[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 141 (Friday, October 9, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1996-E1997]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     DON RUMSFELD'S HISTORIC LEGACY

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 8, 1998

  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, the attached article from the Washington 
Times provides the proper perspective on the work of former Secretary 
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Frank Gaffney, Jr., recognizes that the 
findings of the Rumsfeld Commission are accurate and need to be given 
serious consideration. I recommend this article to my colleagues, and I 
submit the article to the Congressional Record.

               [The Washington Times, Wed., Oct. 7 1998]

                      Don Rumsfeld's Heroic Legacy

                          (Frank Gaffney Jr.)

       Last Friday, top uniformed and civilian Pentagon officials 
     made something of a spectacle of themselves on Capitol Hill.
       It's not just that the officials--Deputy Secretary of 
     Defense John Hamre, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
     Staff Ralston and Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles, the director of the 
     Ballistic Missile Defense Organization--were forced to admit 
     to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that they 
     could no longer sustain the central tenet of the 
     administration's resistance to the prompt deployment of 
     missile defenses: The ballistic missile threat from a rogue 
     state like North Korea is now recognized as likely to emerge 
     before the United States can deploy effective anti-missile 
     systems to defeat it.
       Nor was the spectacle primarily a function of this 
     hearing's juxtaposition with one the committee had held three 
     days before. On the earlier occasion, the chairman of the 
     Joint Chiefs of Staff and each of the four Service Chiefs 
     hewed to the old party line. They parroted the JCS's position 
     laid out in an Aug. 24 letter from their chairman, Gen. Hugh 
     Shelton, to the chairman of the Committee's Readiness 
     Subcommittee, Sen. Jim Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican: ``We 
     remain confident that the intelligence community can provide 
     the necessary warning of the indigenous development and 
     deployment by a rogue state of an ICBM threat to the United 
     States.''
       In particular, the JCS dismissed as ``an unlikely 
     development'' a key conclusion of the blue-ribbon, 
     congressionally mandated commission led by former Defense 
     Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--namely, the prospect that 
     ``through unconventional, high-risk development programs and 
     foreign assistance, rogue nations could acquire an ICBM 
     capability in a short time and that the intelligence 
     community may not detect it.''
       Yet, Mr. Hamre and the generals accompanying him were 
     obliged to acknowledge that they and the intelligence 
     community had in fact been surprised by North Korea's test on 
     Aug. 30 of a third-stage on its Taepo Dong 1 missile. Indeed, 
     this demonstration of the inherent capability to manufacture 
     intercontinental-range ballistic missiles came along years 
     before it had been expected by the Clinton team. It happened 
     to validate, however, the Rumsfeld Commission's warning that 
     the United States was likely to have ``little or no warning'' 
     of a ballistic missile threat from the likes of North Korea, 
     Iran and Iraq.
       Gen. Shelton and Co. owe Mr. Rumsfeld and his colleagues an 
     apology--just as the nation owes the commission a debt of 
     gratitude for helping to shatter the administration's 
     cognitive dissonance about the escalating missile threat.
       The real spectacle, though, came when the Defense 
     Department witnesses [proceeded to assure senators of two 
     propositions that make the systematic underestimation of the 
     threat pale by comparison. First, they asserted that the 1972 
     Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is in no way interfering with 
     the United States' pursuit of effective missile defenses. And 
     second, they claimed their work on such defenses is 
     proceeding as quickly as possible.
       The one exception Messrs. Hamre, Ralston and Lyles 
     mentioned in the latter connection was the Navy's ``AEGIS 
     Option'': an evolution of the fleet air defense system that 
     is operational on the world's oceans thanks

[[Page E1997]]

     to an investment of some $50 billion to date, so as to permit 
     it to shoot down ballistic missiles. They confirmed that this 
     promising program was not receiving the funds it needs to 
     proceed as quickly as technology would permit.
       Unfortunately, to correct this shortfall, the Pentagon is 
     actively considering terminating (either formally or de 
     facto) the Army's important Theater High Altitude Area 
     Defense (THAAD) program. Were such an ill-advised step to be 
     taken, it would offer proof positive of the adage that two 
     wrongs do not make a right.
       The Defense Department representatives went on to 
     perpetrate another spectacular fraud. None mentioned that the 
     AEGIS Option is a case in point of how the ABM Treaty is, in 
     fact, preventing effective anti-missile systems from being 
     developed and deployed as soon as possible.
       If the dead hand of this 26-year-old accord--with a country 
     that no longer exists--were not still governing the Clinton 
     policy toward missile defense, there is little doubt as to 
     what would currently be happening: The nation would be 
     rapidly evolving its AEGIS infrastructure so as to put into 
     place within a few years a competent, worldwide defense 
     against shorter-range missiles (currently threatening our 
     forces and friends overseas). Absent the ABM Treaty, 
     moreover, this program would also afford the beginnings of a 
     missile protection for Americans here at home for a price tag 
     estimated to total (thanks to the sunk costs) just $2 billion 
     to $3 billion, spent out over the next five years.
       At this writing, Defense Secretary William Cohen and Gen. 
     Shelton are about to appear before the Armed Services 
     Committee. Given the velocity with which these sessions are 
     producing dramatic changes in administration positions, 
     perhaps these witnesses will reveal that the truth is 
     breaking out not only with respect to the threat, but also 
     with regard to what can be done about it.
       Under no circumstances should the witnesses be allowed 
     further to insult senators' intelligence by promoting the 
     absurd argument that a limited national missile defense 
     system that literally has to be built from the ground up can 
     be brought on-line faster and cheaper than one that is 
     largely operational, apart from some relatively minor 
     hardware and software changes. This defies common sense. So 
     does the line that the ABM Treaty--which nominally permits 
     the former and explicitly prohibits the latter, sea-based 
     anti-missile program--is having no impact on the effort to 
     defend America against missile attack.
       Whether the truth on these fronts actually emerges from the 
     Cohen-Shelton hearing or at some future event, one thing 
     seems clear: It will become harder and harder to lie to the 
     American people about their vulnerability to ballistic 
     missile attack and about the availability of near-term, 
     affordable options for reducing that vulnerability, provided 
     the ABM Treaty is no longer allowed to be an impediment to 
     bringing defenses on-line. Hats off to Don Rumsfeld and his 
     team for creating conditions under which such momentous 
     changes may yet result in the deployment of missile defense 
     before they are needed.
       Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the director of the Center for 
     Security Policy and columnist for the Washington Times.

     

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