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History > 2006 > USA > Pentagon (III)
Mark Streeter
Georgia, The Savannah Morning News
Cagle 6.9.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/streeter.asp
From L to R: Chamberlain, Hitler, Rumsfeld, Hussein.
Air Force Jet Wins Battle in Congress
September 28, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE WAYNE
The F-22 Raptor fighter jet, the United States
Air Force’s most expensive weapon, is designed for global air dominance. But its
biggest battles have not been in the skies, but in the corridors of power in
Washington, where it has just taken on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and
Washington budget-cutters — and won.
Since coming into office, Mr. Rumsfeld and the administration have tried to rein
in the costs of the $65 billion fighter jet program, which has been two decades
in the making and has suffered one cost overrun after another.
But their efforts were rebuffed this week by the powerful F-22 lobby, a
combination of the Air Force, Lockheed Martin, which makes the fighter jet, and
their allies in Congress.
The Senate is scheduled to vote this week on the $447 billion Pentagon budget
for 2007, which contains a measure promoted by backers of the F-22 that could
extend the jet’s production run beyond its 2011 termination date and reduce
Congressional oversight of the program.
On Monday, after negotiations in a Senate-House conference committee, the F-22
measure was put into the final Pentagon budget, which the full House passed on
Tuesday.
The measure could open the door to additional F-22 purchases above the 183
budgeted by the administration and could extend the life of the program a few
years by using a multiyear procurement contract rather than subjecting the F-22
to annual Congressional review.
The Air Force thus far has taken possession of 74 F-22’s, which are being sent
to bases across the country. The plane has not been used in combat yet. Six more
are in production. Lockheed plans to make 20 to 25 a year between now and 2011.
The plane’s “fly-away” cost, equivalent to the sticker price in a car, is $130
million. But if development costs are included and spread over the 183 planes in
the program, the total cost to the government rises to $350 million per plane.
Critics say the F-22 represents technological overkill at a time when United
States air superiority is unquestioned and the nature of warfare has changed. It
was originally designed for aerial combat against the Soviets. Today, one of its
biggest critics is the Government Accountability Office, which in July issued a
report saying, “The F-22 acquisition history is a case study in increased cost
and schedule inefficiencies.”
Still, even these critics concede that the plane is an engineering marvel, a
Maserati of the skies. It can fly at 60,000 feet, twice as high as any other
plane. Its cruising speed is Mach 2 and its top speed is a Pentagon secret. And
its radar-eluding stealth technology allows it to fly at supersonic speeds —
invisibly.
The plane, however, has suffered embarrassing glitches. This year, an F-22 pilot
became trapped in his jet and had to be rescued from the cockpit with chainsaws.
The landing gear failed in another instance, causing the aircraft to fall on its
nose. Structural cracks have also been reported.
Even as strong a critic of wasteful Pentagon spending as Senator John McCain,
the Arizona Republican, who will become the next chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, as well as the committee’s current chairman, Senator John W.
Warner, a Virginia Republican, could not defeat the F-22 lobby.
The two senators were able to extract some concessions in the closed-door
House-Senate conference committee. But they could not muster the support to
defeat the multiyear contract, in which F-22’s would be acquired in a series of
three-year contracts rather than annually.
“The F-22 lobby is an extraordinary juggernaut and they fought to the death on
this one,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government
Oversight, a Washington research group. “It is astonishing in that the lobby can
take on the most powerful in Washington, including the president, and win.”
Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research
group, added that “the Air Force is dominated by fighter pilots and they would
give up anything to keep the F-22.”
The Air Force would like to see scores more F-22’s than the 183 it has been
promised — it says it needs at least 381.
Originally, the Air Force wanted 750 planes. Even though that number has been
cut sharply, the Air Force has continue to push for more, aided by what
Washington insiders call the Iron Triangle — a politically powerful combination
of military contractors and their allies inside the Pentagon and Congress.
For instance, the multiyear contract was passed by the Senate in the summer, 70
to 28, before being sent to conference committee. The language in the Senate
measure was identical to a draft proposal written by a lobbyist for Lockheed
Martin and given to members of Congress.
Before the Senate considered the issue, an e-mail message was circulated by
Lockheed to Senate members, saying, “Please vote ‘yes’ on the proposed Chambliss
Amendment” to permit the multiyear contract. After the e-mail message was sent,
the amendment was introduced by Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia,
whose district includes an F-22 assembly plant.
“What happened was predictable,” said Christopher Bolkcom, a military specialist
at the Congressional Research Service. “Everyone could see the opponents of the
measure were swimming upstream. The Air Force is still chipping away, trying to
get more planes.”
In fact, Senator Warner accused Senator Chambliss and Lockheed of doing an
end-run around his committee, where such important measures are typically
decided. The Armed Services Committee opposed the measure.
“We are facing here a rather interesting chapter of a very significant and
important defense contractor trying to get through this body a decision, which
is in violation of statute and overrides the judgment of the majority of the
members of the Armed Services Committee,” Senator Warner said on the Senate
floor.
Senator Warner said the multiyear contract would take away Congress’s annual
oversight. The G.A.O. estimated that the multiyear contract would increase total
F-22 program costs by $1.7 billion over the president’s 2006 budget.
F-22 supporters point instead to a report from the Institute for Defense
Analyses, a federally financed research group, which said a multiyear contract
would save $225 million.
Yet even that report has fallen victim to controversy. The president of the
institute, retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair, resigned from it this month amid
conflict-of-interest accusations. In July, Mr. Blair was criticized by Senator
Warner and Senator McCain for his role in drafting the F-22 report while also
holding a seat on the board of the EDO Corporation, an F-22 contractor.
The institute’s trustees asked him last month to resign from his corporate
boards. He chose instead to leave the institute. Mr. Blair’s dual role is also
being investigated by the Pentagon’s inspector general in an inquiry initiated
by Senator Warner and Senator McCain.
Another measure sought by F-22 supporters, the lifting of a ban on sales to
foreign countries, easily passed the House in July on a voice vote but failed to
make it out of a House-Senate conference committee. Backers of the measure said
that overseas sales would help reduce the overall costs of the F-22 program.
Opponents fear that it would permit other nations to gain access to the
Pentagon’s most advanced weaponry and technologies.
That measure was offered by Representative Kay Granger of Texas, a Republican
whose district includes the Lockheed factory that makes the F-22 midsection and
employs 2,640. A spokesman for Ms. Granger, Caitlin Carroll, said it was too
early to tell whether Ms. Granger would resubmit it in another Congress.
But Ms. Brian of the Project on Government Oversight has no doubt this issue
will come back. “This was a short-term win for the opponents of overseas sales,”
said Ms. Brian, who puts herself in that camp. “But this issue will live to
fight another day.”
Air
Force Jet Wins Battle in Congress, NYT, 28.9.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/business/28plane.html
Army explores issue of living wills as more
return from war in comas
Updated 9/25/2006 7:22 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Gregg Zoroya
A growing number of troops are returning from
Iraq and Afghanistan with severe brain damage, prompting the Army to examine
whether living wills or other care directives from soldiers ought to be
available to battlefield doctors.
The issue was raised this summer by wounded
soldiers and families of casualties during a symposium sponsored by the Army's
Wounded Warrior Program.
"With technology as good as it is, they can
keep that soldier alive, but they can't put their hands on a digitized piece of
paper" containing a do-not-resuscitate order, says Ed Salau, a former Army
lieutenant who lost his left leg during combat in Iraq. He was one of 40 people
at the June symposium.
Army officials say they plan more symposiums to hear from wounded soldiers and
their families, but they make no promises about what steps they might take.
From January 2003 through July, the Pentagon identified at least 250 troops who
returned from war with head wounds that left them — at least initially —
comatose or unable to care for themselves or respond to people. Brain injuries,
most from roadside bombs, are the signature wound of the Iraq war.
The number is a small part of the 20,000 troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but it is "unprecedented," says Dale Smith, professor of medical history at the
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. "All of
these (comatose) people died in former wars before they got home."
Troops can fill out living wills instructing doctors to withhold care. Those at
the symposium recommended that troops be better educated about the process and
that the wills be accessible to doctors.
Today, field surgeons unaware of last wishes say they often keep soldiers with
crippling brain injuries alive and fly them to the USA. That allows families a
chance to get closure and to make decisions about organ donation, says Brett
Schlifka, an Army neurosurgeon. It also might leave relatives to decide whether
to withhold life support.
Not every family member favors a move toward living wills. Sarah Wade, whose
husband, Ted, suffered a major head injury from a roadside blast in Iraq in
2004, says she has mixed feelings. If her husband had a living will, he might
have directed doctors not to take the steps that saved his life, she says. Since
he was sent back to the USA, his condition has improved, she says. "I'm leaning
against it," she says of giving combat surgeons access to do-not-resuscitate
orders.
Army Col. Mary Carstensen, director of the Wounded Warrior Program, says the
concerns raised at the symposium are being sent to appropriate offices within
the Army, Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs.
"There was so much emotion behind each one of these issues that we know we have
to do something," she says.
Army
explores issue of living wills as more return from war in comas, UT, 25.9.2006,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-09-24-army-living-wills_x.htm
Rumsfeld Also Plays Hardball on Squash
Courts
September 24, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — For the last six years,
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has slipped down to the Pentagon basement
many afternoons, changed into a T-shirt, sweat pants and headband, and spent a
heart-thumping hour playing squash.
There, no matter how the war in Iraq was going or how many Democrats were
calling for his head, Mr. Rumsfeld could uncork his deadly drop shot, leaving
his foe helpless and himself triumphant, at least for a moment.
In some ways, squash offers a window into Mr. Rumsfeld’s complicated psyche,
revealing much about his stubborn competitiveness and seemingly limitless
stamina. Pentagon officials and employees say Mr. Rumsfeld’s play closely
resembles the way he has run the Defense Department, where he has spent six
years trying to break the accepted modes of operating.
“He hits the ball well, but he doesn’t play by the rules,” says Chris Zimmerman,
a devoted squash player who works in the Pentagon’s office of program analysis
and evaluation and is sometimes in the Pentagon athletic complex when Mr.
Rumsfeld is on the court.
Mr. Zimmerman has never actually played his boss. But he says he has noticed
that Mr. Rumsfeld, 74, often wins points because, after hitting a shot, he does
not get out of the way so his opponent has a chance to return the ball, a
practice known in squash as “clearing.”
The almost-daily matches, Mr. Rumsfeld, a former Princeton wrestler,
acknowledged last year, have helped preserve his “sanity’’ in a period in which
he and the administration have come under increasing political attack.
Yet even the squash court is no longer the refuge it once was. This summer, two
of the aides he played with most left his office for other jobs. Last month, Mr.
Rumsfeld started to break in a new partner, Lt. Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr. of
the Air Force, a tennis player who agreed to take up squash after not playing
for 30 years so the boss would have a partner.
Mr. Rumsfeld packed his squash racket for an August trip to Alaska but never
played a game, even though aides reserved courts at two stops. On the last day
of the trip, he delivered his most cantankerous speech in months, likening
criticism of the Iraq war to appeasement of the Nazis before World War II.
This month, Mr. Rumsfeld had surgery on his left shoulder, repairing a
longstanding injury unrelated to squash. He has not played since, though aides
say he is eager to get back on the court after he heals.
Mr. Rumsfeld took up squash more than 20 years ago when he was a business
executive. Rather than tricky bank shots off the walls, a move that
better-skilled players favor, Mr. Rumsfeld plays with power, hitting the ball
hard and ending points quickly. And he relentlessly attacks his opponent’s
confidence.
“When you try a shot and miss, he’ll say, ‘You don’t have that shot,’ ” said
Lawrence Di Rita, a close aide who played against Mr. Rumsfeld regularly until
leaving his job at the Pentagon this summer.
Mr. Di Rita is a former Naval Academy varsity player more than 25 years younger
than Mr. Rumsfeld. He says he lost his share of games and never went easy on his
boss. By tradition, the loser posted the score on Mr. Rumsfeld’s office door, so
his staff would know when he had beaten Mr. Di Rita or his other main partner,
his military assistant, Vice Adm. James G. Stavridis, who was also on the
academy squash team. Mr. Di Rita concedes that Mr. Rumsfeld rarely offers or
asks for “lets,” a replay point when one player feels aggrieved.
On the court, “he is very aggressive and he is very intense,’’ Mr. Di Rita said.
“He is very good at getting inside your head. He’s everything you would expect
Donald Rumsfeld to be.”
Mr. Rumsfeld has declined invitations to play against reporters, as well as to
describe his game for this article.
Mr. Rumsfeld himself has suggested that his ideas about transforming the
military into a smaller, more agile force, like the one he pushed for in
invading Iraq, were influenced by his squash playing.
In an interview with the military writer Thomas P. M. Barnett last year, Mr.
Rumsfeld said, “I play squash with him,” gesturing at Mr. Di Rita. “When I pass
him in a shot and it’s a well-played hard shot, I saw speed kills. And it does.
If you can do something very fast you can get your job done and save a lot of
lives.”
Many politicians have relaxed by competing, and Mr. Rumsfeld is not the first to
have earned a reputation for zeal. As governor of New York, Mario M. Cuomo was
known for his sharp elbows and tongue on the basketball court; as president,
Bill Clinton exasperated his golf partners by taking mulligans, or do-overs,
after bad shots.
In squash, Mr. Rumsfeld’s main advantage over more capable and fitter players is
that he refuses to play anything but “hardball,” a variation of the game that
was once common in the United States but has largely died out over the last
decade. Most competitors now play the international game, which uses a softer
ball and a wider court, requiring more running and allowing more creative
shot-making. The harder ball favored by Mr. Rumsfeld tends to come back to the
center of the court, so players do not have to move as much to return it.
The Pentagon gym had eight hardball courts when it was built in the 1940’s. When
a new facility was built in 2002, one hardball court was kept for Mr. Rumsfeld
and the handful of other Pentagon employees who still play that version of the
game.
But some who know him say Mr. Rumsfeld refuses to concede that the game may have
passed him by.
“One time I saw Rumsfeld and I referred to hardball as an old man’s game, and he
just stared at me,” says David Bass, a public relations executive who sometimes
plays on the Pentagon courts. “It’s become a running joke with us.”
Nor does Mr. Rumsfeld lack for bravado. Mohamed Awad, a former champion player
who was once ranked as high as ninth in the world, spent a half hour hitting
with him last February at a racquet club in Munich, where Mr. Rumsfeld was
attending a military conference.
Mr. Rumsfeld plays well for a man his age, Mr. Awad said. Afterward, he said,
Mr. Rumsfeld suggested that he could outplay another septuagenarian politician
still known for his prowess in squash, the 78-year-old Egyptian president, Hosni
Mubarak.
“I told him, ‘That can’t be right because I have played with Mubarak, and he is
much better than you are,’ ” said Mr. Awad, an Egyptian who now lives in
Germany.
Mr. Rumsfeld, he said, just laughed. Pentagon aides say that they do not recall
Mr. Rumsfeld boasting about being better than Mr. Mubarak.
Rumsfeld Also Plays Hardball on Squash Courts, NYT, 24.9.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/washington/24rumsfeld.html?hp&ex=1159156800&en=0dd641bf60f5d158&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Strained, Army Looks to Guard for More
Relief
September 22, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — Strains on the Army
from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become so severe that Army officials
say they may be forced to make greater use of the National Guard to provide
enough troops for overseas deployments.
Senior Army officers have discussed that analysis — and described the possible
need to use more members of the National Guard — with Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld’s senior adviser on personnel, David S. C. Chu, according to
Pentagon officials.
While no decision has been made to mobilize more Guard forces, and may not need
to be before midterm elections, the prospect presents the Bush administration
with a politically vexing problem: how, without expanding the Army, to balance
the pressing need for troops in the field against promises to limit overseas
deployments for the Guard.
The National Guard has a goal of allowing five years at home between foreign
deployments so as not to disrupt the family life and careers of its citizen
soldiers. But instead it has been sending units every three to four years,
according to Guard officials.
The question of how to sustain the high level of forces abroad became more acute
this week as General John P. Abizaid, the senior American commander in the
Middle East, said that the number of troops in Iraq, currently at more than
140,000, could not be expected to drop until next spring at the very earliest.
That disclosure comes amid many signs of mounting strain on active Army units.
So many are deployed or only recently returned from combat duty that only two or
three combat brigades — perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 troops — are fully ready to
respond in case of unexpected crises, according to a senior Army general.
An internal Army document that was provided to The New York Times notes that the
demand for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has greatly exceeded past projections
that predicted earlier troop reductions. According to the document, the Army
needs $66.1 billion to make up for all of its equipment shortfalls. Referring to
the units that are to deploy next to Iraq and Afghanistan, or are in training,
the document shows a large question mark to indicate their limited readiness.
The Army had to offer generous new enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000 to
attract recruits into such dangerous jobs as operating convoys in Iraq. It was
able to meet its active-duty enlistment goals this year with the addition of
1,000 new recruiters.
Enmeshed in negotiations with Bush administration officials over its spending
request for next year, neither Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff,
nor any of his top Pentagon aides would agree to be interviewed about the
personnel stresses they are confronting. But Army officials have shared their
concerns with retired Army officers and members of Congress, and quietly
distributed budget tallies, including the internal document on troop and
equipment demands, to their supporters. Military officers and civilian Pentagon
officials interviewed for this article would discuss the issues only on
condition of anonymity.
An examination of the Army’s plan for deploying its force shows some of the ways
it has been overextended.
In overhauling its structure, the active-duty Army is growing to 42 combat
brigades. Army officials have said they want to establish a pattern in which an
active brigade spends two years at home for each year it is deployed overseas.
But so many units are needed for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that
combat brigades are generally spending only a year at home for each year they
are deployed. Military analysts concluded that this has severely reduced the
number of forces that are available for other contingencies.
“The continuing frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the
U.S. Army so thin that there are few brigades ready to respond to crises
elsewhere,” said Lynn Davis, a senior analyst in the Arroyo Center, a division
of the RAND Corporation that does research for the Army.
Ms. Davis said that there was no quick fix for the limited number of troops. The
longer-term solution, she said, was to rely more on the National Guard or to
increase the number of Army brigades, a move that would cost billions of
dollars.
Gordon R. Sullivan, the former Army chief of staff and president of the
Association of the United States Army, said in an interview that the Army was
simply too small for the many responsibilities it faced and should be expanded
from about 500,000 in the active force to some 560,000. It also needs to make
greater use of the National Guard, he said.
“The biggest challenge is manpower,” General Sullivan said.
Barry R. McCaffrey, the retired four-star Army general, also asserted that the
armed forces needed to be expanded. “We cannot sustain the current national
security policy with an Army, Marine Corps, Air Force lift capability and
Special Operations forces of this size,” he added. “They are clearly
inadequate.”
The pace of deployments and financing shortfalls, he said, had taken a toll of
units in the active duty Army and the National Guard. “One third is completely
ready to fight, and two-thirds are severely impaired,” he said.
Asked if it was true that only a handful of combat brigades not currently
deployed were immediately ready for a crisis, a spokesman for the Army said he
could not address specifics because the information was classified.
Mr. Rumsfeld has not favored substantially expanding the Army, concluding that
such a step would draw money from programs he favors to overhaul the military
and calculating that the high level of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will prove
temporary. Congress, however, has mandated a temporary 30,000-soldier increase
for the Army.
As for whether any decision on mobilizing more members of the Guard can be
expected, Mr. Chu, the Pentagon’s chief personnel officer, declined through a
spokeswoman to be interviewed on Army discussions about how to meet its needs.
But active commanders have highlighted the issue. At a recent conference at Fort
Benning, Ga., Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the head of the Army’s Forces Command, which
oversees training and mobilization for all Army forces in the continental United
States, suggested that the service needed to make greater use of the National
Guard if the United States was to pursue what the Bush administration has
described as a “long war” against Islamic terrorists.
“If we are going to prosecute this long war, we need relatively unencumbered
access to the citizen soldier formations,” General McNeill said.
The equivalent of several Guard brigades are deployed today in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Sinai, the Horn of Africa and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Sending more
Guard units to Iraq is politically sensitive because of complaints from families
and employers while the Guard and Reserve were used extensively in Iraq and
Afghanistan in 2004.
Restrictions on the use of the Guard are a matter of interpretation. Guard
officials said that under President Bush’s current mobilization order, its
members may not be called up if they have served for 24 consecutive months. But
a conflicting Defense Department policy interprets the order as limiting the
call-up of those who have tallied 24 months of total service, regardless of the
length of time served consecutively. That view would put more Guard members
off-limits for remobilization without a new order from the president.
If the military cannot deploy enough members of the Guard by following either
interpretation of the rules, officials may be forced to propose that Mr.
Rumsfeld advise President Bush of the need to sign a new mobilization order that
would reset the clock for many Guard members who have already served overseas.
Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, the head of the Guard, said his forces would be prepared
to meet current requirements and to send more forces if needed.
“Can I sustain that?” General Blum said. “I say the answer is, ‘Absolutely’ — if
three things remain, three critical things.”
He said Guard members must continue to feel that what they are doing is
important and that they have the support of the American people. Finally, he
said, “We’ve got to give them some predictability or some kind of certainty so
they can balance their civilian life, with their employers and their family,
with their military service to the nation.”
Given the lengthy lead time required for calling up, training, equipping and
deploying Guard forces, Pentagon officials said that if more Guard members were
mobilized, it would probably be for a rotation that begins in 2008.
Even so, Pentagon and military officials said that it was unlikely that any
decision on a Guard mobilization would be necessary for several months or even
into next year, which would place any announcement beyond the November mid-term
Congressional elections.
To take on a greater load in Iraq and remedy existing equipment shortfalls, the
Guard needs $23 billion over five years, Guard officials say.
“There is no brigade in the United States Army active, Guard or reserve that is
completely ready back at home,” General Blum said. “That is to ensure that every
brigade overseas is completely ready. And by ready I mean completely equipped.
Right now, the key to readiness of the total force is equipping it, resetting it
and modernizing it. It is a function of time and money.”
The stress of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted senior Army officers to
pass a colorful hand card around Capitol Hill explaining that it will take $17.1
billion in extra spending over the next year to repair and replace tanks,
trucks, radios and other equipment for the total force. The card indicates that
another $13 billion is needed each year for the following five years to fix and
replace equipment.
One Army official said this week that the service is seeking about $138 billion
for the next fiscal year, compared with the $112 budget request the Army
submitted last year.
Strained, Army Looks to Guard for More Relief, NYT, 22.9.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/world/22army.html?hp&ex=1158984000&en=cd458b521d842068&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Claim 9/11 Terrorists Were Identified Is
Rejected
September 22, 2006
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — The Defense
Department’s inspector general on Thursday dismissed claims by military officers
and others who had insisted that a secret Pentagon program identified Mohamed
Atta and other terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks before the attacks
occurred.
The inspector general’s office, which acts as the Defense Department’s internal
watchdog, said in a report that its investigators found no evidence to suggest
that the intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified Mr. Atta,
the Egyptian-born ringleader of the attacks, or any of the other terrorists
before Sept. 11.
“We concluded that prior to Sept. 11, 2001, Able Danger team members did not
identify Mohamed Atta or any other 9/11 hijackers,” the report said. “While we
interviewed four witnesses who claimed to have seen a chart depicting Mohamed
Atta and possibly other terrorists or ‘cells’ involved in 9/11, we determined
that their recollections were not accurate.”
The claim that a secret Pentagon data-mining program had known of Mr. Atta and
other hijackers before Sept. 11 created a stir when the witnesses’ accounts
became public last year, because it suggested that the Defense Department had
information that might have helped pre-empt the attacks had it been shared
outside of the Pentagon.
The inspector general’s report, prepared at the request of several members of
Congress, was criticized Thursday by Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of
Pennsylvania, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and who
helped bring information about Able Danger to light.
“I am appalled that the Department of Defense inspector general would expect the
American people to actually consider this a full and thorough investigation,”
Mr. Weldon said, describing the inspector general as having “cherry-picked
testimony from witnesses in an effort to minimize the historical importance of
the Able Danger effort.”
The report found that the recollections of most of the witnesses appeared to
focus on a “single chart depicting Al Qaeda cells responsible for pre-9/11
terrorist attacks” that was produced in 1999 by a defense contractor, the Orion
Scientific Corporation.
While witnesses remembered having seen Mr. Atta’s photograph or name on such a
chart, the inspector general said its investigation showed that the Orion chart
did not list Mr. Atta or any of the other Sept. 11 terrorists, and that
“testimony by witnesses who claimed to have seen such a chart varied
significantly from each other.”
The report says that a central witness in the investigation, an active-duty Navy
captain who directed the Able Danger program, had changed his account over time,
initially telling the inspector general’s office last December that he was “100
percent” certain that he had seen “Mohamed Atta’s image on the chart.”
But in an interview this May, the report said, the officer, Scott J. Phillpott,
changed his story, telling investigators that he had been confused and was now
“convinced that Atta was not on that chart” but that, instead, the terrorist’s
photograph was reproduced on a separate document that he was shown by an
intelligence analyst on the Able Danger team in June 2000.
The inspector general’s report suggests that the independent federal commission
that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks was right to dismiss Captain Phillpott’s
initial claims about Able Danger.
The Sept. 11 commission acknowledged last year that the Navy captain had come to
its investigators in July 2004, only days before it issued its final report.
The inspector general’s report also rejected claims by another of the witnesses,
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a veteran military intelligence officer, that he had
faced reprisals for having make disclosures about Able Danger, including
revocation of his security clearance.
Claim
9/11 Terrorists Were Identified Is Rejected, NYT, 22.9.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/22able.html?hp&ex=1158984000&en=2c5e57b8ae177f22&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Pentagon to release report on September 11
claims
Thu Sep 21, 2006 1:04 AM ET
Reuters
By David Morgan and Kristin Roberts
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's
inspector general will release a report in the coming days that is expected to
refute claims that an Army intelligence unit had information that could have
thwarted the September 11 attacks, officials said on Wednesday.
The report, the result of a Defense Department probe launched last October, was
expected to be issued by acting Pentagon inspector general Thomas Gimble as
early as Thursday, military and congressional officials said.
Former members of the data-mining unit code-named Able Danger and their
Republican champion in Congress, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, have
maintained for over a year that Able Danger uncovered intelligence on September
11 mastermind Mohamed Atta and others in 2000 that should have been a tip-off of
the attacks.
The September 11, 2001 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in New York,
Washington and Pennsylvania and prompted the Bush administration's war on
terrorism.
A spokesman for Weldon's office acknowledged that a final draft of the report
was "imminent" but said he could not discuss the contents of the document.
Officials from Gimble's office were expected to brief Weldon about their
findings on Thursday and then release the report on the Defense Department web
site www.defenselink.mil, officials said.
Two officials familiar with the contents of the report said it substantially
undermines claims put forward by Weldon and former Able Danger members.
Weldon and former unit members including former Defense Intelligence Agency
liaison officer Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer maintain that Able Danger identified
Atta and three other hijackers as al Qaeda members in early 2000. But he said
Pentagon lawyers prevented the team from warning the FBI.
Officials said the inspector general specifically investigated charges that the
Defense Intelligence Agency retaliated against Shaffer for his public remarks
about the Able Danger findings.
The inspector general began reviewing the case of Able Danger after Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld received a written request on October 20, 2005, from
Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the Republican chairman of the House of
Representatives Committee on Armed Services.
Others associated with Able Danger, including the team's former leader, Navy
Capt. Scott Phillpott, have made statements similar to Shaffer's.
But an earlier exhaustive Pentagon search of tens of thousands of documents and
electronic files related to the operation failed to corroborate the claims.
Officials with House and Senate intelligence oversight committees have also said
there is little substantiating evidence.
Pentagon to release report on September 11 claims, R, 21.9.2006,
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-09-21T050321Z_01_N20455195_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-SEPT11.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2
The Lawyers
Military Lawyers Caught in Middle on
Tribunals
September 16, 2006
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 — On Wednesday evening,
the night before a crucial Senate vote on the Bush administration plan for the
interrogations and trials of terrorism suspects, the Pentagon general counsel,
William J. Haynes II, summoned the senior uniformed lawyers from each military
service to a meeting.
The lawyers, known as judge advocates general, had been pivotal players in years
of debate over detention, interrogation and prosecution.
They had repeatedly sparred behind the scenes with Mr. Haynes, the top civilian
lawyer in the Defense Department. This summer, the judge advocates general
emerged in public after the Supreme Court struck down a Bush administration plan
to take an important role in opposing parts of a White House effort to resurrect
military commissions for terrorism suspects in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
But at the meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Haynes sought to enlist the lawyers on the
administration’s side by asking whether any would object to signing a letter
lending their support to aspects of the White House proposal over which they had
voiced little concern.
The lawyers agreed, but only after hours of negotiating over specific words, so
that they would not appear to be wholly endorsing the plan.
What followed was a scuffle that left at least some of the military lawyers
embittered and stoked old tensions at the Pentagon between civilian leaders and
uniformed military officers, who under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have
often found themselves privately at odds.
Early Thursday morning, White House allies distributed the letter that the
lawyers had signed, as evidence that the group, known as Jags, now supported the
administration plan.
That prompted loud protests from Republican senators opposed to the plan. They
dismissed the letter on grounds that the lawyers would have signed it only under
pressure.
The truth lies somewhere in between, said one of the senior lawyers and other
current and former military officials familiar with their views.
“I didn’t have any problem signing what I signed,’’ Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap
Jr., deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force, said Friday in an
interview. “How people use it and what they use it for I can’t control.’’
General Dunlap represented the Air Force at the meeting because the top lawyer
was out of town.
A spokesman for the Pentagon, Bryan Whitman, said it was nonsense to suggest
that the military lawyers had been coerced, a point that General Dunlap agreed
with.
“Do you really think that an officer with 30 years’ service could be coerced by
the Pentagon bureaucracy to sign something he didn’t want to sign?” General
Dunlap asked.
Of the five senior military lawyers, just General Dunlap agreed to comment for
the record. Spokesmen for the other four — from the Army, Marines, Navy and
Joint Chiefs of Staff — said those senior lawyers would not speak publicly
because of the sensitivity of the topic.
Other military officials insisted on anonymity, saying the lawyers’ experience
had demonstrated the perils of active-duty officers’ speaking openly about
sensitive subjects.
The views of professional military lawyers have been much sought after in the
five-year debate over what permissible techniques in the fight against
terrorism.
In early 2002, the administration brushed aside the objections of the military’s
most senior uniformed lawyers to the original plans for military commissions.
When the lawyers’ role as dissenters became known later, they were lauded by
human rights advocates and others as having tried to be an independent voice and
brake on the administration.
According to documents released last year, the military lawyers later objected
strenuously to the conclusions of an administration legal group that said in
early 2003 that President Bush had authority as commander in chief to order
harsh interrogations of Guantánamo Bay detainees.
In public testimony to Congress last month, the lawyers voiced objections to
specific parts of the White House plan, which was an effort to resurrect the
Guantánamo military commissions that the Supreme Court struck down. Most
significant, the lawyers disputed the provision prohibiting defendants from
access to classified evidence against them.
The top uniformed Marine lawyer, Brig. Gen. James C. Walker, said in his
testimony that no civilized country ought to deny defendants the right to see
evidence against them and that the United States “should not be the first.’’ The
lawyers stand by those objections, military officials said.
The letter signed on Wednesday focused instead on two different parts of the
White House proposal, the provision amending Common Article 3 of the Geneva
Conventions and a provision of the War Crimes Act that enforces that article.
Mr. Haynes drafted the letter focusing on these provisions because neither had
been a sticking point in the military lawyers’ objections. But when the lawyers
reached Mr. Haynes’s office, they declined to sign immediately, people with
knowledge of the meeting said.
The lawyers spent more than an hour huddled in a private room wrangling over
language they could agree on and trying to call Rear Adm. Bruce MacDonald, the
Navy judge advocate general.
A participant in the meeting said Admiral MacDonald told his colleagues that he
could not sign a letter saying he supported the Common Article 3 definition in
the White House legislation because he advocated a broader definition that
relied more on international law, rather than a narrow interpretation of
American constitutional law.
In the end, the military lawyers all agreed to language in the letter saying
they “do not object“ to the provisions in the administration bill.
But the letter included a sentence that the clarification would be “helpful to
our fighting men and women at war on behalf of their country.”
White House officials said that sentence demonstrated the military lawyers’
support.
General Dunlap said in his mind that signing the letter meant just to convey
that trying to clarify ambiguous language was helpful and that it did not mean
that he and his colleagues fully endorsed the administration view.
Military Lawyers Caught in Middle on Tribunals, NYT, 16.9.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/washington/16jags.html?hp&ex=1158465600&en=1218dc09761fbf8d&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Gay Groups Renew Drive Against ‘Don’t Ask,
Don’t Tell’
September 14, 2006
The New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
MADISON, Wis. —The three young men who tried
to enlist at an Army recruiting station here appeared to be first-rate military
material.
Two were college students, and the other was a college graduate. They had no
criminal records. They were fit and eager to serve at a time when wars on two
fronts have put a strain on American troops and the need for qualified recruits
is great.
But the recruiter was forced to turn them away, for one reason: they are gay and
unwilling to conceal it.
“Don’t judge me because of my sexuality,” said one of the three, Justin Hager,
20, a self-described Republican from a military family who has “a driving desire
to join” the armed forces. “Judge me because of my character and drive.”
As the Pentagon’s search for soldiers grows more urgent, gay rights groups are
making the biggest push in nearly a decade to win repeal of a compromise policy,
encoded in a 1993 law and dubbed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” that bars openly gay
people from serving in the military.
The policy, grounded in a belief that open homosexuality is damaging to unit
morale and cohesion, stipulates that gay men and lesbians must serve in silence
and refrain from homosexual activity, and that recruiters and commanders may not
ask them about their sexual orientation in the absence of compelling evidence
that homosexual acts have occurred.
The push for repeal follows years of legal setbacks, as well as discord among
gay rights groups about how, or even whether, to address the issue. Now, rather
than rely on the courts, advocates are focusing on drumming up support in towns
across the nation, spotlighting the personal stories of gay former service
members and pushing a Democratic bill in the House that would do away with the
policy.
In August the gay rights group Soulforce opened a national campaign by
recruiting openly gay people, including the three young men in Madison, who
would have enlisted in the military if not for “don’t ask, don’t tell.” [As part
of that campaign, two young people who were rejected as applicants on Tuesday at
a recruitment center in Chicago returned there on Wednesday and engaged in a
sit-in. They were arrested but later released without charges.]
The move to change the policy faces stiff resistance from the Pentagon and
Republicans in Congress, who, in a time of war during a tough election year,
have no longing for another contentious debate about gay troops. The House bill,
introduced last year by Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of
Massachusetts, has picked up 119 supporters, but only five of them Republicans.
“In the near term, it has zero chance,” said Daniel Gouré, a vice president at
the centrist Lexington Institute. “It’s hard to see how anyone would want to
give potential opponents any ammunition to knock them off.”
A 2004 report by the Urban Institute concluded that at least 60,000 gay people
were serving in the armed forces, including the Reserves and the National Guard.
But since 1993, at least 11,000 members have been discharged for being openly
gay, among them 800 in highly crucial jobs, according to the Government
Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative arm.
For all of that, gay rights groups, gay veterans and some analysts say much has
changed since the policy was adopted. A Gallup poll in 2004 found that 63
percent of respondents favored allowing gay troops to serve openly, and a
similar survey, by the Pew Research Center this year, put the number at 60
percent; those majorities did not exist in 1993. Young people in particular now
have more tolerant views about homosexuality.
In addition, 24 foreign armies, most notably those of Britain and Israel, have
integrated openly gay people into their ranks with little impact on
effectiveness and recruitment. In Britain, where the military was initially
forced to accept gay troops by the European Court of Human Rights, gay partners
are now afforded full benefits, and the Royal Navy has called on a gay rights
group to help recruit gay sailors.
The new debate on “don’t ask, don’t tell” also coincides with multiple
deployments that are being required of many American troops by a military that
has lowered its standards to allow more high school dropouts and some convicted
criminals to enlist.
“Would you rather have a felon than a gay soldier?” said Capt. Scott Stanford, a
heterosexual National Guard commander of a headquarters company who returned
from Iraq in June. “I wouldn’t.”
Lt. Gen. Daniel W. Christman, retired, former superintendent at West Point and
onetime assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said both the
British experience and the shifts in attitudes at home would cause the American
armed forces to change, though slowly.
“It is clear that national attitudes toward this issue have evolved considerably
in the last decade,” said General Christman, now a senior vice president at the
United States Chamber of Commerce. “This has been led by a new generation of
service members who take a more relaxed and tolerant view toward homosexuality.”
In fact, a growing number of gay service members have told advocacy groups that
fewer heterosexual troops are making homosexuality an issue. In some cases, they
say, commanders look the other way when someone is suspected of being gay or
even avows it, especially if that service member is valuable. Since the war in
Afghanistan began in 2001, discharges of openly gay members have fallen by 40
percent.
“People are really blasé about the issue,” said Tim Smith, 24, a former marine
who was discharged last year after a civilian chaplain, told of Mr. Smith’s
homosexuality by congregants, alerted his commander.
Mr. Smith, who was married when he entered the Marine Corps in 2001, hopes to
dispel a stereotype of the “promiscuous, night-going, street-dancing” gay man by
telling his story and sharing the reaction that disclosure of his orientation
elicited. That reaction was largely favorable. At the end, he said, his
commander even told the commanding general in a letter that Mr. Smith would be
impossible to replace.
On the other side of the divide, Elaine Donnelly, president of the conservative
Center for Military Readiness, said permitting gay men and lesbians to serve
openly would prompt recruitment rates to drop and disrupt unit cohesion, a
linchpin in the decision to allow gay troops to serve only in silence.
“People in the military live in conditions of little or no privacy,” said Ms.
Donnelly, who advocates a full ban on gay troops. “In conditions of forced
intimacy, people should not have to expose themselves to other persons who are
sexually attracted to them.”
Further, the policy lets unhappy troops, straight or gay, ditch the military
service to which they have committed. About 85 percent of those discharged under
the policy had declared a homosexual orientation, according to the
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a gay rights watchdog; roughly half that
number had volunteered the information simply to get out of the military.
“It lets people kind of get out of jail free,” said Aaron Belkin, director of
the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, a research group
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, that has sided with the effort
to eliminate “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Mr. Hager, the young man rejected at the recruiting center here in August along
with John Alaniz, 25, and Derek House, 19, had expected that outcome. Joining
the Soulforce campaign, he said, was about making a point.
He had tried to enlist in the Navy in high school, when his sexual orientation
was still hidden, and had scored high in his aptitude test. His father had
served in Vietnam, and his grandfather, a concentration camp survivor, had
instilled in him a drive to safeguard America. But a broken ankle dashed his
plans then.
This time it was his own words that sidelined him.
“I am openly homosexual,” he said, “and that opportunity won’t be there for me.”
Gay
Groups Renew Drive Against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, NYT, 14.9.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/us/14gay.html?hp&ex=1158292800&en=7051664f5b08cb99&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Army touts recruiting turnaround
Posted 9/8/2006 11:36 PM ET
By Robert Burns, Associated Press
USA Today
WASHINGTON — The Army says its success in
enlisting new soldiers this year, after a dismal 2005, is innovative
salesmanship by a bigger team of recruiters and financial incentives like
bonuses of up to $40,000.
The Pentagon announced Friday that the Army
met its recruiting goal for August, which a senior Army official said makes it
virtually certain that the service will achieve its aim of signing up 80,000 new
soldiers for the full recruiting year, which ends Sept. 30. Last year the Army
fell short for the first time since 1999.
"We're reaching out a lot better," said the official, Maj. Gen. Sean Byrne,
director of military personnel management. The Army is making better use of the
Internet, for example, to reach more young people, he said.
The Army also has put about one-third more recruiters on the street, and
Congress approved new financial incentives for enlistees, including signing
bonuses for some slots of as much as $40,000. The Army also began allowing
people as old as 42 to enter the service; the maximum age previously was 35.
Through August, the active-duty Army had signed up 72,997 new soldiers, nearly
3,000 above its year-to-date target. The Army National Guard was about 200 below
its target of 63,240, while the Army Reserve, which had a particularly weak
performance in August, was almost 2,000 below its year-to-date target of 33,124.
For August alone, the active Army topped the 10,000 mark for the second month in
a row. It was the 15th consecutive month the active Army has met or exceeded its
monthly goal. It missed four months in a row in early 2005, and some questioned
whether the Army had developed a chronic and debilitating problem.
The Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy all achieved their August goals and are on
target to meet their full-year targets, the Pentagon said.
Summer is typically the strongest recruiting season.
The Army's ability to recruit is particularly important now because it is trying
to grow in size, as part of a plan to build a larger number of combat brigades
for use in Iraq, Afghanistan and potentially elsewhere. Without that growth,
existing brigades would be rotating so often on overseas combat tours that the
Army would risk alienating soldiers and their families, thus eroding their
willingness to re-enlist.
Even now, after increasing the active-duty Army by about 10,000 soldiers this
year, to about 501,000, soldiers generally get less than two years at home
between one-year tours in Iraq.
Byrne said the Iraq war continues to be a drag on recruiting, and he said
unpublished Army research surveys show people of enlistment age are increasingly
disinclined to join. Similarly, adults who influence the choices of potential
recruits — like parents, teachers and coaches — are less inclined to recommend
military service.
But the Army has managed to overcome those negative factors by using more
innovative techniques to reach young people, Byrne said. Recruiters, for
example, are available at all hours on an Army website chat room. Those who
indicate a strong interest are then offered a chance to meet face-to-face with a
recruiter. That has proven more productive, Byrne said, than traditional tactics
like waiting for people to walk into a recruiting station.
The Army also has accepted a larger number of recruits whose score on a
standardized aptitude test is at the lower end of the acceptable range, and it
has granted waivers to permit the enlistment of people with criminal records
that otherwise would disqualify them. The Army says it does not grant waivers if
there is a pattern of criminal misconduct or for convictions of drug trafficking
or any sexually violent crimes.
Army
touts recruiting turnaround, UT, 8.9.2006,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-09-08-military-recruiting_x.htm
Senate deflects push for Rumsfeld's ouster
Wed Sep 6, 2006 8:54 PM ET
Reuters
By Vicki Allen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Republicans on Wednesday
blocked a no-confidence vote on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as Democrats
sought to keep attention on the unpopular Iraq war before November's
congressional elections.
Trying to stem the drag on their poll numbers caused by Iraq, Republicans
denounced as a political stunt the Democrats' resolution urging President George
W. Bush to replace Rumsfeld, whom they depict as a symbol of the war's failures,
and to "change course in Iraq to provide a strategy for success."
"The Democrat amendment may rile up the liberal base, but it won't kill a single
terrorist or prevent a single attack," Senate Republican Whip Mitch McConnell of
Kentucky said of the amendment that capped growing demands from Democrats for
Rumsfeld's ouster.
But Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, called for "accountability
for this breathtaking incompetence which has put our soldiers in daily danger
and weakened American national security."
While Democrats blasted Rumsfeld as a key architect of the war, they said the
problem was broader than the secretary and that Bush must abandon failing
policies.
Most Democrats want a plan to start withdrawing U.S. troops but without a
deadline to complete the pullout, while the administration says it will keep
troops in Iraq as long as necessary.
Republicans also defeated an amendment to make the administration report
quarterly to Congress on the extent to which Iraq is in a civil war, which
Democrats said was needed to counteract the administration's repeated denials
the mounting sectarian violence amounted to civil war.
With control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate at stake in
November's midterm elections, Republicans portrayed Democrats as weak on
terrorism, while Democrats decried the administration's handling of the 3-1/2
year war in which more than 2,600 U.S. service members have died.
The White House accused Democrats on Tuesday of trying to turn Rumsfeld into a
"boogeyman" before the elections, and dismissed calls for his dismissal.
A Republican who has fiercely criticized Rumsfeld, Sen. John McCain of Arizona,
said Bush deserved to have his choice to head the Pentagon.
But some Republicans in tight races have distanced themselves from the defense
secretary who is known for his sometimes glib and combative comments.
The 74-year-old Rumsfeld -- one of the longest-serving defense secretaries --
came under renewed fire last week for a speech to the American Legion in which
he likened critics of the administration's Iraq policies to those who appeased
Nazi Germany before World War Two.
Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, called it a "low and ugly political
speech, smearing those who dissent from the catastrophic policy."
Kerry added, "I think it's immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight
and die in conflict with a strategy that is failing, and a mission that has not
weakened terrorism but strengthened it."
Senate deflects
push for Rumsfeld's ouster, R, 6.9.2006,
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-09-07T005405Z_01_N064374_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-RUMSFELD.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3
FACTBOX-Pentagon prohibits some
interrogation tactics
Wed Sep 6, 2006 2:27 PM ET
Reuters
(Reuters) - The Pentagon on Wednesday
prohibited eight interrogation practices more than two years after the Abu
Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq burst into public. It also authorized
three new methods. Following are details of those tactics, listed in the new
Army Field Manual.
Interrogators may not:
-- force a detainee to be naked
-- force a detainee to perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner
-- use hoods or place sacks over a detainee's head or use duct tape over his or
her eyes
-- beat or electrically shock or burn detainees or inflict other forms of
physical pain
-- use "water boarding," which simulates drowning
-- perform mock executions
-- deprive detainees of necessary food, water and medical care
-- use dogs in any aspect of interrogations.
Interrogators may:
-- engage in "Mutt and Jeff," or good-cop, bad-cop interrogation tactics
-- use "false flag," portraying themselves as someone other than American
interrogators
-- use "separation" to keep unlawful enemy combatants apart from each other so
that they can not coordinate their stories. This technique can be used only with
"unlawful enemy combatants," not traditional prisoners of war, and requires
special, high-level approval. The Pentagon said separation "does not mean
solitary confinement."
FACTBOX-Pentagon prohibits some interrogation tactics, R, 6.9.2006,
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-09-06T182731Z_01_N06466268_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-4
Missile Defense System Intercepts Rocket in
Test
September 2, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — In the first full-scale
test of the ballistic missile defense system in more than a year, an interceptor
rocket launched from California on Friday shot down a target fired from Alaska
that officials said in some respects resembled a warhead from a North Korean
rocket.
Pentagon officials said that the successful interception, which occurred in
space over the Pacific Ocean, showed that the fledgling system, put in place in
2004 by the Bush administration before testing was complete, would have a good
chance of stopping a ballistic missile fired at the United States in a limited
attack.
“What we did today was a huge step in terms of our systematic approach to
continuing to field, continuing to deploy and continuing to develop a missile
defense system,” said Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, the director of the Missile
Defense Agency, at a news briefing. “This is a validation of the confidence I
have in this system.”
But critics said that the test lacked key elements of realism and that its main
objective had been to allow the Missile Defense Agency to claim the program was
back on track after the interceptors in the last two flight tests, in December
2004 and February 2005, failed to leave their silos.
Even General Obering, after calling the test “as close as we can come to an
end-to-end test,” said that the target missile did not deploy decoys or other
countermeasures meant to confuse the interceptor from striking the actual
warhead.
Decoys involve relatively basic technology that a potential foe like North Korea
could be expected to employ, said Stephen Young, a missile defense specialist
with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which opposes deployments of missile
defenses.
“This test was as scripted as it can be,” he said. “It’s a very complicated
test, technically, but it’s much simpler than dealing with an actual missile
launch would be.” In a real-life attack, he said, far less would be known about
the timing, trajectory and characteristics of an incoming warhead.
Countermeasures might be used in the next test of the system, planned for later
this year, General Obering said. He added that the target’s speed, size and
other characteristics resembled those of a North Korean long-range missile,
called the Taepodong 2. North Korea test-fired one of the missiles in July, but
it failed or was aborted shortly after launching and fell into the Sea of Japan.
In Friday’s test, the interceptor missile launched at 1:39 p.m. Eastern time
from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, one of two interceptor sites in
the United States. The launching came about 17 minutes after the target missile
was sent up from a military installation in Kodiak, Alaska.
Tamping down expectations, officials had been saying that the goal of the test
was not necessarily to strike the target but only to gather data on whether the
so-called kill vehicle, which separates from the interceptor in space, would
recognize the warhead and maneuver toward it.
That enabled General Obering to say that the test had exceeded the objectives
when the missile intercepted the target. “What we are trying to do is
under-promise and over-deliver,” he said. Data from the test would be used to
make further improvements in the system and to design additional tests, he
added.
Asked for the chances that the fledgling missile defense system could shoot down
an America-bound intercontinental ballistic missile from North Korea, General
Obering declined to offer a specific percentage number, saying such information
was classified. Pressed to rate the chances from “excellent” to “poor,” he
replied, “I think we’d have a good chance.”
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said earlier this week that he
wanted to see a successful full-scale test of the system before declaring
whether he had confidence that it would work, said in a statement that the
results vindicated the Bush administration’s decision to make the system
operational while continuing to test it.
“Successful tests such as these increase confidence in the approach to
developing an initial missile defense capability,” he said. "While today’s test
was a success, the test program is by no means complete. Tests will continue,
some of which will be successful and some will not.”
The test on Friday is the latest chapter in the long-running saga of the United
States missile defense program, which began with President Reagan’s expansive
vision of a space-based antimissile shield.
More than 20 years and billions of dollars later, the Bush administration is
proceeding with a limited antimissile system that is designed to counter
prospective dangers from nations like North Korea and Iran that might eventually
be able to launch, at most, a small barrage of missiles.
President Bush made the program a top priority soon after taking office and
cleared the way for antimissile deployments by withdrawing from the
Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. The White House decision to move ahead
with the system before finishing testing meant that two interceptors sites, one
at Vandenberg and one at Fort Greely, Alaska, are already operating, while
testing continues.
An interceptor consists of a rocket that carries a 155-pound “kill vehicle,’’
which is designed to seek out and collide with an enemy missile warhead.
Friday’s test was the first time an interceptor had been fired from one of the
two operating sites. In past launchings, the tests had been conducted at
Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Missile Defense System Intercepts Rocket in Test, NYT, 2.9.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/washington/02missile.html?hp&ex=1157256000&en=4e25924c83acc1a3&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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