The Theater High-Altitude Area Defense system is designed to use ground-launched missiles to destroy high-altitude enemy missiles from 800 miles away or more, a distance that current U.S. weapons cannot reach... THAAD scored its first hit June 10 over White Sands. The Pentagon has since said that it will cancel the fine if the defense contractor improves THAAD performance and that it is confident Lockheed Martin can successfully develop the system...."
Heritage Foundation 7/29/99 Baker Spring "...On July 23, 1999, President Bill Clinton signed the National Missile Defense Act (H.R. 4) into law and established as the policy of the United States the decision to deploy a national missile defense system as soon as technologically possible. H.R. 4 does not include specific steps, however, to implement this historic policy. In order to deploy a missile defense system, the U.S. military must be able to test the systems currently under development against the types of missiles that may be launched against the United States or its allies. Today, the clearest threat of attack emanates from North Korea, which surprised the military community last August by launching a Taepo Dong-1 rocket over Japan. Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration's current policy bars the testing of certain defense systems against target missiles resembling the Taepo Dong-1....."
Heritage Foundation 7/29/99 Baker Spring "... In 1995, when the Clinton Administration announced its intelligence estimate that no hostile Third World country would be able to launch a ballistic missile similar to the Taepo Dong-1 within the next 10 years, it affirmed its policy to limit the capability of U.S. missile defense systems to meet this long-range threat. Consequently, its current policy bars the NTW and THAAD systems from being tested against target missiles that resemble the Taepo Dong-1. To begin testing against such missiles, Congress should insist that the Administration remove its restrictions on testing....."
http://www.senate.gov/ 7/27/99 U.S. Senator James M Inhofe "....U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) said today President Clinton is employing word games and abusing the constitutional lawmaking process to cover-up his administration's ideologically-driven opposition to protecting the American people from ballistic missile attack. "Every American must understand that the Clinton-Gore administration strongly opposes the deployment of a national missile defense system," Inhofe said. "They must also understand the President's position has not changed in spite of signing a bill into law last week which calls for the deployment of such a system. "In the spirit of redefining what the meaning of 'is' is, the President has brazenly chosen to interpret this new missile defense law in a manner contrary to its intended and stated purpose. In so doing, he makes a mockery of the Constitutional lawmaking process and once again illustrates the threat posed by his incessant deception, manipulation and dishonesty." Inhofe was referring to President Clinton's actions Friday in which the President a) signed into law a bill calling for the deployment of a national missile defense system; and at the same time, b) issued a statement claiming the bill actually called for no such thing. ..."
http://www.senate.gov/ 7/27/99 U.S. Senator James M Inhofe "....The Missile Defense Act, which passed the House and Senate earlier this year, sought to clearly define U.S. policy on missile defense. The bill states in its entirety that "it is the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as technologically possible an effective national missile defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate) with funding subject to annual authorizations of appropriations and the annual appropriation of funds for national missile defense. It is the policy of the United States to seek negotiated reductions in Russian nuclear forces." In his statement on signing the bill, Clinton claims that "by specifying that any national missile defense deployment must be subject to the authorization and appropriation process, the legislation makes clear that no decision on deployment has been made." Inhofe: "In fact, it makes no such thing clear. It is a ludicrous and preposterous interpretation to suggest that the language of the bill means 'no decision on deployment has been made.' The whole point of the bill is to make an affirmative national decision on deployment. The references to 'authorizations' and 'appropriations' are nothing more than policy-neutral statements of fact about the legislative process. For the President to argue differently is shameless."
http://www.senate.gov/ 7/27/99 U.S. Senator James M Inhofe "....Also in his statement, Clinton asserts with a straight face that the second sentence of the two-sentence bill "puts Congress on record...reaffirming my Administration's position that our missile defense policy must take into account our arms control and nuclear nonproliferation objectives." Inhofe: "In fact, it does nothing of the sort, for if it did, I and many others would not have supported the bill in the first place. The purpose of this bill is to state that our nation's missile defense policy is decided in favor of deployment 'as soon as technologically possible.' The policy does not need to 'take into account' anything else. The stated goal of seeking negotiated reductions in Russian nuclear forces is a wholly separate statement of policy, not a contingent one. ...."
Wall St. Journal 8/6/99 "...It was nice indeed this week to see the Theater High Altitude Area Defense ace its second test in as many months. On Monday, Thaad successfully intercepted a simulated ballistic missile over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, following another successful test in June. The test was important on two counts: It took place outside the Earth's atmosphere and against a warhead that had separated from its missile, just like in the video games. That is, the radar was able to look at two objects in space and determine which one was the warhead. Air Force Lt. General Ronald Kadish, head of the Pentagon's ballistic missile defense program, called it "one of the watershed events in the technological history of our country.".... Both the Navy and the Air Force have made progress of late in their own theater missile defense programs. The Air Force had a home run with an Airborne Laser test recently and the Navy successfully tested a booster for its Lower Tier program. The Army's new Patriot PAC-3 system (the successor to the Gulf War Patriot) performed a series of successful intercepts earlier this year. All of this is to say that we have been moving fast up the learning curve recently. Every time there's a successful intercept in one of the TMD programs, it's important to the other programs....Now that Thaad has passed two tests, the crucial next step is to manufacture and deploy it as soon as possible. That job has just been made tougher by the Republican House, which at the same time that it axed the F-22 also voted to cut the $83.7 million that the Administration had requested for engineering and manufacturing Thaad. In the Senate, Republicans say they'll see to it that the money is restored -- or allocated from the supplemental $1 billion that Congress authorized last year for ballistic-missile defense. Along the way, it would be a good idea if they gave their House colleagues a tutorial on the importance of staying on-message on the subject of missile defense, which is supposed to be a defining issue between the two parties....."
San Diego Union-Tribune 8/4/99 James Hackett "...On Monday, for the second time in just over six weeks, an Army Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile interceptor streaked into the New Mexico sky and smashed into a simulated warhead that had separated from a modified Minuteman ballistic missile. While the earlier intercept was inside the Earth's atmosphere, this one was outside the atmosphere, more than 60 miles high. In addition, the interceptor's seeker proved its ability to distinguish the warhead from the rocket booster and other debris. This is a major success for the hit-to-kill technology that makes it possible to stop ballistic missiles by direct impact. That was Ronald Reagan's basic requirement for the Strategic Defense Initiative -- to develop missile defenses without using nuclear weapons on the interceptors. This THAAD hit outside the atmosphere proves the concept for both theater defenses and a national missile defense, and shatters the main argument of missile defense opponents: that hit-to-kill technology will not work and cannot distinguish the warhead from other objects...."
Inside Missile Defense 8/11/99 "...The newest member of the House of Representatives wants the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization to conduct tests of the Army Theater High Altitude Area Defense and Navy Theater Wide systems against targets representative of the North Korean missile that flew over Japan last year..... "It is not as if we are talking about some possible or hypothetical threat 10 or 20 years down the line. We know this threat is in the hands of the North Koreans, so it only makes sense to test these systems as soon as practical against the threat that is there." In addition, the bill calls for modifications to the THAAD and NTW systems to improve their interceptor speeds and allow for cuing from external sensors. These changes run counter to the Clinton administration's current TMD testing plans and are sure to be contentious....The Taepodong 1 is estimated to have a maximum speed of between five kilometers and eight kilometers per second, according to Baker Spring, senior defense analyst at the Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation. That velocity is much greater than the targets used to date in tests with the THAAD system or planned for the initial NTW tests. Without a third stage, the Taepodong 1 is thought to have a range of 1,500 kms to 2,000 kms, depending on its payload. Intelligence officials have stated that debris from the three-stage version of the missile was found in the ocean as far as 5,500 kms from the North Korean launch site.....Further, in order to improve the likelihood of success in the tests, it calls on the BMDO director to "review changes in the configuration" of the NTW and THAAD systems to "increase the speed of their interceptor missiles to well in excess of three kilometers-per-second," and "allow the interceptor missiles of those systems to receive and use targeting data provided by a variety of external sensors, including shipboard radar, airborne sensors, ground-based radar, and satellite sensors." Funding for these tests, the bill states, "shall be paid out of funds available" to both programs.....The changes proposed to the NTW and THAAD systems under the Vitter bill expose a raw nerve between the administration and ardent congressional missile defense proponents. Under two theater missile defense demarcation agreements to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the Clinton administration signed in September 1997 with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, the United States would be prohibited from testing THAAD and NTW against target missiles with velocities greater then five kms per second. Also, the administration has been reluctant to configure the systems to allow for cuing from external sensors because of existing ABM Treaty compliance issues. Although the TMD demarcation agreements have not been submitted to the Senate yet for advice and consent and the administration maintains it is undertaking no efforts to implement those agreements before their formal ratification, critics charge that the White House has been tacitly abiding by them and in the process "dumbing down" the capabilities of U.S. TMD systems...."
Seattle Times 8/11/99George Tibbits "...Boeing Co. on Tuesday began assembling a 747-400 freighter to carry the Air Force's flying laser, a powerful "death ray" intended to shoot down missiles from hundreds of miles away. The weapon, which runs nearly the length of the 231-foot jetliner, would be the first in any country's arsenal to use light as a destructive force. The Airborne Laser is specifically designed to combat short-range or "theater" ballistic missiles, such as the Scuds used by the Iraqis in the Persian Gulf War or the missiles now being developed by North Korea. "You cannot comprehend the speed of light and how it is going to change things," said Col. Mike Booen, Air Force systems program director for the Airborne Laser at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. Although laser guns may sound more suitable for the weapons bay of the Starship Enterprise, Booen and other Air Force and Boeing officials say the ABL's technology has been around for years and has already shot down missiles in test programs. All that remains to be proven, they said, is whether it can be successfully turned into a combat-ready jet. After years of researching what only recently was considred science fiction, "the moment comes when you have to say to yourself, `Do I have the courage to take the final step?"' said Lawrence Delaney, Air Force assistant secretary for acquisition. Boeing is building the plane under a $1.1 billion contract it shares with TRW, the manufacturer of the laser, and Lockheed Martin, which is making the electronics to track targets, fire and control the beam. By 2007, the Air Force wants three ABLs in operation, and a full fleet of seven by 2009, at a total cost of about $6 billion...."
Aviation Week & Space Technology 8/9/99 Robert Wall "...The second successful intercept of a target by the Army's Theater High Altitude Area Defense system has drastically changed the way some Defense Dept. officials view the program and could result in the Pentagon's jump-starting the next phase. The Pentagon initially wanted Thaad to complete three successful intercepts before the program could move from risk reduction into its engineering and manufacturing development phase next spring. But now Army leaders are interested in moving ahead even sooner. ''We demonstrated that the technology works, both endo- and exoatmospheric,'' Lt. Gen. Paul Kern, the Army's top acquisition officer, said after Thaad's latest test on Aug. 2, which was the first successful intercept outside the atmosphere. ''We have great confidence now, after this second flight, that we are well underway to proving that technology out.'' ....BUT PLANS TO GO INTO production haven't been approved, yet. Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the new director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, made vague references to the fact that program plans are under review. But he wouldn't endorse Thaad moving into the next phase. ''We would like to have a capability as soon as practical but not rush to failure,'' he said. The Pentagon was criticized last year for ''rushing to failure'' in missile defense by not allowing technology to mature...."
Aviation Week and Space Technology 8/16/99 Michael A Dornheim "…On July 23, President Clinton signed the National Missile Defense Act of 1999 that calls for the implementation of a system to protect against limited attack "as soon as is technologically possible." The act was passed by an overwhelming congressional majority under the perception that rogue nation ballistic missiles could threaten the U.S. sooner rather than later, sparked by North Korea's test of the long-range Taepo Dong 1 missile last August. Consensus has been maintained by the recent Chinese test of a long-range missile and North Korean plans to test the more capable Taepo Dong 2. The deployment readiness review (DRR) is to determine whether to deploy a national missile defense (NMD) system, and if so, whether to build it by the end of 2005 or accelerate deployment to 2003 if the threat is judged pressing. The decision will be reviewed by the secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and finally will be made by the President, said Army Brig. Gen. Willie B. Nance, the NMD program manager in the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). The choice needs to be made by the end of July 2000 to support 2003 deployment, and by September 2000 for a 2005 deployment. An initial system is to protect against a "C1" first level of capability threat with a limited number of warheads and the simple countermeasures expected of a rogue nation. The system is to be upgradable to "C2" and "C3" threats. C2 is more sophisticated countermeasures and a small increase in warhead quantity. The C3 "objective" system has more quantity and can represent an unauthorized or accidental launch by a more capable country. The DRR could decide on a C1-plus system, short of C2 capability. None of the options would protect against a full Russian attack, so the rules of mutual assured destruction and the intent of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 still apply. Some solace is gained by the reasoning that a country rich enough to pose a sophisticated threat has enough to lose that they will be deterred by mutual assured destruction….."
Chicago Tribune 8/18/99 "…This week, the United States persuaded Japan to throw its political weight, technological know-how and a few hundred million dollars behind multiyear research on a so-called theater missile defense system. The goal: a system that could knock down an incoming missile fired by a rogue state like North Korea. But exact details of the program--specifically its cost--were kept secret, supposedly at the request of the Japanese….. A regional missile defense system can't be deployed in the Pacific without violating the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty of 1972, a bedrock of U.S.-Russian arms control efforts. Russia has adamantly opposed changes in the treaty. American diplomats are in Moscow this week trying to engage the Russians on the issue. But that distracts from the much more serious issue they are also discussing--reducing long-range nuclear weapons that both countries still target on each other. Those long-range missiles would be cut under the START II treaty, signed by both countries in 1993, but never approved by the Russian Duma. It's unlikely to be approved, either, so long as the U.S. makes noises about unilaterally breaching the ABM treaty. Someday, technological breakthroughs might make missile defense possible. Accordingly, the U.S. should carry out strictly limited research while at the same time adhering to the ABM treaty. But all of this needs to be part of a comprehensive strategy, clearly articulated and transparent. The U.S. has a legal right to abrogate the ABM treaty if it determines "extraordinary events. . .have jeopardized its supreme interests."…"
Defense Daily 8/19/99 Hunter Keeter "…Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and six other Republican senators are criticizing DoD’s decision not to deploy the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) radar to observe the upcoming test of the North Korean Taepo-Dong 2 missile launch. Earlier this month, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Henry Shelton denied the requests of SPACECOM and the support of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) to deliver the THAAD radar to South Korea or Japan to monitor the test, according to the Aug. 18 edition of the Washington Times. In an Aug. 17 letter to Defense Secretary William Cohen, Kyl and the other lawmakers state that the decision to withhold the Raytheon [RTNA/RTNB] THAAD radar "appears to have been driven by ABM treaty concerns" and that the Senate believes "such decisions should be based solely on military and intelligence concerns." The other signatories to the letter are Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho), Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.), Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.). "Shelton’s initial response was to raise the ABM treaty issue; it has far reaching tentacles," one Hill source said. "This might be another case where the treaty is hampering us and it’s our own methodology [that’s causing the problem]. The Russians [co-signatories to the ABM treaty] have never raised protest against THAAD, but DoD’s argument is better to be safe than sorry."…"