‘The Most Important Thing’: Columnist Safire Asks Why Television Media is Largely Ignoring Rumsfeld Warnings?

(Washington, D.C.): In the past twenty-four hours, William Safire — one of the few pundits
whose brilliance, courage and integrity gives that profession a good name — twice
rendered
distinct public service. First, in a nationally televised Sunday morning news program appearance
and then in his syndicated column published today (see the
attached), Mr. Safire called for urgent
attention and concrete responses to the work of the Rumsfeld Commission (formally
known as
the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat which was chaired by former
Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld).⁽¹⁾

A Singular Exchange

Particularly noteworthy was the response given by the Times‘ columnist to a
question posed to
him and former Lyndon Johnson aide and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin by
the host of NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, Tim Russert:

MR. RUSSERT: “Also this week, Mr. Safire, a former White House chief of staff
named Donald Rumsfeld issued a report about the security risk to the United States
posed by a missile attack from someone who doesn’t like us.”

MR. SAFIRE: “This is an amazing moment on television. We’re talking
about the most important thing that happened in the past week, which was
not, you know, Linda Tripp’s testimony and the Secret Service fight. Here
you have a group of the best men we have in national defense, who have no axes
to grind, who looked at the — all the CIA studies and said, essentially, ‘You’re
being complacent. You’re saying that no missile threat — incoming missile threat
exists for 10 or 15 years. We disagree. We’ve looked at all your information and
the collusion we’ve come to is that there is a threat of American cities being under
attack by incoming missiles within five years. And if we don’t start doing
something about it, we’re…vulnerable.’

“Now, most of the American people don’t realize we have no missile
defense.
We’ve agreed not to have one. And here are these tin-pot dictators coming up
and buying missiles and developing missiles and putting nuclear warheads on
them, and we have no defense against it. This is heavy stuff, and this is what we
really ought to be talking about.”

MR. RUSSERT: “But the good times roll and the people are building
second additions, and these kinds of stories don’t seem to concern the
American people.”

MS. GOODWIN: “Well, I mean, that’s partly a problem of
leadership. I
mean, it’s a president’s job to get the American people concerned about the
public issues that are most important to them. We have a very passive
citizenry and we have an unaroused group of countrymen, and that’s partly him,
it’s partly the times — the fragmentation of the media, you know, the good times,
not making people care about public issues, but it’s not anything that we can’t feel
bad about. I mean, we’ve got to feel bad about it. I think it’s a bad thing for our
country…to be content and not care.”

MR. SAFIRE: “Why isn’t this cover[ed] more on television? Is it
dull?”

MR. RUSSERT: “And the newspapers, as well. I mean, it has not been on the front page of
anything, but it should be, and that’s why we brought it up this
morning.”

A Singular Column

Bill Safire’s column was no less trenchant in explaining why the United States cannot afford to
remain vulnerable to the sorts of missile threats that are now emerging. He describes how an
American president — and the Nation’s vital interests — could be subjected to blackmail, with
potentially profound diplomatic and strategic implications. He lays out three frighteningly
plausible scenarios in which the use of North Korean, Iraqi or Chinese missiles are threatened to
compel American accommodation. As Mr. Safire put it:

“Let’s set aside our preoccupation with executive privileges and hospital lawsuits long
enough to consider the consequences of [the Rumsfeld Commission’s] judgment. The
United States no longer has the luxury of several years to put up a missile
defense, as we complacently believed. If we do not decide now to deploy a
rudimentary shield, we run the risk of Iran or North Korea or Libya building or buying
the weapon that will enable it to get the drop on us.”

Thus, the pundit makes explicit a conclusion the Rumsfeld Commission could only
imply
(given that its mandate was limited to addressing the missile threat, not what should be done in
response to it): The United States must promptly begin deploying defenses against
ballistic
missile attack. Mr. Safire endorses an approach that will produce far more effective
anti-missile
protection, far faster and far more inexpensively than any other option — by adapting the Navy’s
AEGIS fleet air defense system to give it robust missile-killing capabilities. href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

The Bottom Line

The time has clearly come for a national debate about defending America against
ballistic
missile attack. Tim Russert and NBC News are to be commended for giving Bill Safire
a prime
opportunity to catalyze such a debate on television. For his part, Mr. Safire is to be saluted for
taking full advantage of it — both by making the substantive point on air with
characteristic
deftness and by challenging the television media, in the process, to mount the kind of educational
effort on the missile defense issue that he has made in print before and after this
important
program.⁽³⁾

It is especially heartening that Democrat Doris Kearns Goodwin seconded the Safire call for
“leadership” on missile defense and Mr. Russert concluded by agreeing that the missile threat
“should be” on the front pages. The Center for Security Policy urges both to use
their
considerable influence to accomplish these critically important objectives.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for Beginning Deployment of Missile
Defenses (No.
98-D 133, 15 July 1998) and Wall Street Journal Lauds Rumsfeld Commission
Warning On
Missile Threat; Reiterates Call for Aegis Option in Response ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-P_134″>No. 98-P 134, 16 July 1998).

2. For more on why this approach is the most near-term, effective and
affordable means of
providing world-wide anti-missile protection, see Irate Senate Supporters of the
‘AEGIS
Option’ for Missile Defense Demand Release of Favorable Pentagon Study ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_119″>No. 98-D 119, 25
June 1998), Words to Live By: Speaker Gingrich Asks Clinton to Use Speech to
the Nation to
Begin Protecting It From Missile Attack (No. 98-D
15, 23 January 1998) and Validation of the
Aegis Option: Successful Test Is First Step From Promising Concept to Global Anti-Missile
Capability (No. 97-D 17, 29 January 1997).

3. See The Tide Rises Further: Bill Safire Calls for
Missile Defense (No. 98-D 105, 11 June
1998).