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Frank J. Gaffney
Director, Center for Security Policy

The Ballistic Missile Threat to the U.S. and its Allies
28 February 1996 - House National Security Committee

"SEE NO EVIL"
IS NOT A SOUND PRESCRIPTION FOR
U.S. SECURITY IN THE FACE OF
EMERGING MISSILE THREATS

It is a privilege to be asked to join two of the national security exports for whom I have the highest professional and personal regard - Dr. William Graham and Dr. Keith Payne - in addressing an issue about which we share a deep concern: the growing threat of ballistic missile attack against not only the United States' forces and allies overseas but against our own Nation. I join them in saluting you, Mr. Chairman, for your recognition of this threat and for your personal efforts, and those of your colleagues and staff, aimed at urgently addressing this emerging menace.

I commend you in particular for scheduling today's hearing at the start of what will surely be a busy and highly charged legislative year. By so doing, you are giving appropriate prominence to what is today, in my view, the single greatest menace to U.S. national security. I trust that you and the relevant National Security Committee subcommittees will follow up this session with equally important hearings on:

• the technical options available for cost-effectively and quickly putting into place global missile defenses;
• the impediments to doing so presented by the current version of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - and those that are being negotiated as we speak by the Clinton Administration; and
• the remedies (legal, political, programmatic, etc.) needed to eliminate such impediments.

My colleagues at the Center for Security Policy and I -- and other participants in the Coalition to Defend America - stand ready to assist the Committee in addressing these and related topics.

What is Wrong With This Picture?

As has been noted previously, the Clinton Administration strongly disagrees with our assessment that ballistic missiles pose a clear and present danger to this country. In support of this position, President Clinton has averred that "our Intelligence Community does not foresee in the coming decade" a long-range missile threat to the United States. In this regard, he is, reportedly, referring to a recently produced National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). I have not had an opportunity to review this NIE personally. I have, however, been exposed to its broad thrust by press reports and the comments of distinguished members of the Center for Security Policy's Board of Advisors like Rep. Curt Weldon and Senator Jon Kyl.

According to Senator Kyl, the NIE concludes that:

While several countries continue to seek longer-range missiles, the North Korean ICBM system is now reassessed as having a 'very low' probability of being operational by the year 2000. In addition, the NIE assumes it is extremely unlikely any nation with ICBMs will be willing to sell them. Finally, the NIE states that the U.S. warning capabilities are sufficient to provide notice many years in advance of indigenous development of ICBMs. "

Such pollyannish statements cause me strongly to second Rep. Weldon's characterization of this NIE as "the most politically biased intelligence brief I have ever seen .... "These are some of the relevant facts:

• The trend in the proliferation of ballistic missile technology is unmistakably in the direction of longer- and longer-range missiles coming into the hands of ever more dangerous nations.

• In the absence of effective, global American anti-missile defenses, there is little if any disincentive to rogue states' pursuit of ever more capable ballistic missiles. Such weapons currently promise to make them instant worm powers, capable of blackmailing their neighbors and even the great United States. If anything, the Clinton Administration's policies of rewarding proliferating nations like North Korea for trying to "go nuclear" has created incentives for doing so. (Interestingly, South Korean press reports indicate that Pyongyang now expects the United States to offer fresh concessions in order to slow the North's ballistic missile program.)

  Some contend that U.S. defenses will only spur the North Koreans and others to build more missiles. I must tell you that I was not among those during the Cold War who believed the Soviet Union would be either willing or able to afford the vast expenditure needed to overhaul their ballistic missile force so as to counter U.S. strategic defenses. I think it even more unlikely that, in the face of American defenses, a rogue developing nation will deem it worthwhile to sink more of its limited resources trying to end-run us by adding to the quantity and/or the quality of its vulnerable ballistic missiles force.

• There are lots of ways rogue nations can reduce the time it would take to have deployable long-range ballistic missiles. The transfer of militarily relevant technologies by the U.S. and other Western nations, by Russia and by China -- with the active support or tacit approval of the Clinton Administration - is one short-cut. (I applaud the National Security Committee's efforts to staunch this reckless practice, notably Chairman Spence's February 23, 1996 request for a GAO investigation into dubious U.S. dual-use tech transfers to China.)

  Another way is through the sale of Russia's so-called 'Space Launch Vehicles' - missiles that are functionally identical to Soviet SS-25 ICBMs. Incredibly, these transactions have been blessed by an amendment to the START I Treaty negotiated by the same Clinton Administration that is publicly minimizing the missile threat!

• It should be remembered that even relatively primitive and inaccurate ballistic missile systems can pose a lethal threat to populous areas like the East and West Coasts and other major urban centers of the United States.

• And arguably most important of all, a nation that already has deployed ballistic missiles of sufficient range and accuracy to reach this country has begun engaging in "nuclear blackmail" of the United States. As you know, within the past few months, communist China has communicated to the highest levels of our government the threat of devastating attacks against Los Angeles.

In short, Mr. Chairman, it is simply no longer possible to describe the threat of longrange ballistic missile attack on the United States as a distant possibility. It is literally a present danger.

Needed: A Second Opinion

So out of touch with these realities does the latest National Intelligence Estimate appear to be that it begs an urgent recommendation to this Committee and to the Congress as a whole: Get a second opinion.t This sensible medical practice has a precedent in national security policy: Faced in 1975 with growing concerns from serious national security experts outside the U.S. government that the official assessment significantly understated the Soviet Union's military build-up, then-CIA Director George Bush arranged to have the Agency's estimates formally second-guessed. This so-called "Team B" initiative produced a much more sober, pessimistic and accurate evaluation of the Soviet threat.

Last year, the Heritage Foundation asked a new group of recognized experts in the field to provide a similar "second opinion" on the Clinton Administration's ballistic missile threat estimates and to offer recommendations concerning the best way to protect against such threats. While I would ask the Committee's permission to include at the appropriate place in the record this study in its entirety, permit me to highlight our key finding with respect to the relatively robust threat assessment the Administration subscribed to prior to the adoption of the latest NIE:

"The Clinton Administration's portrayal of the ballistic missile threat is unjustifiably sanguine, particularly with regard to threats to the territory of the United States. On the one hand, Administration officials have expressed alarm at the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with which to deliver them. On the other hand, the Administration's official view mutes any sense of urgency about protecting the American people from that proliferation threat. The official view is that the only near-term threat is to overseas forces, friends, and allies and that it comes only from primitive, short-range, 'tactical' or 'theater' missiles of the Scud variety. Rogue states are alleged to be incapable of developing or otherwise acquiring missiles threatening to the U.S. homeland for the next 10--15 years. Moreover, the Clinton Administration argues that if these states acquire ballistic missiles, they will not be able to operate them. And the potential threat from literally hundreds of Chinese and former Soviet ICBMs is dismissed, presumably on the basis of Russia's and China's not being hostile enough to the U.S.

"This optimistic view of the threat is not consistent with the observable pace and nature of proliferation, the technical facts of missile development, or the political instabilities of the former Soviet states and China. The Administration's assessment of the threat is consistent with its slow approach to developing ballistic missile defenses, raising concerns that the Administration's estimate of the threat may have been tailored to match its leisurely pace in building missile defenses. This is a huge mistake. The failure to respond to clear and ominous signs is, in fact, a failure of strategic proportions, potentially threatening U.S. interests worldwide and American security at home." (Emphasis added.)

Team B is currently preparing an update to this study that will take into account the further dumbing down of the National Intelligence Estimate and other developments since the first edition was published. I would respectfully request that the Committee provide an opportunity in the near future to receive testimony on this threat update and to hear about our recommendations for an inexpensive, near-term and capable global missile defense system.

The American People Expect - and Deserve - to be Defended

Permit me to close with one final observation. If for no other reason, Members of Congress must take the threat of ballistic missile attack seriously because opinion research conducted for the Coalition to Defend America indicates that your constituents do.

More to the point, as indicated in the attached charts, our research demonstrates that most of your constituents think their government is already protecting them against missile attack. Indeed, a focus group conducted just last Friday in San Diego with Rep. Duncan Hunter (the fifth one the Coalition to Defend America has conducted around the country over the past thirteen months) powerfully showed that most Americans are incredulous and many actually become angry when they learn the truth - namely, that we cannot stop even a single ballistic missile launched at the United States.

That posture is ever more untenable militarily and irresponsible strategically. To those in the executive and legislative branches who still oppose defending America, I would argue that such a posture will increasingly become a serious political liability -- one that I encourage you to eliminate promptly, for your own sake if not for that of our country.