CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP VOWS TO DEFEND AMERICA AGAINST MISSILE ATTACK; WILL IT BE ABLE TO DO SO IN TIME?

(Washington, D.C.): In a major Capitol Hill press conference
yesterday, leading members of the Senate and House Republican
leadership declared their intention to defend the American people
against ballistic missile attack. They did so in the context of
introducing a new legislative initiative, S.1635, entitled the
“Defend America Act of 1996.” This legislation would
establish as policy the objective of deploying an anti-missile
defense by the year 2003 and direct certain actions intended to
achieve that objective.

Read Their Lips

Highlights of the press conference included the following
noteworthy statements:

SEN. ROBERT DOLE (R-KS): “…This is
historic legislation, legislation that will have a profound
impact on America’s future. The bill addresses the most
fundamental responsibility our government has to its citizens,
and that’s to protect them from harm. This legislation
makes it U.S. policy to deploy a national missile defense system
by the end of 2003, and requires the Secretary of Defense to
develop for deployment an effective national missile defense
system. Right now the United States has no defense — and
I repeat — no defense against ballistic missiles. If it’s left
up to the Clinton Administration, it will stay that way.
The Defend America Act of 1996 answers the question whether
America should be protected from the threat of ballistic
missiles, and it answers that question with a resounding yes. wp=”br1″>

“There should be no doubt about it that we have
the capability to defend our great Nation from this growing
threat. What we need is the will to do so and the leadership.
But we’ve seen no leadership in the White House. In fact, the
White House and the rest of the Administration are even denying
that there is a threat….

“The threat is real. China, North Korea,
Russia are all engaged in the transfer of missile components
and/or technologies. The North Koreans are developing a ballistic
missile which will threaten Alaska and Hawaii in the
not-so-distant future. And I don’t believe we can wait, and
neither do my colleagues believe we can wait….

“I think the bill sends a clear message to the president,
but primarily the American people, that we want to defend
America, we believe we should defend America, and we have the
capability and we have the will. And it will happen in this
Congress.

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA): “Let me
echo and reinforce what Senator Dole just said….Secretary
Perry, the Secretary of Defense, [has] said: ‘We have no
capability to shoot down any ballistic missiles fired at the
United States.’ And it’s very important to understand
because most Americans don’t realize today that while we
have the science and we have the engineering, we have not turned
that into capability….I might point out that a former
Assistant Secretary of Defense, Chas Freeman, reported that he
had been told by a Chinese official that China could intimidate
Taiwan because, quote, ‘American leaders care more about
Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan.’

“…If we don’t take steps now, there could be very, very
real threats to American cities….Let me say, finally, the
former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. [James]
Woolsey, who was a Carter and a Clinton appointee, said the
following in recent testimony: ‘Ballistic missiles can —
and, in the future, they increasingly will — be used by hostile
states for blackmail, terror, and to drive wedges between us and
our friends and allies. It is my judgment that the administration
is not currently giving this vital problem the proper weight it
deserves.’ Now that’s the former Director of Central
Intelligence testifying in public about the failure of the
Clinton Administration to take appropriate steps to defend
America.

“We’re simply announcing today, in the Defend America Act
of 1996, that we believe defending America’s cities and
defending America’s civilian population is at the heart of our
constitutional obligation. We believe it is clearly doable.
A number of members here are experts in this topic. And we are
committed to getting this bill through. And we hope the
president will reconsider his position and will agree with us
that the time has come to defend America’s cities from ballistic
missiles.”

SEN. LAUCH FAIRCLOTH (R-NC): “…One
point I want to make that hasn’t been made is, we haven’t
got to wait anywhere from six to eight to 10 to 15 years for
rogue nations to acquire this capability. It’s a threat today.
An accidental launch from some other place like China where they
have ICBMs, Russia, the former Russian republics; they all have
ICBMs and they could have accidental launch to this country and
we can’t defend against just one of them. And so we need to have
this today. This bill, this legislation requires us to have it
place by the year 2003. But we have to start working on
it now and make that commitment.

SEN. THAD COCHRAN (R-MS): “….The sad
fact is that we are not budgeting the required amounts of
money that are desperately needed to take advantage of the
emerging technologies that we have discovered and are available
to enable us to defend ourselves against missile attacks.
There’s a proliferation right now of th[e] technology to build
weapons of mass destruction and also missile systems that are
capable of delivering those weapons across long distances. We
have troops around the world who are now in jeopardy. We have
interests around the world that are now threatened by this new
technology. It is a current and pressing problem now, and we must
act now. That’s why I’m co-sponsoring this legislation and
hopeful that the Senate and House will pass it soon.” wp=”br1″>

REP. BOB LIVINGSTON (R-LA): “….Folks,
the [Clinton Administration is] offering the American people a
placebo. They’re saying we’re for missile defense. We
have the technology to develop these systems and put them out
there today. We have the Aegis cruisers [that] are available in
the Pacific right now to assist in defending Taiwan if necessary.
If only they had the LEAP missile and the Navy Upper Tier system
placed on board, they could intercept incoming missiles for
Taiwan. But we’re not doing it.

“Oh, we’re researching, but we’re not researching fast
enough and we’re not making an effort to deploy these systems.
What we’re saying is, let’s stop fooling the American
people; let’s start developing hard technology, give it to the
forces all around the world so that we can defend our troops
placed around the world, so that we can defend our allies, and
most importantly, so that we can defend the American people.“

SEN. JOHN WARNER (R-VA): “…We should
have every single member of the United States Congress right
behind this bill. This bill will focus the eyes of every single
American on the president of the United States and pose the
question, ‘Why not, Mr. President?'”

SEN. KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (R-TX):
“…Thirty countries in the world now have ballistic missile
capabilities. When you combine that with nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons as well, the one discouraging force
that we can have is a defense and for everyone to know we have a
defense. That’s what we’re trying to do today. We had to
give it up in the bill that we passed last year because the
President was against that defense for us….To appropriately mix
a metaphor, the best defense is a good defense.” wp=”br1″>

SEN. JAMES INHOFE (R-OK): “…Let’s
remember what Jim Woolsey said over a year ago. And keep in mind
this is a CIA director that was appointed not by Republicans but
by Democrats. He said that we know of between 20 and 25
nations that have weapons of mass destruction or are in the final
stages of completing weapons of mass destruction — biological,
chemical or nuclear — and are working on the missile means to
deliver them. Now, you know, we have a president that
vetoed the DOD authorization bill because he doesn’t want to
spend more money on defending America against ballistic missile
attack. And now you can only come to one conclusion: If the
president believes that, we need a new president.” wp=”br1″>

SEN. BOB SMITH (R-NH): “Just picking up
on that theme, this is not passive opposition, as Senator Inhofe
just referred to. The president not only vetoed the
authorization with this language in it; he also put it in his
message as one of the specific reasons, and the most specific and
major reason for vetoing it. And I would like you to
think back in 1991 in the Persian Gulf conflict. Had that missile
hit — that Iraq fired and killed 27 or 28 of our American forces
— had that hit General Schwarzkopf’s headquarters or had that
hit some large city, the debate would be a lot different. wp=”br1″>

“I am very pleased and proud that our leader, who will be
running for president, Senator Dole, is making this an issue. And
it’s a defining issue between the two parties and it’s a defining
issue between the two men who are running for president. One
wants to defend America and is willing to put the resources to do
it; and unfortunately, the other one is not putting the resources
out there to do it. We need missile defense, ballistic missile
defense, and President Clinton has vetoed it, and proudly so. And
that’s the difference between the two parties.”

Needed: ‘Doers’

The Center for Security Policy commends Senate Majority Leader
Dole, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other leading legislators
for giving a strong, personal impetus behind the effort to defend
America against missile attack. They have correctly
identified the United States’ present vulnerability to such an
attack as intolerable. They have appropriately offered the
American people a choice between being defended and remaining —
as President Clinton prefers — absolutely unprotected. wp=”br1″>

What remains to be done, however, is to establish
precisely how — in light of the growing danger of missile attack
and the Clinton Administration’s evident determination to ignore
that danger — a robust, global missile defense can most swiftly
and cost-effectively be put into place.

In this connection, the Center applauds the comments noted
above by Rep. Bob Livingston, chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee and a distinguished member of the Center
for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors. Chairman Livingston’s
comments about the near-term missile defense option of choice
closely track with the findings of a blue-ribbon group sponsored
by the Heritage Foundation.

In a 15 March 1996 update to a paper initially published last
year, entitled “Defending America,”
Heritage’s Missile Defense Study Team (Team B) recommended
promptly modifying the Navy’s AEGIS air-defense system so
as to allow it to intercept ballistic missiles. According to Team
B, such a system could begin protecting U.S. forces and allies
overseas and the American people within 3 years and be
fully deployed aboard 22 ships (with a total of 650 modified SM-2
missiles) for just $2-3 billion spent over the next five years
thanks to the nearly $50 billion investment already made in the
AEGIS program.

The Bottom Line

The Center urges Congress to make such an approach a focus of
the intensive hearings on the missile defense issue that were
promised yesterday by the Republican leadership. Such a
focus is all the more necessary in light of recent, deplorable
Clinton Administration actions intended, first, to slow the
Navy’s AEGIS-based Wide-Area Defense program in violation of
statutory direction from the Congress and, second, to foreclose
it altogether as a result of new arms control agreements now
being negotiated with the Russians.

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