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| October 1998 | Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation | |
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REPORT INDEX
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America's Best Kept Secret
Two of the year's most popular movies, Deep Impact and
Armageddon, imagined a day in the not too distant future
when the world-and America in particular-is threatened with
mass destruction by huge asteroids hurtling wildly toward target
earth. Even as these two science-fiction blockbuster films were
being readied for general release, the real-life International
Astronomical Union and the Central Bureau of Astronomical
Telegrams at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory each
informed the media that a one-mile wide piece of space rock
known as asteroid 1997 XF11 was indeed speeding through space
and might collide with Earth sometime in the year 2028.
Although, several days later, NASA's jet Propulsion Laboratory
disputed the possible asteroid-Earth collision-calculating asteroid 1997 XF11 would pass at 600,000 miles or three times the
distance of the moon from Earth-the news of a possible strike
from space rated front-page newspaper coverage as well as
breathless reporting from network TV commentators. At the same
time, however, the media has generally ignored a very real
threat to our nation's survival, in fact America's best kept
secret. Namely, the U.S. has absolutely no military defense against
an attack from Communist China, North Korea and other unfriendly countries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya or Syria that a 1995 report
by the CIA notes "already have or are developing ballistic missiles
that could threaten U.S. interests."
While movie menaces from outer space are the chilling
inventions of Hollywood script writers, the possibility of nuclear,
biological and chemical attack by missiles aimed at our country-
or even American troops stationed around the globe, to say nothing of our vital food supplies-is ominously real. When even one
such missile lands in Times Square, in the Chicago Loop, on a
busy Los Angeles freeway, or anywhere else in the continental
US. where American citizens believe they are sheltered from
enemy attack, it will be too late to do anything about the fact
that we have no national missile defense. Period!
In fact, as Robert Kagan of the Washington-based Carnegie
Endowment and Gary Schmitt, former executive director of the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, point out in an
excellent article in the July 1998 Commentary (Now May We
Please Defend Ourselves?) the Clinton Administration-with
little outcry from Republican lawmakers-did the following: "Cut
planned expenditures on ballistic-missile defense for the last half
of the 1990's by more than 50 percent, totally eliminating the program to develop space-based interceptors, reducing funds for
a national defense by 80 percent, and slicing approximately
another 30 percent from programs targeted at knocking down
shore-and regional-range missiles."
With defense spending currently down to 2.9% of the gross
domestic product ("a depth not reached since before Pearl
Harbor" says New Hampshire's Rep. Robert Smith, chairman of
the Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces), "finding funds for
missile defense is simply a question of what our political leaders
think matters more," write Kagan and Schmitt, "protecting
an ever-expanding set of domestic-entitlement programs or protecting America's ability to exercise its role as the globe's leading
state" in addition to assuring our country's protection,
where none now exists, from missile attack!
Probably few Americans are aware of a startling report sent to
Congress on July 15th by a bipartisan panel with the official
name of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to
the United States. Headed by former Defense Secretary, Donald
H. Rumsfeld, its other members have held positions in government, or acted as advisors, to both Republican and Democratic
administrations. They are: R. James Woolsey, a former CIA director; Barry M. Blechman, former assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Richard L. Garwin, a physicist
and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; William R.
Graham, science advisor to President Ronald Reagan; William
Schneider Jr., a former arms control advisor; Paul D. Wolfowitz, a
senior Pentagon official under President George Bush; and
Generals Lee Butler and Larry D. Welch, both former heads of
the United States Strategic Command.
Known unofficially now as "the Rumsfeld Report," the commission's document delivered to the House and Senate totaled 300-pages of classified information with a 27-page unclassified version released to the general public and media. The New York Times, our prime newspaper of record-which earlier gave front-page
coverage to the steroid 1997 XF11 imbroglio-found space back
on page A23 in its July 16th edition to mention it under a headline: PANEL SAYS U.S. FACES RISK OR A SURPRISE MISSILE
ATTACK and featured a photo of House Speaker Newt Gingrich
who had absolutely nothing to do with the commission's findings.
"Rogue nations could develop and deploy ballistic missiles for
an attack against the United States with 'little or no warning' an
independent commission announced today," the Times noted,
"but senior American Intelligence officials stood by their long-standing estimate that no country besides Russia and China, which
already have ballistic missiles, could field long-range rockets
before 2010, with the possible exception of North Korea." Pointing out, at least, that the bipartisan commission's warning was
unanimous, the Times added that the "panel" of noted defense
specialists said the present American Intelligence estimates on
how long before hostile governments will have missiles capable of
striking America are wrong. For a clearer explanation, however,
forget the Times. On July 29th, the editorial page of The Wall
Street Journal gave more succinct details:
"The security and defense experts on the Rumsfeld Commission noted that North Korea is developing missiles with a 6,200-mile range, capable of reaching as far as Arizona or even Wisconsin, and that Iran is seeking
missile components that could result in weapons with a similar range, able to hit Pennsylvania or Minnesota. That information is from the unclassified version of the report. The general public doesn't get to bear about the really scary stuff. The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission
Report, of course, received little play in the general media, which seems to have concluded somehow that this issue is no big deal."
Efforts "to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an
effective National Missile Defense System capable of defending the
territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile
attack" is the wording Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi used
in introducing a bill in March called The American Missile
Protection Act of 1998. When motion to move the bill to the
Senate floor for debate and amendments came up, it fell one shy
of 60 votes needed for consideration. As the WSJournal remarked
at the time, "providing an American President the wherewithal to
shoot down a ballistic missile on its way to an American city
shouldn't be a partisan issue," but the following Senators up for
election this year made it so: Barbara Boxer (California),
John Breaux (Louisiana), Tom Daschle (South Dakota), Chris
Dodd (Connecticut), Byron Dorgan (North Dakota), Russell Feingold (Wisconsin), Bob Graham (Florida), Patrick Leahy (Vermont), Barbara Mikulski (Maryland), Carol Moseley-Braun (Illinois), Patty Murray (Washington), Harry Reid (Nevada) and Ron Wyden (Oregon).
On September 9th, the second time in four months, the U.S.
Senate again blocked a bill to establish a national defense against
long-range missiles by one vote. In the interim between the
earlier March Senate rejection, India and Pakistan both exploded
nuclear bombs to the surprise of U.S. Intelligence analysts; Iran
and North Korea boldly tested ballistic missiles, Iraq's Saddam
Hussein refused U.N. inspectors permission to search for suspected
missile-deliverable germ-warfare agents, and a Middle-East
terrorist named Osama bin Laden (who we are now told attempted
to obtain materials in 1993 to develop nuclear weapons) allegedly
blew up two American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing 12
U.S. citizens and more than 300 African nationals. Did such events
change any Senators' minds? Voting in favor of missile defense this
time were Democratic Senators Joseph Liberman of Connecticut
and Ernest Hoffings of South Carolina, as well as Daniel K. Inouye
and Daniel K. Akaka both of Hawaii-whose state, no doubt detailed
in the Rumsfeld Commission's secret classified report, would be
one of the first likely targeted for ballistic missile attack.
(Somebody remembers Pearl Harbor!)
Most Americans might not understand why they should care
about what is happening in Bosnia or China, says Robert
Kagan and Gary Schmitt in their Commentary piece, but they
should certainly be galvanized by the prospect of a missile striking
Alaska or Los Angeles. Then, why are our elected national public
officials so reluctant to build a defense system to shoot down
ballistic missiles?
That reluctance is likewise bipartisan. In 1995, for example,
"a national defense against ballistic missiles was one of only two
items in the 'Contract with America' that failed to pass the
Republican-controlled House," they point out, adding: "Another
Republican loss in 1995 occurred in connection with the defense-authorization bill, which specified a system for defending the
United States itself against a rudimentary missile attack by the year
2003. Clinton vetoed the measure, and the Republican Congress
capitulated. The following year, rather than risk another veto, it
decided to put the measure into a separate 'Defend America Act,'
but the proposed bill never made it to the floor for a vote."
The main reason for those failures is actually simple. It is an
unwillingness to repudiate and scrap the now-26-year-old 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty signed with the Soviet Union which is no longer in existence. Not only Democrats, but
many Republican politicians continue to genuflect not only before ABM but also before the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction
(MAD). The theory, on Treaty paper at least, is if the Soviets
launched nuclear missiles at the U.S., we would respond by
launching missiles against the Kremlin, thus both would refrain
from nuclear confrontations. (In the words of Jim Courtier of
the pro-missile defense Lexington Institute, MAD was simply
"a mutual suicide pact" between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.)
Today, none other than former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger (author of the ABM Treaty and proponent of the MAD
doctrine) points out-says Kagan and Schmitt-that both were
"barely plausible when there was only one nuclear opponent"
(the U.S.S.R.) but now "makes no sense in a multipolar world of
proliferating nuclear powers." In any case, "MAD was never
intended to apply to nations other than the Soviet Union," they
stress. "Letting the ABM Treaty stand means placing a ceiling
over the progress that can be made toward defending American
citizens, troops, and allies. Unless the Treaty is overturned, the most effective theater missile defense will never be built, and
national defense that is more than marginally effective will never
be possible."
In other words, the 1972 ABM Treaty which died in 1991 along
with the Soviet Union-as Melanie Kirkpatrick of the Wall Street Journal puts it-is a relic of political old-think that arms control really works. On the contrary; Joseph Arminio of the National
Coalition for Defense, says ABM has been a deadly sham from its
inception citing as evidence an important new book by William T. Lee, a retired officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency entitled
The ABM Treaty Charade: A Study in Elite Illusion and
Delusion.
The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission reviewed classified
information about the worldwide proliferation of ballistic
missiles not available to most analysts. It includes the chilling fact that countries hostile to the U.S. have become so adept at
concealing their missile program that Western Intelligence
analysts often have no idea how to gauge their progress. There is still much information available through the mainstream media
(especially TV where most Americans get their news). Here are
some examples:
Development of a missile defense system should be a priority
of our elected officials. What sort and at what cost is, of
course, open to debate. As the Rumsfeld Commission pointed out,
we cannot wait many more years while rogue nations and
Communist enemies continue to develop their nuclear, chemical
and toxic arsenals. Robert Kagan and Gary Schmitt explain why:
"As (President) Ronald Reagan envisioned it, missile defense was
not a means of reducing America's involvement in the world but
was, rather, the vital shield that would free the United States
to play its leading role, undeterred by the threat of nuclear
annihilation or of attack by rogue states. That is still the best
argument for missile defense."
GOOD NEWS-A 13-year-old student e-mailed CMF for information on Cardinal Mindszenty, so that he could make an oral
presentation to his classmates "on this remarkable man." A
video, Mindszenty Reports, and leaflets were sent. Weeks later
we heard from him: his teacher was so impressed with his
inspiring report on Cardinal Mindszenty that she let him have
the whole class period and gave him an A+!
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