GIVING ‘I DON’T TALK TO THE MILITARY’ NEW MEANING: LYING TO THE JCS ABOUT MISSILE DEFENSE TALKS IS CRIMINAL

(Washington, D.C.): According to a stunning report in today’s Washington
Times, the Clinton Administration’s campaign to impede the
development and deployment of effective anti-missile defenses has
reached a new low — deliberate deception of the senior
military leadership concerning the status of arms control talks
that would garrote the most promising U.S. wide-area theater
missile defense systems.

As the attached article by Bill Gertz
— the Times’ intrepid Pentagon correspondent —
indicates, “Clinton administration officials misled
the Joint Chiefs of Staff about efforts to reach an agreement
with Russia at last month’s summit on the complex issue
of clarifying the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, Pentagon
officials said.” Not only were the JCS not
“read-in” on the Administration’s plan to try to nail
down a “demarcation” accord, when specifically asked
whether that would be a part of the Moscow summit agenda, the
party line was that it would not be.

One unnamed official told the Times: “At the
[Joint Chiefs] meeting, the chiefs were told ABM-TMD demarcation
will not be discussed at the summit. In fact, that briefing was part
of a deliberate deception plan on the part of the White
House.” Even more damning is the inescapable inference
described by a Pentagon source: “Everybody was outraged. The
only conclusion we could come to was that the White House
negotiated with the Russians against its own military.”
(Emphasis added.)

To add insult to injury, after conducting extensive
negotiations on this subject during his five-hour meeting with
Russian President Yeltsin, President Clinton told the press:
“I’m convinced that if we do this in an open way
that has a lot of integrity, I think we’ll all
be just fine on this and I think it will work out very
well.”

The Bottom Line

It has been noted in the press recently that the late Chief of
Naval Operations, Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda,
had become increasingly strenuous in his opposition to the
Clinton Administration’s negotiating agenda with respect to
expanding the scope of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
This was, perhaps, due at least in part to his appreciation that
the effect of the demarcation agreement now being sought by the
Clinton team would be fatally to constrain if not foreclose the
Navy’s Upper Tier wide-area missile defense program. It would be
a travesty if either the Administration or Mike Boorda’s
surviving colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff were to allow
his memory to be sullied by the further pursuit of this
duplicitous and irresponsible arms control agenda.

Civilian control of the military — a cornerstone of this
Nation’s democracy — not only requires the most powerful armed
forces on earth to submit to the dictates of the people’s elected
Commander-in-Chief. It also demands of the President that he
treat the military with the dignity, respect and integrity they
are due. This point should be particularly evident to an
Administration still trying to live down a White House staffer’s
declaration to General McCaffrey that, “I don’t talk to the
military” and a presidential legal defense against a sexual
harassment suit based on the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act.