Issue Position: Defense - National Missile Defense

Issue Position

Congressman Kucinich opposes the deployment of a National Missile Defense (NMD) system. The system is extremely expensive, has inherent technological flaws that will make it impossible to work as promised, would have a destructive impact on nuclear non proliferation and accompanying treaties, and would have a destabilizing effect on U.S. relations with allies world-wide.

Congressman Kucinich has been very active fighting missile defense. Kucinich challenged Pentagon claims about the July 2001 flight test of the ground-based missile defense system. In a statement issued immediately following the test, Kucinich called the test "flawed," highlighting the Pentagon's failure to include realistic countermeasures in the test. A day later, he sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld inquiring about reports that the test's dummy warhead employed a Global Positioning System to help the intercepting missile track it.

In June, Congressman Kucinich introduced an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Bill to cut funding from the Airborne Laser (ABL) program and transfer the money to underfunded nuclear non-proliferation initiatives. The program seeks to put a laser on a 747 airplane in order to shoot down incoming missiles. Congress' investigative agency has said that a realistic ABL design "may not be achievable using current technology."

Congressman Kucinich also convened a National Missile Defense Strategy Summit in April to explore ways to challenge missile defense. Participants included Dr. Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Gordon Mitchell, Assistant Professor Communication at the University of Pittsburgh; Dr. Robert Bowman; and other Members of Congress.

These initiatives follow a host of actions taken on missile defense in the last Congress. In an effort to protect taxpayers, Congressman Kucinich led 52 other Congressional Democrats in June 2000 in demanding an FBI investigation of allegations of fraud and cover-up in the National Missile Defense program. These allegations were made by Dr. Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Postol's review of the program proved that the $60 billion anti-missile system cannot tell the difference between a decoy and a warhead, totally nullifying its usefulness. Postol made public his conclusions in a letter he sent to the White House. After he sent the letter, the Department of Defense classified the letter and attachments. The congressional letter the Congressman initiated also requested that the FBI determine whether the classification of the scientist's letter occurred in violation of Executive Order 12958, which prohibits the use of the classification system to hide fraud and other wrongdoing. According to the letter, the Executive Order at subsection 1.8(a) states: "In no case shall information be classified in order to: (1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; (2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency; (3) restrain competition; or (4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national security." Furthermore, the Executive Order states at 1.8 (c): "Information may not be reclassified after it has been declassified and released to the public under proper authority."

Congressman Kucinich also introduced a motion to instruct conferees to the Defense Authorization bill to cut funding for the National Missile Defense program. Speaking on the floor on numerous occasions, Congressman Kucinich continued to point out that the National Missile Defense system is a flawed system that is neither economically nor technologically viable. In June 2000, Congress debated the Defense Appropriations bill which allotted more than $1.8 billion for the National Missile Defense program. Congressman Kucinich introduced an amendment to this bill which would have cut funding for the National Missile Defense program and re-allocate it to the Defense Health Program. The amendment failed. As with this year's test, Congressman Kucinich was highly critical of last year's failed attempt to demonstrate the ability of NMD to intercept a missile. In a letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General, the Congressman demanded that he review all technical data from this test relating to the failure of a balloon decoy accompanying the mock warhead to inflate. "It is more than passing strange that in yesterday's failed test, the decoy balloon did not inflate. If it was programmed to not inflate, then a direct hit by the "kill vehicle' could have been celebrated as "proof' the system worked, much the same way that last October's test was scored a success, though subsequent analysis showed its failure to distinguish between decoy and warhead. Is it really possible that the architects of the anti-missile system are reduced to such a pitiful condition that they cannot even inflate their own decoy?" Kucinich asked.

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