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[Page: S583]

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I compliment the Senator from Oklahoma for his remarks on the report in the Washington Times concerning the potential threat of ballistic missiles from not only North Korea but other nations around the world, and the apparent modification of the threat estimate from our security agencies.

Both of us sit on the Intelligence Committee and are well aware of the work that goes into our national intelligence estimates, well aware of the difficulty in gathering information and analyzing it, and the difficulty really of discussing the analysis in a way that does not compromise our ability to gather that information.

The public does need to know that the factual information acquired over the years about the potential threat specifically from North Korea led to some conclusions in 1995 that were very disturbing. The Senator from Oklahoma just reiterated several of them.

I would add that Admiral Studeman, then the acting Director, testified publicly a year ago that the North Koreans could be expected to deploy a missile within 3 to 5 years and that that missile could reach the United States of America. Why this is important is that some Members of the Congress have used a revision in the intelligence estimate to say there is no problem and therefore we do not need to fund ballistic missile defense .

A year ago, the national intelligence estimate clearly would have led anybody to the conclusion that we needed to move forward with ballistic missile defense . Now, a year later, the estimate is that that is not necessarily required because countries like North Korea may not be in a position to deploy a missile that could harm the United States as early as we thought. But the facts have not changed, and that is what disturbs Senator Inhofe; it is what disturbs me. If the facts have not changed, what has changed? Has there been a change in the methodology of the assessment? If so, I am not aware of it. I intend to find out. Might there be other considerations for reaching a different conclusion based on the same information?

I know the newspaper article speculated that politics could be involved. I would find it very hard to believe that the Central Intelligence Agency would permit that to happen. But something happened. And I think we have to find out because in this matter we are talking about the most serious possible consequences. It is literally a potential life and death situation.

If, in fact, according to our intelligence estimates, countries that are unfriendly to the United States are going to develop capabilities that they could use against us in the very near future, we have to be prepared to deal with that, period. If, on the other hand, that threat is further away than we originally thought, we have a little bit more flexibility in determining when and how to respond. But it is important that the information be real and that it not be subjected to rose-colored filters of some kind either based upon hope or based upon politics.

As I said, I cannot believe that anybody in the administration would skew the analysis of such an important matter just in order to cause the Congress not to move forward robustly with the ballistic missile defense system. That is why Senator Inhofe and I and others are going to get to the bottom of this and determine whether or not there is a reason for the change in the estimate.

But the interesting part of this, Mr. President, is that it probably does not matter one way or the other in the sense that, if we began today to get on with the job of developing and deploying an effective ballistic missile defense system, it still would not be ready by the time the threat is said to exist.

Mr. INHOFE. Would the Senator yield?

Mr. KYL. We need to move forward as robustly as we can.

I would be glad to.

Mr. INHOFE. I was hoping it would come out that the Defense authorization bill would have put us in the position to deploy a system, a very crude system, a very basic system, by the year 2003. The estimates are that this would actually be 2 years beyond the time when the threat would exist, so we would still have 2 years of vulnerability. I believe I am correct when I say that.

Mr. KYL. The Senator is absolutely correct, which is why it makes it so important for the Senator from Oklahoma to have brought this to the Senate floor today. Even if you assume the most conservative estimate--or I should say the most liberal estimate--of the time that the threat will be there, we are still not moving forward to meet that threat.

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator would yield further, it is also very important, any time a discussion or debate takes place like this, to remind the American people and ourselves in this body that we have a system that is about 80 to 85 percent paid for right now. We have approximately $40 billion already invested in the Navy's Aegis system that we are merely trying to upgrade to reach into the upper tier.

I would have to say that what offends me more than anything else, because I watch it at work, are the liberals who do not want to invest any money at all in a national defense system, referring to it as star wars because what you get in your head when you hear `star wars' is that it is some kind of an image of something from Buck Rogers--some of you may not remember that--or science fiction, when in fact anyone who was watching CNN during the Persian Gulf war knows the technology is there. This is something for which the technology is here.

We are almost there. It is a matter of spending a little more, about 10 percent more than what we have already spent to be able to defend ourselves against missile attack.

I did not really become wrapped up in this issue, Mr. President, until the bombing took place in my State of Oklahoma. I saw all the disaster surrounding that. I watched and heard the stories, and I knew people who were in there, people later found to be dead. I looked at that and I thought, that bomb was equal to 1 ton of TNT. The smallest nuclear warhead that we know of today is 1,000 times that size.

If you multiply the disaster that the whole world grieved over in Oklahoma City, multiply that by 1,000, it gives you some idea. Maybe it is the fact that this magnitude is more than we can comprehend. I do not know.

[Page: S584]

Mr. KYL. If I could make another comment. Perhaps the Senator from Oklahoma would want to add to this, too.

Let us go back a little bit and put this in perspective. The weapon that killed 28 Americans in Saudi Arabia during the gulf war was a conventional explosive organ, just high explosives they call it, and yet the single largest number of American casualties occurred in that one instant. And 28 Americans died when that 1 Scud missile hit the barracks in Saudi Arabia. That was a relatively crude Scud missile with a range of maybe 300 miles or thereabouts.

The point is that every year countries learn how to cause their missiles to go farther and farther and farther, and they put heavier payloads on them, and they make them more accurate in terms of where they will fall.

What our intelligence has been telling us about the North Korean missile is that they are on a subsequent generation now. They have already developed missiles that will go these intermediate distances. They are working on missiles that will go farther and farther and farther. So what we are trying to do is estimate just when will it be that they will have advanced to the point that they can deliver that warhead all the way to the United States? We cannot tell that with precision. We do not know when that will happen. But the information we had suggested they were now getting along to the point where it would be perhaps within 3 to 5 years that they had that capability. That is what we are talking about here.

Mr. INHOFE. Would the Senator yield on that point?

Mr. KYL. Yes.

Mr. INHOFE. I think that is interesting because it was a week ago today in the New York Times that a story came out about China, making reference to the fact that they were talking about possible missile attacks against Taiwan. But do not worry, they said, because the Americans are not going to go to Taiwan's defense because they are more concerned about Los Angeles than they are about Taipei.

What does that tell you? Certainly there is an interpretation on that that could be very close to a warning to us. It just bothers me that we in this country have adopted a policy, just during this administration and specifically this year, that we are going to be downgrading our nuclear capability, our missile technology, our capability when, as the Senator from Arizona states, the rest of the countries are raising theirs up.

If there is one lesson from the Persian Gulf war that the American people learned, it is that the leader of that country is capable of doing anything. If he had a missile , I do not doubt that most people in America believe he would use it.

Mr. KYL. If the Senator from Oklahoma would like to respond to this: Is it not a fact that Saddam Hussein said that if he had had the bomb, he would have used it? I know Muammar Qadhafi said that, the leader of Libya.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes.

Mr. KYL. It seems to me Saddam Hussein said the same thing.

May I ask the Senator another question?

Mr. INHOFE. He went on to say, `If we waited, if the war was 2 years from now, we would have the capability.'

Mr. KYL. The nuclear capability.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes.

Mr. KYL. Suppose it is 3 or 4 years from now and the North Koreans have a missile which has enough range now to finally hit the continental United States or even, Mr. President, Alaska or Hawaii--maybe even just Japan, although presumably they are already there. North Korea clearly could get into Japan at this point.

But suppose they had a missile that could get to Hawaii or Alaska, and they decide that they have had it with Taiwan, that they have threatened Taiwan long enough and it is time for them to incorporate Taiwan into China, not only in a rhetorical and political sense, but in an actual and military sense; therefore, they are going to threaten Taiwan with obliteration if it does not agree to become an effective part of the Chinese Government--they call themselves a state now, but they are not subject to the government in Beijing--suppose that China begins rattling its sword and says, `We are now going to do this,' and Taiwan has to go along. And the United States says, `No. We have a treaty obligation, or we have obligations, in any event, if not rising to the level of a treaty, which have commitments to Taiwan to protect them in the event you attack.' And the North Koreans say, or the Chinese, either one, says, `Well, we have weapons that we know can reach Alaska and Hawaii, and you know that, too. So we would suggest that you not step in the way of China taking over Taiwan or step in the way of North Korea taking over South Korea,' whatever the target between China and North Korea would be.

What do you think the United States would do in that event, if we knew that if the Chinese taking over Taiwan or the North Koreans taking over South Korea could launch a missile against the United States and we could not stop them? Would we intervene militarily to protect South Korea against North Korea or Taiwan against China?

Mr. INHOFE. I will respond to the Senator from Arizona. It is even more complicated than that, assuming we continue our present course of blindly adhering this to the provisions of the ABM Treaty. Taking the same scenario, if we have an Aegis ship in Sea of Japan, and two missiles are launched from, say, China or North Korea--one bound for Taiwan and one bound for Los Angeles, we could very well be in the adsurd position of being fully able to intercept the one bound for Taiwan, but not the one bound for Los Angeles, because that would be a violation of the ABM Treaty.

We have debated this before as to the fact that the ABM Treaty does not have valid application today. In fact, it was Henry Kissinger, the architect of the treaty, who said to me--and you can quote me, he said, `It's nuts to make a virtue out of our vulnerability.'

So this is the environment that we are dealing with. I am very thankful to the leadership of the Senator from Arizona and a few others who share our concern over the vulnerability of the United States.

Mr. KYL. I appreciate the Senator from Oklahoma bringing this issue up. I also know that the Senator in the chair, the Senator from New Hampshire, has a very strong voice speaking in favor of the development and deployment of the U.S. ballistic missile defense system, and I thank him.