White House plots defense for 21st century
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES, August 24, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/news/news3.html#link
The White House has drafted a new global strategy for the next century that makes the case for U.S. military intervention in a variety of trouble spots and says the nation is facing its biggest espionage threat in history.
The paper, written by the White House National Security Council staff, also says the odds are growing for concerted attacks on the United States by terrorists and rogue nations. The attacks could come in the form of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, or terrorists' bombs or cyber-attacks on information systems.
"Due to our military superiority, potential enemies, whether nations or terrorist groups, may be more likely in the future to resort to attacks against vulnerable civilian -- Continued from Front Page -- targets in the United States, instead of conventional military operations abroad," says the draft document, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.
"At the same time, easier access to sophisticated technology means that the destructive power available to rogue nations and terrorists is greater than ever. Adversaries may thus be tempted to use long-range ballistic missiles or unconventional tools, such as [weapons of mass destruction] or information attacks, to threaten our citizens and critical national infrastructures."
The strategy statement represents a road map for how 21st-century policy-makers should use America's economic, diplomatic and military strength to influence developments overseas and at home. It foresees an activist military, continuing President Clinton's policy of sending troops to places like Haiti, the Balkans and Africa to change a nation's behavior.
An NSC spokesman declined comment yesterday.
"We must be prepared and willing to use all appropriate instruments of national power to influence the actions of other states and non-state actors, to exert global leadership, and to remain the preferred security partner for the community of states that share our interests," the NSC document says.
Republicans in Congress say Mr. Clinton has sent the military on a record number of "contingencies" at great cost to combat readiness. Many Navy and Air Force pilots have quit, blaming the decision on long deployments away from their families. The services also have complained of old, deteriorating equipment and a lack of spare parts.
Mr. Clinton reversed himself last year and proposed $12 billion in additional defense spending after Republicans convened hearings to expose readiness problems.
The NSC document predicts the hot pace of deployments will continue.
"In our vision of the world, the United States has close cooperative relations with the world's most influential countries and has the ability to influence the policies and actions of those who can affect our national well-being," it says.
Without being specific, the NSC staff says foreign intelligence agents are trying to glean U.S. secrets at an unprecedented pace. "The threat from foreign intelligence services is more diverse, complex and difficult to counter than ever before," the report says.
The congressional Cox Commission reported in May that communist Chinese spies have stolen sensitive design information on virtually every weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
But the draft NSC document has nothing but praise for China. It cites China's efforts to stop North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons, while ignoring Beijing's long history of exporting components for weapons of mass destruction.
The White House paper also says foreign governments and terrorists are "creating sophisticated, well-organized capabilities" to launch cyber-attacks on strategically important information networks.
"New intrusion-detection network technologies are being developed and deployed, first to protect [the Defense Department] and other critical federal systems, then to protect private-sector systems as well," the paper says. "A nationwide system for quickly reconstituting in the face of a serious cyber-attack is being developed."
The United States' post-Cold War national military strategy calls for the armed forces to be capable of fighting two theater wars, most probably in the Persian Gulf and the divided Korean peninsula.
The draft White House strategy predicts that two wars will not break out simultaneously.
"Rather, a second foe would need time to decide to take advantage of heavy U.S. military engagement in the first theater and then to mobilize and deploy its forces for an attack," the NSC staff says. "Our strategy is to seek to halt the second aggressor's advance, while concluding operations in the first theater. Our focus would then shift to the second theater, including, if necessary, a counteroffensive."
The Pentagon's current strategy guidance, called the Quadrennial Defense Review, states that without a two-war capability, "our standing as a global power, as the security partner of choice, and as the leader of the international community, would be called into question."
---------
Congress Seeks Wide Sanctions for Drug Trade
By TIM GOLDENAugust 24, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/082499congress-drugs.html
WASHINGTON -- Congress is close to forcing a major expansion of economic sanctions against international narcotics traffickers and the businesses that work with them.
Legislation to impose such sanctions on drug criminals throughout the world passed the Senate easily late last month. Administration officials said that, after initially opposing the measures on practical and foreign policy grounds, they have now begun to work with legislators to fashion a bill that both the House and the President could support.
The sanctions have won some support among businessmen and government officials in Colombia, where the United States has imposed them by executive order. But the legislation to extend them worldwide is being strongly opposed by the Government of Mexico and a few of that country's biggest companies.
"The Mexican Government has repeatedly expressed profound concern about the negative consequences that may arise from the implementation of such a proposal," Mexico's Ambassador to Washington, Jesús Reyes Heroles, wrote on July 27 in a confidential letter to the White House drug-policy director, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey.
The sanctions would bar drug traffickers and their associates from doing business in the United States, cut off their access to American banks and freeze any assets they may have deposited here. American firms that continue to work with companies linked to the traffickers would be subject to civil and criminal prosecution.
President Clinton first levied such penalties in 1995 against the four main leaders of Colombia's Cali drug cartel. In a subsequent letter to Congress, he promised, "I shall continue to exercise the powers at my disposal to apply economic sanctions against significant foreign narcotics traffickers and their violent and corrupting activities as long as these measures are appropriate."
Since then, the Treasury Department, which administers the sanctions, has built a list of almost 500 relatives, associates and mostly Colombian companies linked to the traffickers. More than two dozen of those companies have ended up liquidating their assets, officials said, while others have had to reorganize or change their names.
But Clinton Administration officials have hesitated almost from the start of the program to extend it to drug criminals in other countries, and particularly to those in Mexico.
In part, their concerns have been practical: Before acting against the Cali cartel, United States officials had been able to analyze reams of the group's secret business records that had been seized in raids by Colombian police teams backed by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the C.I.A.
By contrast, the most powerful Mexican drug gangs are believed to have hidden their wealth in mazes of front companies, aliases and associates that the American authorities have not yet been able to penetrate. One C.I.A. effort to dig into the possible drug connections of one of Mexico's most prominent business dynasties ended after an agent in Mexico was threatened while trying to search public records, officials said.
More importantly, perhaps, some senior Administration officials have also worried about the political and economic impact that the sanctions might have on a country that is the United States' second-most-important trading partner after Canada, officials said.
"There are parts of this Government that are very nervous about doing anything like this with Mexico," one senior State Department official said. "There is no question that it will raise the tension level some, and there are always some people who think it may undermine confidence in the economy."
If finally approved, the legislation that passed the Senate on July 21 and a similar bill pending in the House would essentially force the Administration to do what it has done with Colombia on a global scale.
By Jan. 1, 2000, and by every year thereafter, the legislation would require the Secretary of the Treasury to submit a list of major international drug traffickers after consulting with the C.I.A. and the Departments of Justice, Defense and State.
That list would then be vetted by the White House drug-policy director and sent to the President. By March 1, the President would have to produce a final list of traffickers to be sanctioned, as well as a report to Congress explaining his reasons if he has decided to leave off any of the accused traffickers suggested by his aides.
The legislation would freeze the assets of the traffickers and of any companies that they may partly own or control and prohibit American businesses from working with them. It would also cover the American assets of any person or company that aids a trafficker's illicit activities.
As a practical matter, the annual publication of such lists would probably only be the start of a process of investigation, congressional and Administration officials said.
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control now has only about six or eight officials assigned full-time to implementing the sanctions. Even if new funds are appropriated to pay for the collection of intelligence on the traffickers' business assets and associates, it could take years to develop evidence strong enough to withstand a challenge in court.
So far, there have been very few such challenges from Colombia. Two of the teen-age daughters of the Cali cartel chiefs, both of them American citizens, fought successfully to be struck from the list of the traffickers' known associates. About 10 others have been removed from the list after severing their ties to the cartel or establishing their innocence, officials said.
A Colombian official who discussed the sanctions on the condition that he not be identified said that although the Government of President Andrés Pastrana supported the American sanctions, it was eager to be more involved in drawing up lists of the traffickers' associates so as to insure that innocent businesses were not hurt by being linked to drug trafficking. Mexican officials and businessmen said they were fighting the legislation in part on similar grounds.
"If you're a legitimate company and you're targeted, you should have a way to defend yourself before you get on the list," said Luis Calvillo, a spokesman for one of Mexico's biggest international transportation companies, Transportación Marítima Mexicana, or T.M.M..
Both T.M.M. and the Mexican Embassy in Washington have been campaigning strongly for detailed amendments to the legislation, with lobbyists for T.M.M. working to organize a coalition of like-minded American businesses. The Mexican firm, one of Latin America's largest shipping companies, has complained that it has been unfairly linked to drug trafficking by United States intelligence documents in the past.
In interviews, two Republican sponsors of the sanctions legislation, Senator Paul D. Coverdell of Georgia and Representative Porter J. Goss of Florida, said they would readily consider changes to strengthen the safeguards for law-abiding companies. They added that they were confident that the legislation now has enough bipartisan support to win approval.
"We have suggested for a long time that this be used," said Goss, who, like Coverdell, will likely be among the legislators who reconcile the Senate and House bills. "The Administration would go a little way but they didn't want to go too far. We got tired of waiting for them."
---
U.S. Anti-Drug Czar Says Colombia Regional Problem
Updated 2:41 AM ET August 24, 1999, By Joelle Diderich
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990824/02/news-latam-usa
BRASILIA (Reuters) - U.S. anti-drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey said Monday there was no simple method to tackle Colombia's guerrillas and cocaine dealers, which he described as a problem for all its neighbors in South America.
"The solution is not a narrow one," McCaffrey told foreign correspondents in Brazil, where he kicked off a five-day tour of the region designed to rally Latin American leaders in the fight against narcotics.
"It is not simply to enhance aid to the police or the armed forces but ... it involves a broad-gauged approach of support for the judicial system, the economy," he said. "This is not just a Colombian problem; this is a regional problem."
McCaffrey, the White House's top anti-drug official, met with President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and senior officials Monday to discuss increased cooperation and the growing threat from booming drug output in neighboring Colombia.
His five-day tour of South America will also take him to Bolivia, Peru and Argentina.
McCaffrey's talks are expected to focus on international efforts to tackle the civil conflict in Colombia, where Marxist guerrillas funded by the cocaine and heroin trade control more than 40 percent of the countryside.
U.S. figures show cocaine production in Colombia has doubled in the past four years and heroin output has risen 20 percent, threatening to reverse a 29 percent drop in cocaine production in the Andes during the same period.
The United States has been looking for new ways to stem the flow of drugs from South America since the closure of American bases in Panama, Colombia's neighbor, deprived it of a strategically located launch pad for U.S. counter-narcotics efforts.
"Now we have a huge problem," McCaffrey told the foreign correspondents. "There has to be some sort of mechanism set up to regain what we had in Panama."
McCaffrey recently suggested Colombia and other countries in the region might need $1 billion in emergency assistance, on top of the $287 million Colombia is receiving this year.
But he strenuously denied talk that the United States was mulling a major military intervention in Colombia to counter the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
"There is absolutely zero discussion in any way of U.S. direct involvement in the struggle," McCaffrey told a joint news conference with Brazil's top military adviser, Gen. Alberto Cardoso, earlier Monday.
Brazilian officials, traditionally sensitive to any foreign intervention in the strategically important Amazon region, reiterated that they were opposed to taking on any military role in Colombia.
Gen. Cardoso said Brazil and the United States were committed to exchanging intelligence as Brazil was increasingly being used as a transit route for smuggling cocaine from Peru, Colombia and Bolivia to Europe.
"A country which has borders like ours, with rivers running across them, with so many landing strips, and a territory that is hard to monitor and hard to control in its entirety, needs to have precise information about the movements of drug traffickers," he said.
During McCaffrey's visit to South America -- his second in two months -- he will visit eradication and alternative development sites in Bolivia, which the United States considers a model for the hemisphere.
Anti-drug efforts in Bolivia have led to a 22 percent net decline in coca production over the last two years, the U.S. government says.
In Peru, McCaffrey will sign a partnership to strengthen counter-drug efforts in the Andean nation, which has seen coca cultivation fall 56 percent over the past two years.
---
Drug Chief Warns of Colombia Cocaine
By The Associated Press, August 23, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Brazil-McCaffrey.html
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) -- The White House's drug policy chief warned Monday that Colombia faces a ``giant threat'' because of cocaine production.
Gen. Barry McCaffrey said that production in Colombia sparked economic and security problems and hindered government talks with leftist guerillas, adding the problem had worsened in the last four years.
But the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said there was ``absolutely zero'' chance of direct U.S. involvement in the region.
``Our vision is that the United States must be prepared to provide resources, equipment, training and intelligence but the most important thing is to provide political support,'' McCaffrey said at a news conference in Brazil, the first stop on a four-nation visit to Latin America.
McCaffrey met Monday with Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and security officials to discuss combating drug trafficking. He will travel on to Argentina, Peru and Bolivia to do the same.
His tour precedes a November summit of 34 nations from the Americas with the aim of developing a program of cooperation against drugs.
McCaffrey said cocaine consumption in the United States had declined 70 percent fall over the last decade, prompting traffickers to seek new markets in Europe and Asia. He said Brazil becoming a shipment route for those markets.
-----------
GOP Picnic Draws 7,000-plus
By Luis Cabrera Associated Press Writer Saturday, August 21,
1999; 8:14 p.m. EDT
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990821/V000601-082199-idx.html
VASHON, Wash.(AP) -- More than 7,000 people turned out Saturday to hear Republican presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Dole and John McCain stump at the GOP Picnic, a gala rivaling the recent Iowa Straw Poll in orchestration and glitz....
Dole said she favors a tax cut, local control of public schools and increased military preparedness, including stepped-up efforts toward a missile defense system..
Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., ... hammered on the themes of campaign-finance reform, increased military salaries and readiness, tax reform and local educational control.
``We have a weak and hollow military,'' he said. ``We have 11,000 military families on food stamps, and that has got to stop.''
Like Dole, he called for increased efforts toward developing a missile-defense system....
-----------
Draft agency's number may be up
By Jessica Lee, USA TODAY 8/24/99- Updated 12:05 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsmon08.htm
WASHINGTON - In all the advice Landon Lockhart heard during his senior year in high school, no one said anything about registering with the Selective Service System.
His father never talked to him about it. Nor was there an assembly at Shaker Heights, Ohio, High School. So, until he received a notice in the mail, Lockhart was only dimly aware of the legal requirement that all male U.S. citizens register with the Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthday.
"I have a rough idea about the process of registering, as well as a vague idea of what could happen next," Lockhart said two days after his 18th birthday.
What happens next with the 59-year-old Selective Service System itself is being debated on Capitol Hill. A decision about its fate will be made when Congress returns to work after Labor Day.
Led by Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y., those who seek to eliminate the agency reason that the country has not had a draft in 26 years and faces no threat from a superpower. "It's an anachronism," says Larry Korb, a military readiness expert with the Council on Foreign Relations.
The House Appropriations Committee agreed and voted unanimously to cut about 70% of the Selective Service's $24.4 million annual budget, leaving $7 million for shutting it down.
The Selective Service System has been shut down once before. President Ford stopped registration in 1975, after President Nixon abandoned the draft in 1973. President Carter reinstituted registration in 1980 after Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. And President Clinton wants operations to continue at the agency, which registers 5,000 men a month.
Clinton views registration as a low-cost insurance policy against an unforeseen threat, National Security Council spokesman David Leavy says. "Terminating the Selective Service could send the wrong signal to our enemies," Leavy says.
Powerful members of the House and Senate armed services committees share Clinton's view. Rep. Floyd Spence, R-S.C., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says the military has had such difficulty recruiting and retaining its 1.4 million troops that a return to the draft may have to be considered. His Senate counterpart, Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., agrees.
Mandatory registration of names, addresses and other information allows the Selective Service to maintain a roster of men ages 18 to 25 who might be called upon in a national emergency. Men who fail to register can be prosecuted and fined up to $250,000 and jailed up to five years. Before a draft could be started, a law authorizing it would have to be passed by Congress and signed by the president.
Even if there weren't problems with military recruitment, the Selective Service shouldn't be eliminated, says Charles Moskos, a specialist in military-civilian relations at Northwestern University in Illinois.
If registration is not mandatory for 18-year-old men, "it will mean a cutoff of citizenship responsibility," Moskos says. "This is the one time in his life a man has to sign a document saying he has a citizenship obligation."
Lockhart confronted his obligation when Selective Service sent his registration notice in early August. His father, power company executive Anthony Lockhart, and he finally had that talk.
"I told him to acknowledge that military service is an obligation," says the elder Lockhart, who turned 18 during the Vietnam War and served in the National Guard. "I expect him to do what he's called upon to do."
###
[Sometimes the programming is so obvious. What if the young man thought it was his civic responsibility to refuse to wage war? He's called upon to kill by whom? Why? Are the declared reasons valid? Critical thinking skills needed here in the USA.]
---
Look for incentive, special pay to increase too
August 2, 1999 The Daily Herald Co., Everett, Wash.
http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/99/8/23/11194826.htm
With bigger pay raises and better retirement plans grabbing headlines, thousands of service members might be surprised to learn that, as early as Oct. 1, they could see hefty increases in special and incentive pays.
The added compensation is aimed at those who fly, dive, drive ships or speak a foreign language well. New or expanded bonuses are planned for those trained in nuclear propulsion, the law, veterinary medicine or special warfare. Others will see larger re-enlistment or retention bonuses.
The improved incentives are part of the fiscal 2000 defense authorization bill Congress is expected to approve next month. But lawmakers, in raising payment ceilings, will leave it to each service to decide how much to pay to whom.
For example, Congress will broaden eligibility for Aviation Continuation Pay to include, for the first time, colonels and Navy captains. It also would allow maximum ACP of $25,000 per year to be paid on any contract, regardless of length. But each service will decide how to wield the retention tool based on unique operational needs, personnel challenges, if any, and competing budgetary demands.
Other special pay and bonus raises are to include:
A $10,000 hike in each of four special pays used to retain nuclear-qualified officers or enlisted personnel.
An extra $50,000, spread through several years, to retain surface warfare officers who agree to complete tours as department heads afloat.
$15,000 to special warfare-qualified officers (O-3 and O-4) for each year served from sixth through 14th year.
$2,000 to $5,000 a year for board-certified veterinarians in the military or Public Health Service.
A $3,000 increase in the ceiling on the Selected Reserve enlistment bonus to reach $8,000.
A $40 increase in monthly diving pay for officers and enlisted personnel. Also, the ban on divers receiving just one other hazardous duty pay each month would be lifted.
Foreign language proficiency pay would be raised from $100 a month to $300.
Reserve gains
Improvements in retirement benefits for the Redux generation will mean gains for their counterparts in the Reserve and National Guard.
Reservists who entered service on or after Aug. 1, 1986, will see the lifetime value of Reserve retirement at age 60 climb by about 10 percent because of a change in Redux retirement in the new defense authorization bill. The rise will be tied to improved inflation protection.
The Redux plan has two key features, only one of which affects reservists. It lowers active duty retired pay to 40 percent, not 50 percent, of basic pay after 20 years of service. This does not affect reservists, whose annuity formula remains linked to an accumulation of "points" earned through drill weekends and stints on active duty.
The second part of Redux, which lowered annual cost-of-living adjustments for retirees, does affect Redux-era reservists. Rather than cost of living allowances that match inflation, Redux would set COLAs a percentage point below the inflation rate. The defense bill would allow active-duty Redux members to switch to High-3, which includes more generous COLAs, or to stay under Redux and accept an immediate $30,000 bonus.
Reservists from the Redux era automatically will become eligible for full COLAs, as called for under High-3, rather than reduced Redux COLAs, said a Pentagon pay official.
Retirees lose
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., has upheld a lower court's decision to reject a claim by military retirees that old laws and regulations granted them a right to free lifetime medical care.
The decision came on an appeal by the Coalition of Retired Military Veterans, a group of military retirees and survivors based in South Carolina, who claim the government's denial of free lifetime health care, promised by recruiters and career counselors, amounted to an unconstitutional taking of property.
That became clear, the CORMV attorneys argued, when the Defense Department moved to TRICARE, a managed care program, in 1995. Under TRICARE, beneficiaries age 65 and older are denied enrollment, and younger retirees must pay an enrollment fee plus co-payments to ensure access to care.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the lower court that a 1956 law clearly states retirees are entitled to care only on a space available basis. That same theme runs through almost all post-1956 regulations, the court said. The lone exception, a 1949 Navy and Marine Corps medical manual, said retirees "shall, if in need of hospital care, be admitted to any Navy hospital." But that still did not create a right to free lifetime care, the appeals court said, given "the general pattern of military regulations" that offers medical care to retirees when facilities and personnel were available."
Retired Air Force Col. George "Bud" Day, pursuing a separate lawsuit for retirees 65 and older, has an appeal pending before the same court that rejected the CORMV case.
Day called the ruling "disappointing" but "not fatal" to Class Act Group's separate appeal of its own loss at the district court level. Day indicated his group has more evidence of binding health care promises.
Readers can contact CORMV officials at 803-775-2775 or the Class Act Group at 800-972-6275.
Comments and suggestions are welcomed. Write to Military Update, P.O. Box 1230, Centreville, VA 20122-8230, or send e-mail to milupdate@aol.com
----------
U.S. Police Legally Sell Thousands Of Guns- CBS
Updated 7:03 PM ET August 23, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990823/19/news-crime-guns
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Four of the five police departments responding to the Columbine High School shootings in March sell or trade used weapons, including assault rifles, to gun dealers, CBS News said Monday.
In a report for its nightly news program, CBS said law enforcement agencies across the country sell or trade tens of thousands of their weapons to gun dealers, who then sell them to the public.
CBS said it had a list of weapons that gun dealers bought from four police agencies responding to the tragedy in suburban Littleton, Colorado, including 112 handguns, 194 shotguns and 20 assault weapons.
The Texas Rangers and the Texas Highway Patrol are among the biggest arms dealers in law enforcement, CBS said, having unloaded thousands of handguns, shotguns, rifles and assault weapons over the last decade, according to inventory reports.
Another Texas police department, in Irving, has sold grenade launchers, with a paper trail leading to licensed firearms dealer in Idaho, which is selling them for $3,500 each on a Web site, CBS said.
The issue of guns used in crimes and traced to police departments came to light with the recent shooting at a Los Angeles day care center and murder of a Filipino postal worker allegedly by white supremacist Buford Furrow. The 9 mm semi-automatic pistol allegedly used in the shootings was first owned by the Cosmopolis Police Department in Washington state.
New York State now destroys all used state weapons, the report said, but at least 30 of its law enforcement agencies' guns were later used in crimes before the policy was changed.
All of the gun sales, including that of the grenade launcher, are legal, CBS said.