OVER TO YOU, DR. PERRY: SENATE WANTS TO SEE THE RAND STUDY ON A U.S. GOLAN DEPLOYMENT

(Washington, D.C.): Notice has been
served on the Clinton Administration: It
will not be able to get away with denying
the Congress a study of the potential
dangers associated with the deployment of
U.S. forces on the Golan Heights.
In the attached letter signed today by
Republican Senators Alfonse D’Amato of
New York, Don Nickles of Oklahoma and
Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming, Secretary of
Defense William Perry was asked to
provide “copies of [a] classified
RAND study [addressing this matter]…in
addition to a briefing on its conclusions
at the earliest possible moment.”

As noted in the Center for Security
Policy’s 18 July 1994 Decision Brief,
‘Dennis: Let the Golan
Deployment Study Go!’ Congress Entitled
to 7-Month-Old RAND Study Called
‘Premature’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_74″>94-D 74), this
analysis was performed at the request of
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Regional Affairs Fred Smith in the Spring
of 1993. It examined “Possible U.S.
Roles in a Middle East Peace
Settlement” — including, but not
limited to, the idea of deploying
American troops on the Golan Heights —
and was submitted to the Pentagon fully
seven months ago.

Ordinarily, the products of federally
funded research and development centers
(FFRDCs) like RAND are made available to
Members of Congress who, like the
signatories, have a clear “need to
know.” This is especially true with
respect to legislators who serve — as
Sens. D’Amato and Nickles do — on the
Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
And yet, the Senate has, to date, been
denied access to the information
contained in the RAND analysis, despite
direct requests for it.

The failure to supply copies of this
classified study to interested Senators
does not appear to be the result of
intransigence on RAND’s part. Neither,
evidently, is it the result of an
unwillingness in the Pentagon to acquaint
the Congress with preliminary assessments
of the “possible risks and likely
costs” involved in a U.S. deployment
on the Golan Heights (although Secretary
Perry’s response to the
D’Amato-Nickels-Wallop letter may suggest
otherwise). Instead, the Center for
Security Policy understands that this
study is being kept under wraps by Dennis
Ross, the Clinton
Administration’s Special Coordinator for
the Middle East, the U.S. point man on
the Israeli-Syrian negotiations.

In the absence of an opportunity to
review the RAND study, the Center is
unable to evaluate its quality or
ultimate utility. Still, as the
taxpayers have paid for it and as Members
of Congress have formally expressed a
desire to see it, there seems no basis
upon which it can reasonably be withheld
from the legislative branch. And
as it may offer the only official — or
quasi-official — assessment of the
putative benefits and prospective dangers
involved in a U.S. peacekeeping operation
on the Golan Heights, the RAND
analysis must be permitted to
inform a debate on this dubious
deployment before the United
States is committed to undertake it.