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[Page: S586]

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

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