A New Year — Time For A New Beginning on Defending America

(Washington, D.C.): To its credit, the
Republican Congress is gearing up once
more to try to correct one of this
Nation’s most serious military
vulnerabilities — its utter inability to
stop even a single ballistic missile
fired at the American homeland. On 3
January 1997, House Speaker Newt Gingrich
(R-GA) identified defending America
against missile attack as one of his
priority assignments to the House
National Security Committee. And the
Senate Republican leadership has decided
to make legislation authorizing a prompt
deployment of effective national missile
defenses one of its top ten objectives.

Unfortunately, it appears that the
congressional Republicans might be
opposed in this effort by a man who was,
until recently, one of their own. In the
course of his confirmation, President
Clinton’s nominee for Defense Secretary,
William Cohen, was asked by the Senate
Armed Services Committee’s ranking
minority member, Senator Carl Levin
(D-MI) whether he agreed with the
Administration’s “Three-Plus-Three
Plan.” According to Sen. Levin, this
plan envisions:

“developing national missile
defense technology for three
years and then deciding whether
to deploy a system as early as
three years later, but not
deciding now whether or not to
deploy a national missile defense
system — waiting until the
technology is developed in three
years, and then assessing the
threat at that time.”

Bill Cohen on the Record

In response to the question “Is
that your current position?” Mr.
Cohen said (Emphasis added.):

“It is, Senator Levin….Let
me say that the reason for it is
as follows. I don’t think it’s a
very good idea to try to mandate
any deployment of technology. I
think it became necessary in the
view of many — myself included
at that time — that there was
not a serious commitment to a
national missile defense system.
And so we set a date of the year
2003 in which to deploy such a
system.

“That was done with the idea
that we had to generate enough
discussion, enough pressure to
produce a response that we felt
was real and legitimate and
sincere. I believe that objective
has been achieved. Secretary
Perry designated the national
missile defense as a major
defense acquisition this past
year. All of the theater missile
defense systems have now been
designated as core systems.
Additional money — my
understanding, I don’t have the
exact figures — but additional
money has now been put into the
budget for fiscal ’98 for the
THAAD system and for Navy Upper
Tier.

“Secretary Perry has
indicated that we will, indeed,
undertake a development of a
national missile defense system,
and we’ll have it by the year
2000. At that time, we will make
a determination, based on the
best intelligence that we have as
to the nature of the threat, and
if the threat warrants it,
that we will be in a position to
deploy it and be in the force by
the year 2003, the exact date
that we were seeking to mandate a
year or two ago. So I believe
that’s the appropriate course of
action. It’s one that I
support.”

Speaking of Intelligence

Regrettably, confidence in the
intelligence the Clinton Administration
is inclined to rely upon when it comes to
making decisions about deploying missile
defenses was sadly shaken by its conduct
with respect to 1995 National
Intelligence Estimate on the ballistic
missile threat to the United States (NIE
95-19). This NIE concluded that no nation
other than Russia or China will be able
to attack the U.S. mainland with
long-range ballistic missiles for at
least fifteen years. It was
first made available to Senator Levin and
other opponents of missile defenses as
the Senate prepared for a critical vote
on a deployment initiative.

Many knowledgeable Members of Congress
and other experts immediately challenged
this conclusion, which is so much at odds
with reality.⁽¹⁾
Some strongly suspected that the NIE’s
conclusions were politically
motivated, in order to justify the
Clinton Administration’s unwillingness to
protect the American people from what is,
in fact, a growing danger of ballistic
missile attack.

In the face of this criticism,
then-Director of Central Intelligence
John Deutch commissioned a study led by
one of his predecessors, Robert Gates, to
examine the assumptions, methodology and
conclusions of NIE 95-19 and, in
particular, the question as to whether it
was politicized. On 4 December 1996, Mr.
Gates presented his panel’s findings. As
the Center for Security Policy noted at
the time, the conclusions were damning:

“The methodology used to
produce the NIE’s controversial
conclusion — i.e., that no
nation other than Russia or China
will be able to attack the U.S.
mainland with long-range
ballistic missiles for at least
fifteen years — was seriously
flawed. In fact, the
flaws are sufficiently grave as
to call into question the value
of this analysis as a guide to
policy-makers.”⁽²⁾

The Gates panel nonetheless
concluded that, despite its shortcomings,
the Intelligence Community’s analysis was
not influenced by external
pressures or otherwise
“politicized.” Indeed, on
behalf of his panel, Mr. Gates sharply
denounced those who so believed:
“The panel believes that
unsubstantiated allegations challenging
the integrity of intelligence community
analysts by those who simply disagree
with their conclusions, including Members
of Congress, are irresponsible.”

Enter
Curt Weldon

Fortunately, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)
is one of the leaders in the Congress on
the missile defense issue and a man who
has had the courage to call a spade a
spade: In a letter to Mr. Gates dated 17
January 1997, Rep. Weldon — who chairs
the House National Security Committee’s
powerful Military Research and
Development Subcommittee — took strong
exception to Director Gates’ conclusions
and aspersions on the politicization
issue. Among the highlights of this
three-page letter were the following
(Emphasis added.):

• “While you acknowledge the
  1995 NIE is in many ways flawed,
  you criticize others who raised
  questions about its and
  objectivity. As a
  consumer of intelligence,
  Congress has a right to raise
  criticisms and it has an
  oversight responsibility to
  ensure that the intelligence
  community is delivering a quality
  product.”
• “Not once did your
  panel provide an opportunity for
  Members who charged
  politicization to be heard.
  Given your harsh condemnation, I
  believe you had a responsibility
  to explore those allegations and
  to offer a detailed rebuttal of
  them. Instead, you merely
  exonerate the intelligence
  community of politicization,
  suggesting that the report became
  victim to ‘political naivete.’
  It is far more injurious to
  ignore or whitewash
  politicization when it exists
  than it is to suggest that
  possibility.”
• “Ironically, NIE
  95-19 failed to adhere to the
  criteria that you laid out in a
  March 1992 memo for avoiding
  politicization. For
  example, you stated that analysts
  must clearly distinguish between
  fact, inference and judgement. As
  noted by the GAO, this NIE
  presents judgments and
  assumptions as facts. You also
  warned against the dismissal of
  alternatives and the exaggeration
  of certainty. GAO found that NIE
  95-19 exaggerated the certainty
  of its key judgment that no new
  ICBM threats to CONUS would arise
  in 15 years — and that no
  evidence was presented to support
  that conclusion.”
• “I completely agree with
  your statement that the exclusion
  of Alaska and Hawaii from the
  assessment of the ballistic
  missile threat to the United
  States was ‘foolish from every
  perspective.’ If these
  estimates are to be of any use to
  policy makers, they should be
  framed in such a way that they
  can form the basis for national
  security decisions, not CONUS
  security decisions.”
• “As you know, earlier NIEs
  warned of a potential missile
  threat to the United States
  shortly after the turn of the
  century. Had the threat to Alaska
  and Hawaii been considered in the
  1995 NIE, there is little doubt
  that the outcome would have been,
  at best, much less optimistic. Indeed,
  the faulty framework of the 1995
  NIE itself suggests
  politicization.”
• “The analysis also dismisses
  the remaining threat from Russia,
  exaggerates the efficacy of the
  MTCR and ignores critical
  developments which suggest the
  potential for accelerated
  maturation of a missile threat.
  It also conflicts with the 1993
  assessment in terms of future
  missile threats to the United
  States without any attempt to
  justify such a major departure. I
  wholeheartedly agree with you
  that the estimate understated the
  risk of an unauthorized or
  accidental Russian missile
  launch, particularly in light of
  military and civil instability
  there.”

Can Secretary Cohen Be
Brought Around?

There is reason to hope that Secretary
of Defense Cohen may come to view the
danger of missile attack against this
country and the need to do something
urgent to meet it in a less pollyannish
light than the current NIE. After all, as
the Wall Street Journal noted
yesterday in a lead editorial,
then-Senator Cohen on 3 August 1995 made
a characteristically eloquent and
well-reasoned speech about the necessity
of defending America in Senate floor
debate:

“There is an assumption in
all of this debate that somehow
the threat will only come from
the former Soviet Union. I do not
make that assumption. We are
concerned about what is taking
place on a global basis. We are
concerned about potential threats
from other sources. We cannot
predict who they are, where they
may be, or how far along the line
of technology development they
have proceeded. But we
cannot face our constituents in
good conscience and say: ‘Sorry
we failed to take any measures to
protect you. Our only
defense is to launch an all-out
attack on whomever launched that
missile.’ That is our only option
today. Is that a rational, sound
option, to say if you launch one
or two missiles against the
United States, we end up
launching ours against
yours?”

The Bottom Line

The executive and legislative branches must
work together to make the fielding of
effective national — as well as theater
missile defenses — an urgent priority.
Secretary Cohen’s testimony about the
latter has also complicated that prospect
by suggesting that he intends to
perpetuate his predecessor’s effort to
stonewall statutory direction to bring
the Army’s THAAD and the Navy’s Upper
Tier anti-theater missile systems on-line
as quickly as possible. As the Wall
Street Journal correctly observed
today, the latter is all the indication
Judge Stanley Sporkin should require to
reinstate a lawsuit mounted by Rep.
Weldon together with Rep. Floyd Spence
(R-SC), Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and 38
other leading legislators aimed at
compelling the Clinton Administration to
obey the law.

It can only be hoped that as
Secretary Cohen grows into the job, he
will adopt a more constructive and
prudent approach to both issues. Given
the enormous stakes, however, if he
does not do so, Congress must be
prepared to fight him and his new-found
colleagues through legislative
and, if necessary, through judicial
avenues.

– 30 –

1. See Yesterday
Dhahran, Tomorrow Pearl Harbor II?
(No. 96-D
64, 27 June 1996).

2. See size=”-1″>It Walks Like a
Duck…: Questions Persist That Clinton
C.I.A.’s Missile Threat Estimate Was
Politically Motivated ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_122″>No. 96-T 122,
4 December 1996).