The Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, commonly called the Rumsfeld
Commission or the Rumsfeld Missile Commission after its chair Donald
Rumsfeld, operated from January 1998 to July 1998 and issued its final report on July 15, 1998.
The commission determined that the ballistic missile threat to the United States was much greater than
previously reported, indeed, so great that "the United States might have little or no warning
before operational deployment" (Report of the Rumsfeld Commission, Executive Summary, July 15,
1998).
The report concluded that "rogue states" such as Iraq, North Korea, or Iran—the future "axis
of evil"—could deploy ballistic missiles within "five years of a decision to do so," thereby
contradicting the CIA's 1995 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that it would take at least 10-15
years for rogue nations to develop a missile capacity that could threaten the United States.
As might be expected, right-leaning commentators saw the commission's conclusions as a green light
to begin work on missile defense. A Heritage
Foundation analyst summarized the most alarmist aspect of the commission's report: "A Third
World country could develop and deploy a ballistic missile threat against the United States in as little
as five years, and U.S. officials would have no way of knowing about it until the threat had materialized" (Baker
Spring, July 24, 1998). Accepting whole-hog the notion of a developing nation building and delivering
a ballistic missile without U.S. foreknowledge, the Heritage analysis declares: "The warning that
the missile threat may be immediate clears the way for Congress to debate more seriously the most effective
way to meet this danger."
According to some analysts, the unstated objective of the commission was to turn up pressure on the
Clinton administration to support new weapons programs and substantially increase major military spending
(see Gronlund and Wright, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1998). The commission's
report certainly had that effect, as conservative think tanks took the unclassified report and immediately
began using it to push for missile defense. The day after the Rumsfeld Commission's report came out, Gary
Schmitt of the neoconservative Project for
the New American Century wrote in a memo to "opinion leaders" that "as the findings
of the Rumsfeld Commission suggest, when it comes to missile defenses, the [Clinton] administration
is pursuing a policy which will inevitably undermine the country's capacity to exercise that leadership
by leaving it, its forces, and its friends unprotected against attacks by ballistic missiles and the
deadly warheads they carry" (Schmitt, July 16, 1998).
The missile defense commission was itself the direct result of congressional pressure from right-wing
Republicans, orchestrated by such groups as the Center
for Security Policy (CSP), the SAFE Foundation (Safeguarding America for Everyone), and American
Conservative Union. At the urging of Frank
Gaffney, CSP founder and president, Sen. Newt
Gingrich (R-GA) included a plank in his 1994 "Contract with America" that called for
the rapid deployment of a missile defense system—the only plank in the Republican campaign platform
that addressed foreign or military policy at the time.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) introduced an amendment
in the 1997 Defense Authorization bill setting aside funds for a bipartisan commission to study the
missile defense threat (see Ciarrocca and Hartung, July 2002). Weldon, who was a proponent of missile
defense throughout his terms in office, serves on the advisory board of Gaffney's neoconservative-led
CSP and had close ties to such groups as the American Conservative Union and the National Defense Industrial
Association. He was also the chair of the military procurement subcommittee of the House Armed Services
Committee.
Strong advocates of missile defense dominated the commission, which besides Rumsfeld included William
Graham, Paul Wolfowitz, William
Schneider Jr., James Woolsey, as
well as three members cut from different cloth than your typical hawks—Richard Garwin, Gen. Lee Butler,
and Barry Blechman. Butler was one of two high-ranking retired military officers on the commission.
He served as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Strategic Command and Strategic Air Command (1992-1994)
and as the director of strategic plans and policy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-1991). The other
officer was retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch, who was the chief of staff of the Air Force (1986-1990)
and commander-in-chief of the U.S. Strategic Air Command (1985-1986). He was president and CEO of
the Institute for Defense Analyses (1990-2003).
Garwin, a respected scientist, wrote about his experience on the commission, saying adamantly that
he would not endorse a missile defense: "The report created a stir. It was enthusiastically received
by congressional and think-tank hardliners, who believe the United States must deploy a national ballistic
missile defense system soon. Meanwhile, many in the arms control community were dismayed. How could
a panel with at least some supposedly reasonable people have handed such potent ammunition to the hardliners?
The answer is that analysis of the threat should be clearly differentiated from analysis of the response
to that threat.
"Insofar as the Rumsfeld report is concerned, it should—and must—be regarded as neutral regarding
missile defenses. The commissioners simply did not consider whether deploying the national ballistic
missile system as currently conceived represented wisdom or folly. Presumably, some of the commissioners
would favor such a system. Others—and that assuredly includes me—would not" (Garwin, Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1998).
Rumsfeld hired Stephen Cambone, a longtime
associate, as the commission's staff director. Staff members for the missile defense commission included
David Dunham and Eric Desautels of TASC, Inc., Dolonnie Henry of the National Defense University, Steven
Maaranen of the policy planning staff of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Jason Roback and Bernard
Victory, on loan from the National Institute
for Public Policy (NIPP). On the eve of George W. Bush's 2001 inauguration, NIPP, a militarist
institute strongly supportive of President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative, published "Rationale
and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control," a report that served as a blueprint
for the new administration's more aggressive nuclear weapons policy (National Institute for Public
Policy, January 2001). Cambone was on the team that produced the NIPP report, as were Kathleen
Bailey, Robert Joseph, Linton
Brooks, William van Cleave, Stephen
Hadley, Fred Ikle, and Max
Kampelman. NIPP president, Keith Payne,
was the study director.
Several players connected to the Rumsfeld Commission later became part of the George W. Bush administration.
Rumsfeld was named defense secretary; Wolfowitz became deputy defense secretary; and Rumsfeld named
Schneider to the Defense Science Board. In March 2003, Cambone became undersecretary of defense for
intelligence—a new position created by Rumsfeld.
Although the Rumsfeld Commission's panicky conclusions were initially challenged by the director of
central intelligence, a little more than a year later, in September 1999, the CIA released a new National
Intelligence Estimate that was substantially more alarmist than its previous NIE. The CIA predicted
that North Korea could test a ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States "at any time" and
that Iran could test such a weapon "in the next few years." Commenting on the new threat
assessment, Weldon congratulated himself: "It was the largest turnaround ever in the history of
the [intelligence] agency." As a main sponsor of the Rumsfeld Commission, said Weldon, "I
was part of making it happen" (Washington Post, January 14, 2002). Gingrich was similarly
ecstatic. Finally the right wing had a new set of external dangers to rally around and to leverage
into increased defense spending. Referring to the commission's report, Gingrich exulted that it was
the "most important warning about our national security system since the end of the Cold War" (Nation,
January 29, 2001).
Although CIA officials argued that the new NIE was the result of "improved trade-craft," many
experts attributed the revision to pressure from hardline Republicans, the considerable influence of
Rumsfeld, and a campaign by Israel to focus attention on what the Likud government of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu saw as a rising missile threat from Iran. Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation
program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued that the CIA's 1995 NIE "holds
up pretty well in hindsight." He also accused Weldon and other Republican hawks of developing "a
conscious political strategy" to attack the CIA's 1995 NIE because "it stood in the way of
a passionate belief in missile defense" (Washington Post, January 14, 2002).
Shortly after the Rumsfeld Commission ended its work, Rumsfeld chaired a second congressional commission,
the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, which was
informally known as the Space Commission or the Rumsfeld
Space Commission. Cambone again served as Rumsfeld's staff director.
The two Rumsfeld commissions focused on the issues at the top of the list for the national security
militarists and the large military contractors: the ballistic missile threat to the United States and
U.S. space-based defense capabilities. In the tradition of Team
B in the mid-1970s, the apparent agenda of both these commissions was to pressure the administration
into increased military spending and new weapons programs (see Gronlund and Wright, Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1998). Both commissions received funding from defense
spending bills—in effect using taxpayer revenues to subsidize them.
