Letters From Lawmakers Overburden Pentagon Staff
Responding to the daily inflow of letters that senators and congressmen
send to the Pentagon is an ever-growing workload, said a senior
Pentagon official.
Since the early days of democracy in the United States, legislative
officials have written letters to federal agencies requesting that
additional attention be given to specific issues and programs. The
problem is that the amount of time it takes to respond to these
letters is draining “finite human resources” at the
Defense Department, said the official, during a recent meeting with
defense industry lobbyists. “I am amazed by the amount of
pen pals I have from Capitol Hill,” the official said. “We
have a finite level of resources we can commit during any given
transaction, and every letter I get from Capitol Hill takes eight
to 10 hours away from the subject at hand.”
At the Pentagon, the process of answering congressional correspondence
is “highly regulated process with high priority,” the
official said. “Our responses are also highly regulated and
we can usually say nothing in those letters anyway. ‘The matter
is under review,’ we say.”
Each new letter from a senator or congressman creates an immense
amount of internal work at the Pentagon, said the official, so this
presents an important political question: “Do you commit your
resources to getting to the bottom of the issue on a technical basis,
or do you do the congressional correspondence?”
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Gingrich: Security Procedures Are “Insane”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who served on the Hart-Rudman
Commission on U.S. Security/21st Century, said that enemies of the
United States are focusing now on ways to deliver weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). “They are looking at terrorists, at missiles
and at clearer ways of delivering violence,” he said. The
United States, in turn, he said, “needs a more massive capacity
to respond.”
The administration’s creation of a homeland defense office,
headed by former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, is a start, Gingrich
said. “But we also have to really change the way we do things.”
For example, the current security questions that people are asked
before boarding airplanes “are insane,” he said. “‘Did
you pack your bag personally,’ the ticket agent asks. ‘Absolutely,
I made sure the bomb was in there,’ the terrorist would say.”
If the homeland defense office really wants to improve security,
it should not function as a “comfortable organization,”
Gingrich said. It should consider “structural changes,”
if necessary.
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Gilman Opposes Bush Policy on Palestine
In a letter to President Bush, Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y. criticized
the administration for suggesting that it would favor the creation
of a Palestinian state. “In my view, such a proposal exceeds
outright previous United States policy statements that the formulation
of a Palestinian state should be subject to the outcome of negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians,” he wrote.
Gilman is the former chairman of the House International Relations
Committee and now serves as chairman of that Committee’s subcommittee
on the Middle East.
“Such an action (a declaration of a Palestinian state) could
confront the United States with an unexpected and unwelcome crisis
in the Middle East at the very time your administration is building
an international coalition against terrorism,” Gilman said.
“Congress has expressed itself strongly against the unilateral
declaration of an independent Palestinian state.”
The Palestinian Authority, he added, “has had a disappointing
record, particularly over the past year, of preventing Palestinian
terrorism against Israelis. United States indications of support
for a Palestinian state under these circumstances gives the impression
of rewarding terrorism.”
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Pentagon Sets Up Technology Task Force
A counter-terrorism “technology task force,” was established
at the Pentagon on September 19, in response to the terrorist attacks,
said Ronald M. Sega, the director of defense research and engineering.
The group was asked to “identify core technologies applicable
to combating terrorism,” Sega told a conference of the Precision
Strike Association. The plan is to look for technologies across
federal agencies and all the military services. The development
of sensors, particularly, requires interagency coordination, he
said.
The focal areas will be divided into four groups: survivability
and denial, deterrence and warning, consequence management and recovery,
and attribution and retaliation.
One project will involve the use of modeling and simulation to
train commanders on how to deal with asymmetric threats. “We
will use models and social science theory to allow commanders to
shape engagements without the use of force,” said Sega.
One area of concern at Sega’s office is the expected wave
of retirements during the next five years. That will dramatically
shrink the pool of scientists and engineers available to carry out
the counter-terrorism technology effort, Sega said.
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Air National Guard Wants Commercial Aircraft as Tankers
The Air National Guard supports the use of commercial Boeing 767
jets as tanker platforms to replace existing C-130s and KC-135s.
“We need to purchase a new wide-body aircraft,” said
Maj. Gen. Paul A. Weaver, the director of the Air National Guard.
“We need a tanker not only with tanking capabilities, but
with four missions—tanker fuel, cargo, passenger and air-med,”
he said. “A commercial wide-body aircraft could do just that.”
The current fleet is aging, he said. “We are just about maxed
out.”
The first step in the modernization of the tanker fleet, he stressed,
would be to buy a commercial aircraft that can fly long distances.
“Our tanker fleet is long-haul,” he said. “We
have become an expeditionary force, so everything we do, we need
to get there.”
The Air Force KC-135E tanker, based on the Boeing 707 airframe,
has been a workhorse, but needs refurbishing, said Weaver. The service
has approximately 360 KC-135R versions, which are modernized, in
addition to about 130 KC-135Es, which are older.
Under operations Nobel Eagle—in support of homeland defense
efforts in the United States—and Enduring Freedom, in Afghanistan,
the Guard has mobilized 6,000 members. That number, said Weaver,
may increase substantially.
Weaver spoke to reporters in Washington days before his retirement
at the end of October.
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“Radio Free Afghanistan” Gains Support
Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., introduced bipartisan legislation to create
a “Radio Free Afghanistan.” Royce, a senior member of
the House International Relations Committee, said the legislation
would broadcast to Afghanistan under the existing Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty services.
Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., James
Leach, R-Iowa, Chris Smith, R-NJ, Mark Kirk, R-Ill., Joseph Pitts,
R-Pa., Joseph Hoeffel, D-Pa., and Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif.,
joined Royce as cosponsors of the legislation.
“This legislation would revive the broadcasts that Radio
Free Europe and Radio Liberty were doing when the Soviets invaded
Afghanistan during the Cold War,” Royce said. “They
are familiar with the challenges of broadcasting to Afghanistan
and have the institutional knowledge to perform these broadcasts,
and get them up and running quickly.”
In fact, he added, most of the people who were broadcasting during
Afghanistan’s war with the Soviet Union are still on staff
with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
The bill would allow Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to perform
surrogate broadcasts into Afghanistan. It authorizes $8 million
for fiscal year 2002 and $6 million for 2003. The funds would pay
for a new transmitter and roughly 12 hours a day of broadcasting
into Afghanistan in local languages (six hours in Pashto and six
hours in Dari).
“There is a lot of anti-Semitic, anti-American, anti-Western
hate radio being broadcast by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s
organization,” Royce said. “We’ve got to counter
these vile lies being propagated by terrorists and the radical Taliban;
Radio Free Afghanistan is the best way to do that.”