From: “The Hartford Advocate”, June 28-July 4, 2001

Call them the Star Wars Lobby, but understand that their ties to key congressmen and officials in the executive branch make them much more than a lobbying group.

By Edward Ericson, Jr.

America's looming--if not inevitable--plan to spend $100 billion dollars or more on "missile defense" is the result not of sober analysis and enlightened leadership, but of single-minded lobbying by a few large and medium-sized defense contractors and a small coterie of determined men, many of whom have close business relationships to those companies.

Call them the Star Wars Lobby, but understand that their ties to key congressmen and officials in the executive branch make them much more than a lobbying group. This year alone, this group has given us a deputy national security adviser, the secretary of defense, and the chief financial officer of the Pentagon. And its members comprise the expert commissions that have strongly influenced Congress' authorization of missile defense expenditures, currently running at more than $3 billion annually--and due to increase substantially. From this small group of men, Congress has received an inflated "threat assessment" on other nations' missile capabilities, and an organizational blueprint calling for a policy of unbridled space warfare to defend against the alleged threat. This policy, if implemented, will neither protect the United States nor its allies from missile attack; and experts not in a position to cash in on the program say it stands a good chance of creating the now imaginary threat it purports to dispel.

The following is not meant to be definitive or exhaustive; it merely intro

duces some key players in the Star Wars Lobby and illustrates its members' interlocking ties to both the policy-making elite and the military contractors who would benefit.

Frank Gaffney

Founder and Executive Director, Center for Security Policy

Founded in 1988, the non-profit Center for Security Policy is the Star Wars Lobby's mothership. With a board boasting conservative heavyweights such as Iran-Contra figure Elliot Abrams, former drug czar and education secretary William Bennett and Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, the center turns out a steady stream of propaganda designed to convince Americans that A.) the Chinese are about to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile--ICBM--attack (they actually possess about 20 intercontinental missiles) and B.) so are the North Koreans (they have zero), and C.) only a missile defense system--which is actually affordable and completely dependable--can defend us.

The center's turning point in directing public policy came in 1998. Wrote Gaffney: "The Center for Security Policy has served as a catalyst for the intensifying debate about deployment of ballistic missile defenses. It is gratified that this goal--a priority for the organization and its Board of Advisers from the Center's inception 10 years ago--has during the second quarter of 1998 achieved what appears to be critical mass. This judgment is borne out by developments chronicled in a series of Decision Briefs calling attention to: a growing chorus of editorial support for missile defenses from America's most thoughtful columnists; increasing awareness of the availability of an effective and highly affordable means of providing near-term anti-missile protection for the American people via evolution of the Navy's AEGIS fleet air defense system; and perceptible intensification of political commitments to defending America."

He continued, "As part of its contribution to the debate about missile defenses, the Center produced a 15-minute videotape entitled 'America the Vulnerable.' This film offers a brief tutorial about how it is that the United States came to be completely vulnerable to missile attack as a matter of state policy, and what can be done to correct this increasingly perilous condition."

Among the foundation's funders are McDonnell Douglas, Northrop Grumman, TRW, Lockheed Martin, right-wing foundations such as the Smith Richardson, Sara Scaife, and Coors foundations...and Donald Rumsfeld.

Donald Rumsfeld

Secretary of Defense

Formerly: Chairman, Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States (Rumsfeld Commission I); Chairman, Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization (Rumsfeld II); Board Member, Center for Security Policy; Board Member, Tribune Co.

Having moved smartly among the fields of government service, investment banking, and corporate management since 1958, Rumsfeld returned to government in 1997 as chairman of the Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was created by Congress largely at the behest of then-speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), House National Security Committee member Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), and the committee Chairman Floyd Spence (R-S.C.).

By assessing the threat in terms of worst-case scenarios, and by giving no weight at all to the considerable impediments to deploying ICBMs, the nine-member commission was able to conclude in 1998 that "the threat to the U.S....is broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by the Intelligence Community," and that such third-tier powers as North Korea and Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles "within five years of a decision to do so."

The Center for Security Policy awarded Rumsfeld its "Keeper of the Flame Award" in recognition of his contribution to their mutual cause.

In 2000, Rumsfeld was tapped to head a new, 13-member commission "to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization." As with the 1998 commission, this one was packed with true believers (two men--Rumsfeld and William Graham--served on both). Rumsfeld resigned his chairmanship of this second commission in order to take the job of defense secretary and accept the commission's findings, released Jan. 11. Among those findings:

The United States faces the possibility of a "Space Pearl Harbor"--a sneak attack on its space-based assets.

"Our growing dependence on space, our vulnerabilities in space and the burgeoning opportunities from space are simply not reflected in present [military] institutional arrangements."

The United States must not sign any treaties that would prohibit weapons in space.

War in space is inevitable.

William Graham

Member, Rumsfeld Commission I and II; Board of Advisers, Center for Security Policy; Chairman of the board and president, National Security Research, Inc.

Graham is an expert in the electromagnetic pulse created by nuclear weapons. He has a Ph.D. in physics and served as science adviser to President Reagan. He also sits on the board of advisers to Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, and runs a seven-employee defense contracting company called National Security Research, Inc.

In April 1999, Graham's small company received a piece of a four-year, $250 million federal contract to protect the nation's critical infrastructures--including satellites--against physical and cyber attack.

From 1994-1997 he was senior vice president of the Defense Group Inc., in charge of counter-proliferation and other related defense activities. He also served as a member of the Department of Defense's Defense Science Board Task Force on Theater Ballistic Missile Defense. From 1990-1993 he chaired the Defense Department's Strategic Defense Initiative Advisory Committee.

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.)

Member, House Armed Services Committee; Advisory Board, Center for Security Policy

In 1997 Weldon was a key architect of the commission to reevaluate the ballistic missile threat--after the CIA concluded that there was no imminent threat of a missile attack on the United States Chaired by former and future Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the committee's findings jump-started the push for Star Wars.

Weldon continues the push today. He is organizing a June 28-29 conference in Valley Forge, Pa., to make the case for ballistic missile defense. Weldon believes it will be hard to achieve big spending hikes for missile defense and other defense programs without building public support.

Adm. David E. Jeremiah (USN, Ret.)

Member, Rumsfeld Commission II; President, Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation; Board of Trustees, Mitre Corp.; Director, Alliant Techsystems, Litton Industries; Adviser, Northrop Grumman

Jeremiah epitomizes the comfortable nexus among government advisory boards and research centers, investment advisers and defense contractors: he is all of them. As part of the Rumsfeld Commission, Jeremiah served his country by telling Congress and the Pentagon to spend more money integrating existing war-fighting capabilities while establishing a robust military presence in space. Meanwhile, the federally funded, nonprofit Mitre Corp., of which Jeremiah is a trustee, was authoring "Joint Vision 2020," a suggestive blueprint under which the armed services might achieve "full spectrum dominance" on land, sea, air and in space.

While helping provide this strategic rationale for spending fantastic sums defending this country against wholly theoretical threats, Jeremiah also presides over the Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation, a strategic advisory and investment banking firm engaged primarily in the aerospace, defense, telecommunications and electronics industries.

Since 1995, Jeremiah has sat on the board of Alliant Techsystems, the defense department's 29th largest contractor and a maker of small arms ammunition and rocket motors. He is also on the board of Litton Industries, the DOD's No. 6 contractor and a maker of night vision equipment and lasers, and the advisory board of Northrop Grumman, the DOD's fifth-largest contractor.

Jeremiah also sits on the advisory boards for Texas Instruments and ManTech International, and the Defense Policy Board, which advises the secretary of defense. In that capacity, Jeremiah released in 1999 a report claiming that China had obtained--partly through espionage--design information concerning ICBM reentry vehicles. This report, which fanned the hysteria surrounding the arrest of Wen Ho Lee, the nuclear scientist falsely accused of spying for China, also put wind in the sails of congressional star warriors.

But Jeremiah is not being disingenuous. He is genuinely paranoid. Upon the release of the Rumsfeld Report II, he pointed to one satellite problem in 1998, in which 85 percent of the nation's pagers were temporarily silenced, as a possible "space attack." "The difficulty of space is that you can't tell," he told a reporter for the Associated Press. "We don't know if the interruption of all the pagers not so long ago was an attack or an anomaly that showed up in the hardware."

Bruce Jackson

Vice President, corporate strategy and development, Lockheed Martin; Board of Advisers, Center for Security Policy; Key Bush fundraiser; Committee to Expand NATO

"I wrote the Republican Party's foreign policy platform," claimed Jackson, who was the chairman of the Republican Party's foreign policy platform committee during the 2000 national nominating convention. Although he later recanted, explaining to author Karl Grossman that he merely led the committee that wrote the platform, Jackson earned the right. Jackson's corporation has given $391,000 to the Republican Party since 1998, and employees chipped in at least $20,000 to Bush's campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In addition, Lockheed Martin spent more than $8 million on lobbying on Capitol Hill in 1999--not counting in-house lobbyists.

The party platform calls for a tougher line against China, expansion of NATO (Jackson leads the Committee to Expand NATO [with Stephen Hadley], which has offices at the American Enterprise Institute), and, of course, expanded and accelerated deployment of National Missile Defense.

Duane P. Andrews

Member, Rumsfeld Commission II; Chairman, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC)

With 41,000 employees and revenues last year of $5.9 billion, SAIC is ranked 296 on the Fortune 500, and 10th among the Pentagon's largest contractors. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, SAIC spent $1.2 million in 1998 alone lobbying the federal government.

Now touting itself as a leader in computerized medical records, the company is also, and has been, a military contractor specializing in communications and organization. In 2000, SAIC received $1.5 billion in Pentagon contracts. The company is the integration contractor for the Air Force's Space and Missile System Center's advanced programs.

Gen. Howell Estes

Member, Rumsfeld Commission II; President, Howell Estes & Associates Inc. Vice Chairman, Board of Trustees, The Aerospace Corp.

Estes is a 33-year general who retired in 1998 as commander-in-chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the United States Space Command, and commander of the Air Force Space Command headquartered at Peterson AFB, Colo. Like Jeremiah, he now lounges in that magical hot tub where the warm currents of federal outlays meet the swirling undertow of private contractors. With one hand on the tap and the other on the drain plug, his Estes & Associates is a consulting firm to CEOs, presidents and general managers of aerospace and telecommunications companies worldwide, while the private, nonprofit Aerospace Corp., whose advisory board he vice-chairs along with fellow Rumsfeld II commissioner Thomas Moorman, ranked as the Pentagon's 47th contractor in 2000, receiving more than $334 million in DOD contracts as "a leader in the application of space technology."

Estes served as a consultant to the Defense Science Board Task Force on Space Superiority. On April 4 he joined the board of directors of SpaceDev Corp., a small commercial launch firm that has partnered with Boeing to explore commercial possibilities in "deep space."

Gen. Thomas Moorman (USAF, Ret.)

Member, Rumsfeld Commission II; Vice Chairman, Board of Trustees, Aerospace Corp.; Vice President and partner, Booz, Allen & Hamilton; Director, Smiths Industries

Smiths Industries is a British conglomerate concentrating on medical and aerospace industries. Booz, Allen & Hamilton ranked as the DOD's 34th top contractor last year receiving close to $420 million in contracts for work on everything from missile defense to the Milstar program and numerous classified programs. Moorman's position is described as "vice president-Air Force programs," putting him in the thick of the Star Wars boodle. His judgment and expertise were sought by Lockheed Martin, which tapped him in 1999 as vice chairman of a review team "to assess program management, engineering and manufacturing processes, and quality control procedures" within that company's Space & Strategic Missiles Sector. The independent panel was formed when Lockheed Martin experienced four launch failures over an eight-month period costing more than $3 billion that year.

This is a "one strike and you're out business," Moorman said at the time. "Therefore, Lockheed Martin needs to demonstrate to its Department of Defense customers that it is putting in place rigorous quality control procedures, especially for Titan IV, perhaps equivalent to those that apply to human space flight."

The panel's harsh professional judgment: "excessive cost cutting" was to blame for the failures. It recommended raises for Lockheed engineers.

Moorman is also an expert on the space "industrial base," which he believes should be expanded, and he took part in the U.S. military's first (publicly announced) "space war games" conducted in January.

Gen. Jay M. Garner (U.S. Army, Ret.)

Member Rumsfeld Commission II; President, SY Technology

SY Technology of Sherman Oaks, Calif., boasts "unique expertise in space and missile defense technologies, systems engineering and integration." The company is focused almost exclusively on National Missile Defense. In 1999, SY Technology received a Star Wars contract worth up to $365,934,442 to provide the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, the U.S. Army Space Command, the U.S. Space Command, the U.S. Navy Space Command, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, and the Joint National Test Facility, with scientific, analytical, engineering and technical assistance expertise in any effort that involves space and/or missile defense. Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2004.

Garner's Army career revolved around air defense, force development and missile defense. He served as commanding general, U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command from 1996-97, then retired in 1997 as assistant vice chief of staff.

Former Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.)

Member, Rumsfeld Commission II; Board Member, Center for Security Policy; Founder and Chairman, Frontiers of Freedom

Frontiers of Freedom describes itself as "the antithesis to the Sierra Club and Vice President Al Gore's Earth in the Balance." The nonprofit, "nonpartisan" group works to advance states' rights and private property rights, privatize Social Security, establish a flat tax, repeal or gut the Endangered Species Act, and demolish the Food and Drug Administration. It is also for missile defense.

Wallop is a true grandfather of the movement: In 1978, Sen. Wallop was the first elected official to propose a space-based defense system. In 1980 he lobbied then-Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan of the feasibility of missile defense.

James Woolsey

Member, Rumsfeld Commission I; Board of Advisers, Center for Security Policy; Partner, Shea & Gardner; Former Director of Central Intelligence

Woolsey is a bit of a maverick in this group. Although a long-time advocate of Star Wars, he has also suggested that the current emphasis on quick deployment is counter-productive, wasting both money and political capital with
U.S. allies.

His work with the first Rumsfeld Commission seemed to contradict that of the CIA, which he unhappily directed from 1993 to 1995. His present position with Shea and Gardner more closely aligns his interests with those of Lockheed Martin, a Shea client.

Stephen Hadley

Deputy National Security Adviser; Formerly: partner, Shea & Gardner; Principal, The Scowcroft Group, Inc.

Hadley has been working part time on Star Wars for most of this decade. In the early 1990s he was assistant secretary of defense with responsibility for NATO defense policy, nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defense, and arms control. As an adviser to the Bush campaign last September, Hadley wrote both an impassioned plea for early deployment and the definitive white paper detailing the political roadblocks in Western Europe to ballistic missile defense, as well as the strategies for overcoming them. Those strategies are now being employed by senior members of the Bush administration. Hadley's former firm, the Washington law firm Shea & Gardner, counts Lockheed Martin among its clients.

Hadley is also a member of The Vulcan Group, an eight-member club of Cold War hawks inside the Bush administration.

Dov Zakheim

Comptroller, the Defense Department; Board of Advisers, Center for Security Policy; (formerly) Chief Executive Officer of SPC International Corporation

SPC International specializes in political, military and economic consulting. It also manufactures a radar simulator for target acquisition now used by the U.S. Navy, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) Countermeasure Group, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Zakheim served as a senior foreign policy adviser to then-Gov. Bush. In late May, after Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont announced his decision to leave the Republican Party, throwing control of the Senate to the Democrats, Zakheim announced Bush's decision to push for a $5.6 billion increase in next year's defense budget--some of this going to Star Wars.

He told reporters he is optimistic that Congress, even with Democrats controlling the Senate, will approve big spending increases for missile defense for 2002 and beyond. "I'm reasonably sanguine, and I'll tell you why," he said. "I don't think it's as partisan an issue as you might, perhaps. And that is because...it was a very different world" when President Reagan first proposed a space-based missile defense system aimed at stopping an all-out Soviet missile attack.

"We're not out there to zap the Russians; we're not out there to zap the Chinese," Zakheim said. "The context has changed completely. And I believe that there are a lot of Democrats who see this."

Missile Defense: How it's Supposed to Work

National Missile Defense as proposed by Congressional Republicans and endorsed by the Bush administration is much smaller in scope that the "Star Wars" nuclear umbrella President Reagan dreamed of in 1982. Today the goal is to stop a few incoming missiles launched by a "state of concern" such as China, integrated with a system of "theater missile defense" to protect U.S. troops based in places like Korea and the Middle East from shorter-range tactical missiles. Yet even this modest goal is difficult to achieve, despite nearly two decades of research. The systems now proposed to do the job would accomplish it in layers, shooting at the missiles soon after launch while they are hot and slow, then taking several shots while they are high in space, and perhaps taking a final swing as the warheads fall to earth in their last minute of flight.

All of this would cost, by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's (BMDO) own estimates, more than $100 billion over the next 20 years. Due to the complex nature of the task, missile defense cost overruns have averaged much more. Here's a brief look at the various proposals, their viability and their costs.

Ground-based interceptors: There are currently three land-based missile interceptors in development. The first is the latest version of the Patriot missile, called the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, or PAC-3. These are used against tactical or theater short- and medium-range missiles traveling up to about 1,500 miles. They are nearing production and slated for sale to such countries as Taiwan. The second land-based design is called THAAD, for "Theater High Altitude Area Defense." As with the PAC-3, THAAD missiles will be mounted on trucks, but they'll have longer range. They have been tested 11 times with mixed results and are scheduled for deployment in 2007. The third interceptor is also in testing stages. It would be deployed in fixed silos in Alaska to protect the United States against incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles--ICBMs--by shooting down the missiles while they're still in space. The system has performed spottily at best so far, failing three of four tests. Boeing is the lead systems integrator. Lockheed Martin makes the rockets. Total cost to deploy will be about $65 billion, the BMDO estimates.

Sea-based interceptor: The Aegis missile system, mounted on cruisers and destroyers, is touted as near-ready by the Bush administration. In fact the missile system will need to be adapted for use against ballistic and cruise missiles--both the radar system and the missiles themselves will need upgrading. Under development since 1996, the Navy is scheduled to receive its first upgraded ship in 2003. Total cost will likely exceed $12 billion.

Airborne laser: Mounted on a Boeing 747, this weapon could be tested and deployed in as little as two years, according to proponents (the contractors hope merely to test it by then). It will destroy missiles shortly after launch--during the "boost phase"--while they are big and slow and unable to deploy decoys. Now in research stage, the United States has paid principal contractors Lockheed Martin, TRW and Boeing about $1.1 billion so far. Although the technology is promising and presents no engineering mysteries, the system would require the aircraft to stay aloft at all times over hostile territory. Total cost to deploy is estimated at about $12 billion.

Space-based laser: This is the grand dream. With a space-based laser zapping enemy missiles soon after they're launched, the United States would rule the world (even more so). So far the concept is speculative and likely to be very expensive, its budget buried in more mundane laser projects and, doubtless, several "black" (off-the-books) research operations. The BMDO estimated "acquisition" costs at $3 billion, but that doesn't count deployment and support costs, which would be multiples of this number. The weapon is, however, built in to the assumptions of military planners looking toward 2015 and beyond.

Space-based kinetic weapons: Originally dubbed "brilliant pebbles," this system has been dormant since the early 1990s but is showing signs of revival. It would consist of several thousand orbiting satellites that would track missiles and maneuver themselves into their path to destroy them. Budget is unknown.

Space-based Infrared System: is a system of low-orbit satellites designed to track incoming warheads during their 20-minute flight through space. In development since the mid-1980s, the system is still at least 10 years and $12 billion away, despite a congressionally-mandated deployment date of 2006. The troubles involve keeping the satellites cold enough to detect slightly warm warheads after their rockets have shut down, and differentiating between warheads and decoys. Cost so far: Several billion dollars. Even Pentagon leaders aren't sure. Contractors: TRW, Boeing, Spectrum Astro, Raytheon, Motorola, GenCorp.

Here's What Your Senators Think

Massachusetts

John Kerry (D) is against National Missile Defense. He signed a letter to President Clinton last August urging him to go slow in deployment. But Kerry is also for it. Like everyone else in the New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts Senate delegation--and all but three senators, total--he voted for "The Cochran-Inouye National Missile Defense Act of 1999" which declares that it is U.S. policy to: (1) deploy as soon as technologically possible a National Missile Defense (NMD) system capable of defending U.S. territory against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate), with funding subject to the annual authorization of appropriations and the annual appropriation of funds for NMD; and (2) seek continued negotiated reductions in Russian nuclear forces. The bill passed 97-3, with Connecticut's Joe Lieberman as co-sponsor.

Ted Kennedy (D) presents a similar picture. He took a go-slow approach on a 1997 bill calling for deployment by 2003 (the bill failed; almost every Democrat voted against it). But this is not the same as opposing missile defense. With Raytheon--a key missile defense contractor--headquartered in their state, Kerry and Kennedy could not realistically oppose the very concept of missile defense.

New York

Daniel Pat Moynihan (D) voted very similarly to Kerry and Kennedy. He also signed last summer's letter to Clinton; he also voted for the 1999 bill but voted against the bills in 1998 and previously. He retired from the Senate last year.

Charles Schumer (D) did much the same as Moynihan, but he wasn't there to vote in 1998 and 1996.

Hillary Clinton (D) replaced Moynihan this year and has not voted on a bill regarding missile defense. During the campaign, she said she would vote to fund research for missile defense, which suggests her views on the matter are similar to those of Moynihan.

Connecticut

Chris Dodd (D) voted pretty much the same as the Massachusetts and New York Democrats. He signed the letter to Clinton in 2000 and voted for more testing and deployment as soon as feasible in 1999.

Lieberman (D) is the maverick in this group--but the difference is subtle. As Al Gore's running mate, he did not sign the letter urging then-President Clinton to slow down development of an anti-ballistic missile system. He was quoted at the time as saying he hoped that Clinton would "keep [the program] going forward."

Lieberman reiterated this position in a Feb. 12, 2001 letter to President George W. Bush calling for increased defense spending overall (and a reduced tax break). Unlike the other senators, Lieberman also voted for the "American Missile Protection Act of 1998," which states it is U.S. policy to deploy as soon as technologically possible an effective national missile defense system capable of defending U.S. territory against limited ballistic missile attack. What's weird is that this bill, essentially the same as the one that passed overwhelmingly in 1999, failed by a vote of 59-41, with almost all Democrats opposed.

In 1997 Lieberman joined Kennedy in opposing a bill that would have set a date for deploying a national missile defense system, saying such a plan was foolhardy without knowing if the technology would work and what the effect such deployment would have on arms control treaties.

In 1996, Lieberman joined many others in his party to vote against the "Defend America Act of 1996"--which expressed U.S. policy to deploy by the end of 2003 a National Missile Defense system that: (1) is capable of providing a highly effective defense of U.S. territory against limited, unauthorized, or accidental ballistic missile attack; (2) will be augmented over time to provide a layered defense against larger and more sophisticated ballistic missile threats; and (3) does not feature an offensive-only form of deterrence. That one died as well, 53-46.

--Edward Ericson, Jr.