[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 31, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S586-S587]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE

  Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, just a few minutes ago, I was occupying the 
chair, as the Senator from Arizona is now, and I witnessed, first, a 
few remarks by the Senator from Arizona regarding the two-thirds 
supermajority vote for a tax increase, legislation that he is planning 
to introduce. And later, hearing the distinguished Senator from 
Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe, come down and engage in a debate on both that 
issue with the Senator from Arizona and the issue of ballistic missile 
defense, I was very much taken by the debate.
  First of all, I want to compliment both the Senator from Arizona and 
the Senator from Oklahoma for the distinguished service they have given 
their country just in allowing this dialog to come to the forefront. In 
the case of the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Oklahoma, I 
have worked very closely with both of them on this ballistic missile 
defense matter, taking that issue first, knowing that here we have a 
situation where the entire defense authorization bill was held hostage 
by the President of the United States because he did not want national 
missile defense. Not only did he not want national missile defense, he 
did not even want language talking about national missile defense. So 
in order to get a pay raise for our military, whom the President of the 
United States sent to Bosnia, we had to agree to take missile defense 
language out of the bill.
  What came to my mind as I listened to the debate between my two 
colleagues was one simple line: Elections have consequences. I found 
myself saying that if a President sat down at the White House who 
shared the philosophy of the Senators from Arizona and Oklahoma, 
sticking to missile defense, we would have had a Defense authorization 
bill not only with language, but with a real direction to move toward 
building a defense against incoming ballistic missiles against the 
people of the United States of America. We now do not have that.
  As the Senator knows, there have been a number of focus groups where 
people throughout America have been asked one very basic question: If 
the United States were fired on by a ballistic missile from another 
country, what would the United States do? Overwhelmingly, the response 
is, ``Shoot it down.'' In fact, we know we cannot shoot it down.

  It is shocking to me that a President, and many of the colleagues in 
his party, would hold a Defense authorization bill hostage to simply 
get that language out. I am outraged by it, to be candid about it. I 
think that what the Senator from Oklahoma brought to the floor with 
this intelligence information is shocking. I said to him, privately, as 
he was leaving the floor, ``I hope that both of you Senators, who are 
members of the Intelligence Committee, pursue this diligently because 
it goes really to the heart of our democracy here.'' If, in fact, those 
charges are true, or even remotely true, as they appeared in the 
Washington Times, that somehow this was falsified, this is a very, very 
serious matter because the defense of the United States of America is 
at stake.
  I just cannot understand why anyone would not want to do what needs 
to be done to defend American cities and American people. That is our 
obligation. That is one of the primary obligations of the U.S. 
Congress, certainly, as outlined in the Constitution. Yet, we have this 
situation where a report--and the Senator well knows we heard reports 
to the contrary. I am also on the Armed Services Committee. We heard 
reports to the contrary that this could be a problem within 2, 3, 4, 5 
years. Now we are hearing maybe it is 15 years, or even further down 
the road.
  Something is wrong, Mr. President, because you and I both know of the 
technology that is out there. We know it is being shipped all around 
the world. The Chinese have this missile technology, the Iraqis have 
it, the Iranians have it, the North Koreans have it, and Qadhafi would 
like to have it, and he may have it soon. It goes on and on and on.
  The Senator from Arizona, the occupant of the chair, made an 
excellent point, which reminded me--and I want to accent it, comment on 
it a little further, expand on it a little further--that when those 28 
brave men and women were killed in the Persian Gulf by that missile, 
that is the first time in the history of America that a missile--in 
this case a theater missile, but a missile--attacked, hit, and killed 
American service men and women.
  I find myself thinking, what if we had not had Jack Kennedy, to his 
credit, as you mentioned, and Ronald Reagan in the positions they were 
in at the time to see to it that we had even just the remotest 
possibility of defending against that missile. As the Senator knows, 
the missile that was used to shoot that missile down was not designed 
for that purpose, it was not designed to do that. So this is a very, 
very serious matter. We investigate a lot of things in the Congress, 
but if the intelligence community truly has information that says that 
the threat of attack from an incoming ballistic missile from one of 
those countries I mentioned, or another one, is possibly 15 years down 
the road, then I think they need to prove that to the Intelligence 
Committee.
  I do not believe that is going to be the case. I do not think they 
can prove it. We know the range of these missiles. We know how this 
technology is being exported. We know our own technology has in some 
cases been bought and in some cases stolen and has been shipped around 
the world and in some cases encouraged to be sold by the current 
administration--certain types of technology which may or may not be 
used in building these missiles.
  It is a perfect example, again, of one of the basic differences 
between the two political parties. So much focus has gone on the budget 
debate, and rightfully so, that we are trying to turn around 4 years of 
big government spending. That is a huge issue in and of itself, but 
also this issue of defending America, the basic responsibility that we 
have as Government servants of the people of the United States to 
preserve, protect, and defend our country is at stake here.
  I am certainly going to be pursuing this, as well, on my own and in 
conjunction with my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee to find 
out the facts. I hope that we are not going to find that somehow this 
thing was inflated to be something that it is not, and that some 
pressure was put on to play this down, because I have been in some 
meetings over the past several months and years that I have been on the 
Armed Services Committee where I have heard the contrary from very 
high-ranking administration and military officials, as I am sure the 
Senator from Arizona has. I am looking forward 

[[Page S587]]
to hearing the results of this investigation. I think it should be on 
the front burner.

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