Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences
The 34th IFPA-Fletcher
Conference on
National Security Strategy and Policy:
Security Planning
and Military Transformation
December
2-3, 2003
U.S. Chamber of
Commerce Building
Lafayette Square, 1615 H Street, NW
Washington, D.C.
Address by Congressman Curt Weldon, Vice Chairman, House Armed Services Committee, and Chairman, Tactical and Land Forces Subcommittee
Introduction by Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., President, IFPA
Dr. Pfaltzgraff: —the seventh Congressional district of Pennsylvania, which is in southeastern Pennsylvania, which is where I come from. And for many years, he has been my Congressman. And whenever I've needed a speaker, or to do something with him, I've just called and said, "I have a constituent interest here that you need to take care of, Curt." And he normally responds to me.
So, at the present time, Congressman Weldon serves as Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Chairman of its Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. He has been a member of Congress since 1987. Among his many, many other interests—and he has many of them—Congressman Weldon is a member of the House Science Committee. He is a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security. And he is the founder of the Homeland Security Caucus in the House of Representatives. And also, he founded, as I recall, a Firefighters Caucus in the House as well, because he is a former fireman in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, which is where he comes from.
He has been a frequent participant, furthermore, as we were saying at dinner here, just a few minutes ago, in meetings with Russian leaders. He's a Russian speaker, I might add as well. He has many, many contacts in Russia, and he has participated in and organized meetings with Russian leaders on many issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, energy in general, and of course, national security. He is the founder of the Duma Congress Study Group, which is a bilateral Russian/US parliamentary exchange. And I might say that among Congressman Weldon's many other interests is missile defense, and I had the great honor and pleasure to work with him in organizing a conference that we held on missile defense in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in June 2001. I could say much more about Congressman Weldon. I'm one of his great admirers, and I have the highest regard for him. And I'm delighted to welcome him as our speaker this evening, in this 34th IFPA/Fletcher National Security Conference. Curt?
Congressman Weldon: Thank you, Bob. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. There aren't many people that I would travel all the way down to DC when we're in the midst of recess to speak for. But when Bob calls, because I have such high respect for him and this conference, I said I'd be happy to come down and share some thoughts with you. And there are many friends out in the room that I've worked with over the years, both from the contractor side and the military side. And let me say, thank you for the great work that you've done for us. All of us tonight celebrate the absolutely astounding success of our military. All of us pray for their health and well being. And all of us, on a daily basis, are so proud that we're able to support them in a small way to allow them to continue to do the great work that they do for us constantly, in defending the ideals upon which our nation is founded.
And I want to congratulate the Navy especially for hosting this conference this year. I'm a very proud supporter of our Navy. I'm saddened by the fact that our shipbuilding accounts have been cut so dramatically that we're moving now down to a fleet that is absolutely an embarrassment to us in the Congress, and one that we're dramatically trying to address, from what used to be a high of 585 ships, to what appears to be a direction taking us down to somewhere around 300, or possibly even lower. And that's a part of the concern that we in the Congress are trying to address, and part of what I'll talk about in my comments regarding transformation tonight.
The focus of your conference has been on transformation, and I'm here to give you kind of a Congressional perspective. Now, there are many, certainly many over at the Pentagon and the White House, that think there is no role for the Congress to play in this process. And I would hope that those in those in this room would understand that there is a role for the Congress to play. And I would say, as someone who's been in Congress for 17 years, that while we've had our ups and downs, by and large the Congress has played a dramatic role in where we are today, in terms of our military capability and preparedness.
Just think for a moment: If the Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, hadn't been there during the 90s, when those dramatic cuts were being proposed by the White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the service chiefs all lined up before us in our committee hearings in the House and the Senate, and told us repeatedly, "It's just enough money for us this year. We can live with this budget." But we knew what the threats were. We knew what the commitments, in terms of our troop deployments were. And we, as Democrats and Republicans, disagreed. And that's why during the six years from 1994 to 2000, we in the Congress plussed up our defense budget by $43 billion dollars over what the President and the service chiefs had asked for officially. Forty-three billion dollars, 99% of which went directly to unfunded priorities of the military. Not pork barrel special interest projects, but unfunded priorities on the unfunded priority list of the service chiefs. Thank goodness the Congress was there to play that critical role during the 90s, when we were being told, nationally, we can have a bigger peace dividend. We can cut our defense base even more. We can cut back on our R&D and our technology base.
And thank goodness that Congress, when the White House and our Pentagon leaders told us that we could cut R&D by an average annual amount of 25%, said, "No way. Twenty-five percent reductions in research and development accounts at a time where emerging threats are going to require the latest technology, and a more significant investment in cutting edge technologies, is not acceptable to the Democrats and Republicans in Congress." And thank goodness we objected to and stopped those kinds of draconian cuts, although we could not put back in the amount of money that many of us felt was necessary.
And thank goodness it was the Congress, back in 1996, '97, and '98, who said to the Central Intelligence Agency when John Deutsche (?) was the head of that agency, that we don't believe 9519 (?). In case you don't recall what 9519 was, it was a national intelligence estimate that came out in December of 1995. Oh, by the way, at the same time, President Clinton vetoed our defense bill. And one of the bases for vetoing the bill was because we had mandate movement on missile defense for our country, based on the national intelligence estimate that Matt O'Neill (?), who at that time was a general in charge of the Missile Defense Agency, had not even seen. Thank goodness the Congress stepped in, again, Democrats and Republicans. And the Congress said, "Wait a minute. This intelligence estimate doesn't take into consideration the impact of proliferation of technology, the impact of proliferation of technology from Russia that's going to assist the Iranians with the Shihab (?) missile system, that's going to assist the North Koreans and the Chinese with developing next-generation technologies.
Thank goodness the Congress stood together and required by legislative mandate the creation of a commission that was eventually chaired by Don Rumsfeld, and that commission directly led to HR-4, the bill that I cosponsored, not when George Bush was elected, by the way, even though I'm a Republican, but in 1998. Because that was the year when HR-4 came up for a vote. President Clinton and the White House, and many of our senior military leaders, thought we didn't need HR-4, but we had convinced the Congress through 150 classified briefings and hearings, that the threat was going to be a lot sooner than 15 years, which was the initial estimate in 9519, which by the way was the only time the CIA publicly turned itself around on a national intelligence estimate.
And when the vote came up on HR-4, 103 Democrats voted in favor of the bill, 102 voted with President Clinton against the bill, and all but two Republicans supported it. So it was in 1998 that the Congress gave this country a veto-proof margin to move us forward on missile defense. And here we are in 2003. Iran's already deployed the Shihab 3 system. The Shihab 4 is under development, and the Shihab 5 is in the planning stage. Thank goodness the Congress had the foresight to take the steps to right the wrongs and lay the foundation for what we knew was going to be a threat that we had to deal with in the year 2000 and beyond.
And thank goodness it was the Congress, in 1996, when the Pentagon objected to, heaven forbid, our thoughts of arming the Predator, that I was able to stick a provision in the defense bill that said we will proceed with finding a way to arm the Predator, which has become one of our key workhorses. Again, Congressional action was in the forefront of meeting the threats that we're now dealing with. I could go on and on. I could talk about the commission we created in 1998 and ’99 through legislation, not requested by the Pentagon. That commission was to assess the role of the military in dealing with terrorism in America. That was in 1998. That commission has been chaired by Governor Paul Gilmore. That commission issued three reports before 2001, reports that contained recommendations of what we should have been doing to prepare this nation for terrorist actions that eventually would touch us.
So, is there a role for the Congress? Absolutely, unequivocally. And we will play that role. Now, this is my administration. When I say my administration, it's a Republican administration. But that doesn't mean things have dramatically changed from the administration of President Clinton, in terms of wanting to work with the Congress. Now, I know that might offend some people in the room. But that's okay. That's why I'm here. I'm here to tell you the Congressional perspective. And I'm also here to tell you that this is a critical time for us. And that critical time requires that through transformation that's going to occur, the Congress has got to be involved.
The Congress is a staunch supporter of our military. We showed that during the 90s, when Democrats and Republicans stood tall against the White House, and said that we're going to provide the additional resources that our war fighters need to maintain the capability to address the threats that we know are on the horizon. Because we saw what was occurring. We saw the continual decrease in resources, while we had such a dramatic increase in deployments. I've used the figures frequently when I've talked around the country. If you take the period of time from, say, John Kennedy's era—I won't compare it to Reagan. That would be unfair. But when John Kennedy was president, we were spending 55 cents of every federal tax dollar on the military. In 2000, we were spending 15 cents of the federal tax dollar on the military. Under John Kennedy, it was 9% of our GNP. In 2000, it was 2.5% of our GNP.
Any way you look at it, that was a significant decrease in resources, especially when you consider the fact that under President Kennedy, we had a draft. We paid our military personnel next to nothing. They served the country, and they did so with pride. But today, we have an all-volunteer force. Many have graduate degrees. Many have college degrees, undergrad degrees. Many are married, so we have family, housing, healthcare, other costs that were not there in the 1960s, when Kennedy was president. And back when John Kennedy was president, there was nothing in the defense budget called environmental mitigation. In the 2000 budget, as it is today, that's over $10 billion dollars. In fact, it was x11 billion dollars, to be precise, in 2000. It's up to around $12 billion dollars right now. That's money not going for improvement of systems, or modernization, but money going to clean up old military sites, and deal with those environmental concerns we have.
So during the 90s, we had some terrible things occur that we're now trying to deal with. Because while those resources were being cut, we increased deployments dramatically. Again, if you take the period of time from the end of World War II until 1991, under all of those presidents in 40 years, we had a total of 10 major deployments at home and abroad. From 1991 to 2000, we had 38 major deployments, only one of which was paid for in advance, and that was Desert Storm, when we were able to get our allies to reimburse us for the cost of that operation. In every other deployment, we put our troops in harm's way, and then the Congress was left to find a way to pay the bill. So even though we were cutting defense budgets in the 90s, we had to go in through the appropriations process, and find a way to raise more money to pay those added costs.
So, what happened? Taxes were applied, across the board, to DOD operations. Cuts were made in modernization. Programs were slipped. And as a result, many of those bills are now coming due. And so now we're faced with a problem. As we look at transformation, as we look at dealing with the threats of the 21st century, we have to find a way to continue modernizing, and to continue to have the investment in R&D that will allow us to meet these cutting edge challenges that we see out there, that involve everything from cyber-terrorism and the use of the Internet as a tool against us, to these exotic new weapons that may involve chemical and biological agents that require a whole new capability, both for our troops and for the homeland, to guarantee the protection of the safety of the American people and our military.
Now, this is not to say Congress has been perfect, because we haven't. In fact, I've been very critical of my colleagues, because we haven't allowed the Pentagon to close down more military bases. You can't have it both ways. You can't ask for more accountability of our Pentagon leaders, and then tell those same leaders, "But you can't close bases down, because they're in my district." Now, I know what it's like to lose a military base, because the first ever eight public shipyards that were closed was the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. It cost my district and my region 13,000 jobs. But I supported the Base Closing Commission back then, knowing full way Philadelphia was a prime target, and I support it today. Because you can't continue to decline the resources, and yet not give the military the flexibility to close down infrastructure, to spend that money more wisely, effectively, and efficiently.
The Congress has also, in many cases, provided plus ups, in some cases questionable. But when we see people like Senator McCain criticize plus ups, I would say that by and large, 99% of the plus ups that are put in by Congress, in both the House and the Senate, are on the unfunded priority list of the services. Now, let me also take a jab at my friends in the Pentagon. The services know how to play the game very well. They know full well where the most popular programs are, and if they put it on the unfunded priority list, and don't request the funding, they known full well that contractors can convince members to add that funding in during the appropriation process. We're not stupid on the Hill. We understand that's part of the way the game's played.
But Congress is not without fault in this process of attempting to give the military the kind of transformation assets it needs. Also, we've got to look at what we just did in the last defense bill, in trying to satisfy the needs of our constituents, in terms of buy America. All of us want as many of the products and components that we use in the military to be bought in our country as possible. But we can't take that approach at the same time we're asking our allies to come in and help share the cost of some of these new weapons systems. I don't know where we'd be with the Joint Strikefighter if the Brits and the Italians and the Australians and others hadn't come in and put some serious dollars on the table, and had said to us--
END OF SIDE 1
Congressman Weldon: —products and components, that we don't want you to be involved in helping us to decrease the cost to our taxpayers for these new systems that we need.
So while all of us support the need to focus on rebuilding, where we can, our defense industrial base that we've lost, especially in the manufacturing area, we've also got to realize that we can't do that in a way that might be politically popular at home, but which flies in the face of giving our military contractor base the best capabilities to be able to lower costs and give us programs and platforms, in cooperation with our allies, that can help us meet the challenges that transformation requires.
Now, we're in a critical time. We need to step back and ask ourselves some fundamental questions. And in the Congress, we're trying to do that. We need to have clear strategic planning, but I can tell you in at least one area, we don't think we have it. We don't think we have a clear nuclear strategy. Now, why do I say that? Why am I critical of my own administration and my own government? Well, just look at the votes on the House and Senate Arms Services Committee in this year's markup of our Defense Authorization Bill. Nuclear weapons are still a major part of our military strategy and doctrine. Why then did we have votes in the House of 41 to 37, or of one-vote margins, on whether or not we should build robust earth penetrators, whether or not we should do research on low yield nuclear weapons, what the amount of lead-up time should be to resume nuclear testing if the President warrants that?
All of these issues were very, very controversial issues this year, and I can tell you that many of my colleagues had no clear idea of how they should vote. In fact, as the Vice Chairman of the Arms Services Committee, I had to end up twisting arms of my own colleagues on the Republican side to get them to support the administration's position, because the administration had not done the job of showing it's nuclear strategy to the members of Congress, so the votes would be easy, let alone the Democrats, who largely opposed all of the administration's efforts.
So as a result of that, members of Congress in both parties listened to people like Johnny Foster (?) and Jim Scheslinger (?) and Jim Woolsey (?) and Bob Pfaltzgraff, and 20 other leaders. They recommended to us that we create a Strategic Nuclear Commission to take a long-term look at, where are we going in the 21st century? What is the role of nuclear weapons? Do we need more smaller, tactical nukes? Do we need research into these low yield penetrators? Do we need to have more flexibility in the lead-up time to resume testing? And what is the posture? And unfortunately, the Pentagon opposed us. And so the result was, we had to pull that recommendation from our bill. But in the Congress, because this issue is so critical important, especially in terms of transformation—Because one of the key components of transformation is, what is going to be the role of our nuclear arsenal in this transformation? And if we don't understand it, then clearly there's going to be confusion on the Hill, and there's going to be confusion throughout America.
So in spite of the administration's objections, we're going to proceed. And with the cooperation of one of your panelists, Dr. Keith Payne, who was here today, we're going to do it independent of the government. Now, the Pentagon is not going to be happy, but we tried to get them to go along with us, because we thought this would be a plus for the Pentagon leaders to help have Congress more fully understand what our nuclear posture is. But when the Pentagon doesn't respond, and when the Pentagon says we don't need it, then we have no choice. We'll fund it through private foundations, and that external commission will come back and look at those overall opportunities, and the possibilities for transformation for the next 10 to 15 years, next 50 years, on the use of nuclear capability and nuclear weapons.
That's all the more reason why the Congress has got to be involved in this transformation process. As someone who just fought the battle for Secretary Rumsfeld on some very controversial issues, issues involving transforming the way we oversee our Pentagon workforce—Very controversial, very much opposed by the labor movement. We need to have the Congress involved in the process, not just in the end, when the tough votes come about, but the Congress needs to be involved in the planning stage, so that when those tough issues come up, there is a clear foundation, a clear basis of thought, so that we can win the votes not by one- or two-vote margins, but that we can win the votes because members of Congress who want to do the right thing for our military clearly understand the reasoning behind those transition elements that are a part of the administration's long-term program.
In fact, it's not just in the area of Nuclear Posture Review, and an entire nuclear strategy. It's also in the area of planning in general. Congress must be involved as transformation is outlined by our military leaders for the next 20 years. We also need to have an aggressive pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Now, I'm not talking about Iraq. You know, all this political rhetoric that's come up—and it's all political rhetoric—about not finding weapons of mass destruction is a non-issue. The vote on whether or not to support the President on our Iraq policy wasn't done based on his State of the Union speech in January. The vote on supporting the President was in October of last year, three months before the State of the Union speech. And that vote, which was overwhelming in both the House and the Senate, with both Democrats and Republicans, was based on information all of us had access to.
So, when the pundits come out and say that we're basing our decision on bad information, that's just flat out wrong. Because the President's State of the Union Speech where he alluded to weapons of mass destruction came three months later. But all of us knew. Anyone who followed this issue, anyone who took advantage of classified briefings, anyone who followed the UN special reports on human rights, like that produced by Max Vandrestall (?), where he said that Saddam Hussein only had one equal in the last 50 years, and that was Adolph Hitler, in terms of using weapons of mass destruction against his own people, chemical weapons against the Kurds, biological experimentation, and nuclear desire. We all knew that.
I'm not talking about that pursuit. I'm talking about the need to pursue weapons of mass destruction where largely the originated, and that's in the former Soviet states, in Russia in particular. Because if you look around the world today, the bulk of the weapons of mass destruction that terrorists want to get their hands on, that rogue states want to get their hands on, are in Russia. Because that's where the bulk of these weapons were produced. That's where these nuclear materials and weapons grade plutonium was developed. In fact, back in 1990, I had Dr. Alexei Yablokov (?) come over and testify before my subcommittee. He's a leading member of the Academy of Sciences. And I had him testify because the official Russian declaration on chemical weapons was that they had produced 40,000 metric tons. So I had Yablokov come in and testify. He said, "Oh, no. It was more like 100,000 metric tons." One hundred thousand metric tons of chemical weapons produced by the Soviet Union.
And biological weapons, you don't have to go very far to read the book of Ken Aliback (?). Dr. Ken Aliback, who is now down at George Mason University, wrote the book in 1998 called Biohazard. And as most of you know, Ken Aliback, in his prior life when he was living in his homeland of Russia, was the number two leader of the agency called Bio Propet (?). What was his job? His job for decades was to help oversee the development of biological weapons, 60 strains of anthrax, smallpox, and how to weaponize those agents. So our focus needs to be on getting at those weapons of mass destruction that still exist in Russia.
Now, we've done a good job. Our cooperative threat reduction program that was originated by Dick Lugar and Sam Nunn has done a good job. But it needs improvement. Because there are some sites that Russia will not allow us to have access to. They are still closed, and there are still problems in using our dollars in a way that we feel totally confident about. We've built some facilities that, in the end, the purpose of that facility has gone away. They were the subjects of major disagreement in our defense authorization markup this year in the House and the Senate. There are other revelations that are going to come out, that are going to shake this city. Because one of my tasks over the past several years has been to work within Russia to find a way to get access that allows us to get to those sites that up until now they've denied us access to. If there's one key priority for me, in terms of our national security for the 21st century, it is getting at those weapons of mass destruction that still exist in Russia.
In August of this year, I took a delegation to the closed city of Krasnoyarsk 26, now known as Alejnigorsk (?), a city of 102,000 people on the side of the Yennessi (?) river. The reason we went there is because buried inside of a mountain there, in the 1950s and 60s, the Soviets built three weapons grade, plutonium producing reactors inside the mountain. Two of them have been shut down, and the third is scheduled to be shut down, but it's also the site where they store their weapons grade plutonium. Now, we asked them the question, while we were there, "Are you satisfied with the security of this weapons grade material from the threat of terrorism?" And the answer, unfortunately, was no. "You know, Congressman, we used to have the military here. And they used to guard the entrance to the mountain with weapons. Now we have a civilian security effort, and we don't feel that it's capable of defending against the threats, including Chechnyan terrorists, who have specifically listed Krasnoyarsk 26 and Tomsk as key targets of their efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon."
So, in talking about the transformation of our military, we cannot forget that I think one of our top priorities has got to be to remove those weapons that those terrorist organizations and rogue states want to acquire. And where are they? They're in Russia. So we've got to find ways to work smarter, to improve the cooperative threat reduction program, not to waste money, and certainly not to waste DOD money, but to do it more efficiently, and to do it more effectively. And that's got to be a key part, and will be a key part of the effort in Congress, as we move toward the next 10 to 15 years.
We've also got to work on our intelligence. We need a seamless intelligence system that allows us to access data and use it. And unfortunately, we're making good progress, but we're not there yet. And it's very frustrating to me. I think back to an incident that I'm going to repeat for you, from 1999. Because it tells the story the best for me. I was really unhappy with the way that we started bombing Yugoslavia to get Milosevic out of power, not because I supported Milosevic. He's a war criminal, and I agree with what's happening in the Hague. But I disagree with that approach because I was given access to a document that had been prepared internally in the State Department for the Vice President and Sandy Berger. And that six-page document, which I shared with 10 members of Congress, five Republicans and five Democrats, basically said, "We don't want Russia involved."
Well, Russia is the big brother of Serbia, and Russia, perhaps more than any other country, in my opinion at the time, was the nation that should have forced to get Milosevic out of power. But here we were, bombing Serbia, and yet not letting Russia play a critical role. Well, my Russian friends in the political factions in that country contacted me and said, "You're driving a wedge between us." And I said, "What do you want me to do?" And they said, "We can help you. Yeltsin's prepared to use the influence of Russia to help get Milosevic out of power." I said, "Well, tell me what specifically you want me to do. We're at war with you. And I want Milosevic out of power as much as Bill Clinton does."
And they said, "Well, come with us. We'll go together. You bring a delegation of members of congress. We'll bring a delegation of Duma deputies, and we'll go to Belgrade together." I said, "We're not going to do that in the middle of a war. We're not going to stop the war for us to go over there as freelance negotiators. I'm not going to do that." I said, "But I'll tell you what I want you to do. Put your request in writing. Identify the leaders of the factions. Guarantee me a meeting with Milosevic. Give me a date and time certain, and tell me that you'll let us see our three POWs, which up until then we hadn't heard from." Two days later, that document arrived.
So, with my good friend and colleague, Stenny Hoyer (?), who's the second ranking Democrat in the House, we went down to meet with Strobe Talbot (?) in the top floor of the State Department. I explained to Strobe what happened, and that we were prepared, if the administration wanted us, to support this effort by using the Russians' offer to get Milosevic to step down. Talbot said, "I don't think it's a good idea. We can't guarantee your safety. We can stop you from going, but we don't think it's a good idea." I said, "If you say we shouldn't go, we won't go." Stenny suggested we go to a neutral city, Vienna. Talbot said okay.
Now, the Russians told me they were going to bring another person from Yugoslavia who they felt had access to Milosevic, even though he wasn't part of the government. I thought, well, that's interesting. I know these Russians. I've met them many times, and I trust them. And they're from all the factions, Noshdorm Russia, Yabliko (?). Even the Communists had representatives. I know them all. But I don't know this Serb. So I picked up the phone and called George Tenet. I said, "Director, can you give me a lowdown on this individual?" He said, "Why do you want to know that?" I said, "Well, he's going to be with the Russians when we go to Vienna this weekend, and I want to know who I'm dealing with. And if he's a part of the Milosevic government, I don't want to talk to him, because that would violate the Hobbs Act." You can't negotiate with the enemy while you're at war. You can't even talk to them, under the Hobbs Act.
So, a day later he called me back and gave me a couple of sentences about this individual. He said, "You've got to watch him. We think he might be tied in with some corruption inside of Russia." Well, I'd been working with the Army and the other services on standing up our information dominance centers. Because at the time, I was the chairman of the research committee. And we were doing great things back in the late 90s. The Navy, the Air Force, the Army, and the Marines were unbelievable. Cutting edge use of data mining, cutting edge use of new software tools like Starlight and Spires, to go through massive amounts of data, and to develop trends and patterns, external data, not just for military information, but also from other classified systems that they were able to access.
And in particular, I'd gone down to Fort Belvoir, where the Army's LIWA facility was doing a really fantastic job. This facility, by the way, was built with some contractors who are in this room today. And they were saying, "You know, Congressman, we can do more than just manage the data, and guarantee the security of our Army systems. We can do data mining of massive amounts of information, and we can use that to show trends and patterns. Let us give you some examples." I called John Hamre on the phone, a man who I have the highest respect for. He was number two at the Pentagon at the time. I said, "John, have you been down to Fort Belvoir yet?" He said no. I said, "You've got to go down and see what the Army is doing." He went down there, he came back, and he said, "You're right, they're doing great work." I gave them some test cases on proliferation. Before I went to Vienna, I called the Army. And I said, "Can you do me a favor, off the record? Can you run a profile of this guy for me that I'm going to meet in Vienna and tell me something about him?"
In 1999, the Army gave me eight pages of information about this guy. Eight pages of information. The CIA gave me two sentences. The Army gave me eight pages. So when I went over to Vienna, I knew all about the connections, and I knew all about the linkages. We met with the Russians for two days. This guy was in the room. He kept calling back to Belgrade. And finally, we reached an agreement, the terms the President wanted. Maurice Hinshy (?), a Democrat supporter of Clinton, called the White House Operations Center, and he talked to John Pedesto (?) on the phone on Saturday afternoon. The State Department guy with me called back and talked to the State Department Operations Center, and we gave them some startling news. Belgrade and Milosevic was willing to accept the conclusions we'd come to. In fact, three weeks later, that document became the basis of the G8 agreement, with Russia's involvement, that ended the war.
But here's my point on the intelligence issue. We came back to America, and I got a phone call from the FBI. And they said to my staff, "We want Congressman Weldon to tell us about his trip, and about his meeting with this individual." My staff said, "Do you want to do it?" I said, "Absolutely. Set it up for Monday afternoon." The Friday before that Monday, I got a 911 page from my staff in DC. They said, "Call the CIA right away." I said, "Okay." I called CIA Congressional Affairs. They said, "Congressman, we want fly two agents to Philadelphia right now. They'll meet you at the airport. You can go to a hotel next door to the airport, or wherever you want." And I said, "What's the urgency?" "We've been tasked, Congressman, to brief the State Department official who's negotiating the end of the Kosovo war on this guy that you met with. He needs that information." I said, "Well, the FBI has already asked for it. Can't we do it together on Monday?"
So that Monday afternoon in my office, I had four agents, two FBI agents and two CIA agents, including one CI (?) person. And we sat there for an hour and a half. They each had two pages of typewritten questions. I saved them just so they could never refute my story. They asked me all the questions about this guy, and I gave them all the answers. And when I finished, I said to the CIA and the FBI, "Now, you know where I got my data from?" And they said, "Oh, yeah, you got it from the Russians." I said no. "Oh, you got it from the guy." No. I said, "Before I left Washington, I called the Army's Information Dominance Center down at Fort Belvoir, and asked them to run me a profile of this guy, and they gave me eight pages." And the FBI and the CIA said, "What's the Army's Information Dominance Center?"
You want to know why intelligence is important in transformation? It's because of that need. That was in 1999, and that led us to put language in two successive defense bills, calling for the creation of a joint capability. John Hamre said to me, "Congressman, I want to do this. I'll pay for it. I don't care where it's housed. I'll pay for it. But you've got to get the FBI and the CIA to agree. So I have a suggestion for you, Congressman." This is the fall of 2000. "Please convene a meeting in your office. I'll come. And bring the number two person from the FBI and the CIA person in, and brief them on this concept." So in October of 2000, October of 2000, in my office, sat John Hamre, the Deputy Director of the FBI, and the Deputy Director of the CIA. And we briefed them on something we called the National Operations and Analysis Hub, which I didn't design. It was done by intelligence people who knew the need.
We went through the whole capability. Hamre said, "I'll pay for it." Eight pages of material. It will bring together all 33 classified systems that exist in the federal government, only using external data, not spying on Americans. And the FBI and the CIA, in October of 2000, said, "We don't need it. We're doing good work on our own. We don't need that capability." Now, the Marine Corps took that example, and down at their headquarters and special ops headquarters, they developed a prototype also, and used that data. In fact, a year before 9/11, we had a complete profile of al-Qaeda. In fact, I took that down to the White House, and showed it to a person who will remain nameless. When I showed him the document, it was given to me by special forces command. He said to me, "Congressman, where did you get this from?" I said, "I got it from the military." He said, "I've got to show this to the man." I said, "Who's the man?" He said, "You know who the man is. The man in the Oval Office."
My point is that oftentimes, there are things that are happening that allow us to complete transformation that we don't pay attention to. If we'd have listened to what the services were telling us back in the 90s, if we'd have listened to what individually was happening, the cutting edge use of technology, perhaps our transformation could have occurred before 9/11, that would have helped us understand what was about to happen. If we'd have looked at things like intelligence, and that seamless system that we need, the use of data mining, the use of new, cutting edge software tools—All of that has to be a key priority for the transformation of the 21st century.
Now, I had an unfortunate experience with DARPA. They knew what they had to do, but unfortunately John Poindexter was not the right person to do it, even though he's a very capable man. The media jumped all over that, and those who opposed it said, "It's going to be used to spy on the American people." That was a total, absolute lie. That was never the intention of total information awareness. It was a desire to create a capability to use cutting edge technology to allow our war fighters and our decision makers to have the best and most complete base of information possible. We're still struggling with that today. The President announced it in the State of the Union speech, but our military has got to continue in our transformation to give us that seamless intelligence capability that we have to have.
And that also includes a seamless system that brings in our local responders. And in fact, our military again has led the way. We have a new program called JRESE (?). Since I work with the firefighters all across the country, and our law enforcement, I can tell you this military system is working unbelievably well. First prototyped up in New York and California, we're now integrating vertically the sharing of limited data with local first responders, all the way up to the chain, and back down the chain, to help us more fully understand emerging threats. As transformation continues, we need to build and expand on those kind of programs, which in many cases, the military is already working on, whether it's through DARPA or whether it's through the individual services. Again, we need to look within and see the kinds of things that are being done, sometimes by our labs, sometimes by our contractors, but in many cases, answers to concerns that we're going to have to have in the 21st century.
Besides our intelligence capability, communication, integrated communication, capability to have all of our platforms intertwined for the battlefield of the future. And you know what's so frustrating to me? We talk a good game about this. But neither the Pentagon nor the White House will take on the big media moguls to implement the most fundamental need for transformation in the area of communications and intelligence. And you're going to have Art Cebrowski here tomorrow, and I hope you ask him the question. And that is, why won't they free up the frequency spectrum allocation for public safety that was called for in 1995? That's when the first report was put out by the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee. And they recommended 20 megahertz be set aside for the military and public safety. And here we are in 2003, and that frequency spectrum still has not been set aside.
Yet that is the most important thing for our military, in terms of communication and the use of information technology, to have that wide band capability, that frequency spectrum, that all of us know is going to be needed through transformation, and yet we still haven't done it. Because you don't want to take on those TV stations in the 60 range of your channel who currently occupy that frequency spectrum that should have been made available eight years ago.
Technology. We've got to continue to invest more money through transformation on new technologies, and apply it in very direct and quick manners. And that means we have to help increase the funding for DARPA, and our labs. Because many of the threats we see on the horizon in the future are going to require cutting edge technology advances using information systems, and at the same time protecting that information data from being compromised by our adversaries.
Congress does want to be of assistance in each of these areas. We want to help in the technology area. We proved that in the 90s, as we resisted the attempts to cut our cutting edge research budgets. We want to reform the acquisition system. And now, the administration has no excuse. We gave them everything they asked for in reforming the way the Pentagon operates. We gave them the flexibility to move people around. And so now our challenge to the Pentagon leaders is, deliver. We gave you the tough votes. We took on the labor movement. We won some tough battles, and we changed the policies which oversee the way you operate. You asked for it. Now it's time for you to deliver on the streamlining, on the movement, on the transition of Pentagon employees, in the decrease of the buyers, so that we have a better way to give us the products and technologies the military needs quicker, and in a more cost effective manner.
And finally, we have to get our financial house in order through transformation. I remember when I chaired the Readiness Subcommittee, I was concerned that we weren't spending enough money on readiness. So I took five members of Congress on a whirlwind trip. I said, "We're going to do something dramatic, because I'm very unhappy with the state of our base housing, with the state of our schools and our hospitals and our military bases. So we're going to get each of the services to give us their five worst examples of their readiness. Five worst examples." I called the services and I said, "I don't want to go to a base, and go to the dining hall of the Commander of the base, and have a nice lunch with the crystal, and talk about all that's right there. I want to go to your worst sites. I want to see the problems with dining halls, with housing. We're not going to cast any blame, because if there's blame, it should fall on the White House, the Pentagon, or the Congress, not on the services, because that's where the budgets were cut."
Well, they did that. They gave us those sites. The five of us took off, early morning on a Monday, and in four days we went to 15 states, and from 7:00 in the morning until midnight in those four days, we visited 24 installations, across the country, up into Washington state, down through California, Arizona, the Midwestern part of the country, and down to the coast of the East. And we saw the worst possible conditions. We saw raw sewage coming down in barracks. We saw showers where the water was a foot deep on the first floor, because it was improper drainage. We saw schools with mold on the ceiling, because it hadn't been properly maintained. We saw dining halls in the South where the temperature was in the 100 degree range, because the air conditioning didn't work. We saw spalding (?) on runways that could damage a jet engine. We saw recruits using their own money to take care of repairing the walls in their barracks. We saw conditions you wouldn't see in the worst public housing in America. And we heard time and again from the engineering staffs of our bases that when we should have been using an industry standard of 5% for the improvement of that base each year, no base that we visited was putting more than 1% of their funds into base improvements.
And as a result of that effort, we realized that we weren't doing well by our military personnel. And so as a result of that effort, we understood that it's not just about—Transformation is not just about new systems. It's not just about new technologies. It's not just about integrating our information systems. It's not just about network-centric warfare. It's also about the quality of life for the troops. Because through the transformation, you better take care of morale. Because if in the end that family is not feeling good about what they're doing, if in the end that soldier, sailor, Marine, or Corpsman doesn't feel good that his wife has a decent place to shop, that his kids have a decent place to go to school, that they don't have the kind of quality life they should have, then the entire system is going to fall apart. And so the one area where we will have the most support to the transformation of the next 10 years, next 20 years, is in guaranteeing that we put whatever amount of money is necessary into the continued improvement of the quality of our troops.
And let me just say again, our military, I think, is showing the way. You know, we tend to criticize the military for not having answers. Go listen to the Marine Corps out at California, Camp Pendleton, where they took privatization and wrote the book on how to do it well. And they're doing it with the same amount of money, providing state-of-the-art homes for the men and women who serve in the Marine Corps. Go look at the work being done by they Army at bases across the country. The privatization process is allowing us to modernize our base housing to continue to improve the quality of life, and yet not do it in a way that bankrupts the other financial needs that we have.
So, the transformation challenges are real, and they're deep. There's one underlying message I want to leave with you today, especially with my friends from the Pentagon and the services. The Congress is made up of some of the best friends you have. We proved that during the 90s, Democrats and Republicans. Any transformation program, any transformation system, had better have the Congress involved as a part of the process, or it won't work. We will play our role under the Constitution, and yes, we will have our say, both in the authorization and appropriation bills. And so as you continue this seminar tomorrow, and talk about the specifics of what transformation is going to mean for each of the services, and for the Pentagon in general, make sure there's a component or a contingent in every aspect of that planning involving those members of Congress from both parties who want to be there to support you, who want to take your ideas and put them into place, so that in the end we continue to have the best trained, the best equipped military in the world. Thank you.
Questions and Answers
If anyone has any questions, I'll try to answer them. I can't promise I'll answer your question, but I'll promise you I'll give you my opinion, because I'm an expert on my own opinion. What's your question or criticism or comment? Yes, sir? Tell me where you're from, first of all.
Audience: Congressman, my name's Brice Harris. I'm from the OSDC ...[inaudible] If I may, sir, tonight you spoke a lot about transformation, in particular. But in terms of the operational capabilities of our forces, I might ask you where was it that ...[inaudible]
Congressman Weldon:: Okay. The Crusader program was a program that we felt was going to be a priority of the Pentagon, and in fact, the support for the Congress was strong. In the case of the cancellation, it caught many members off guard, and there wasn't an opportunity to reverse that decision. All I can tell you is, I wasn't involved in that battle, but I was involved in a similar battle, and can prove to you that Congress can play a role when decisions like this are made. And for all of my Marine friends in the room, they know this story well, because it's a case study of the Naval War College. And that was when the V-22 was canceled. I led the effort, with my friends in the Congress and the Marine Corps, to tell the story of the lack of a replacement for that aircraft. And it took us about seven years, battle after battle after battle. That's the only major weapon system, ever, that was canceled by the Pentagon.
And think of this for a moment. It was canceled by the Secretary of Defense, who now is our vice president, Dick Cheney. And he canceled it with the support of the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Les Aspen (?), and the Democrat chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, Sam Nunn, with the support for canceling it, with the Republican ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Bill Dickinson (?), and the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, five top officials in Washington. And we beat them.
Now, why did we beat them? WE beat them because the Marine Corps wanted that program, because the Marine Corps was ready to go to the wall for that need, that medium lift over the horizon capability. And we beat them because we put together a strategy that repeatedly told that story. Now, why wasn't that done with the Crusader? All I can tell you is, I think if the Army would have wanted it as desperately as the Marine Corps wanted the V-22, we could have put together a strategy to win it. That didn't happen. Part of it was because there wasn't enough time. The decision was too late. In my own opinion, that's one of the reasons why J.C. Watts (?) didn't run for reelection.
Dr. Pfaltzgraff: We have time for one or two more questions. Who would like to ask a question? Is there another question here? In the back. Wait for the microphone, please.
Audience: You've been to Russia a lot. You study Russia. The Russian population is projected to fall by about 20 million over the next 20 years because of AIDS, tuberculosis, alcoholism, a host of problems. You can see where, if they don't incorporate that kind of a problem into their own transformation, it's going to present problems for us. And I just wonder what your opinion of your interaction with the Duma might be on how they're going to approach that problem.
Congressman Weldon:: Well, there are a lot of lengthy answers I could give you to that questions. But you're absolutely right. Russia's got major internal problems. They're aware of that. Putin is a very clever man. If you're watching what he's doing right now, not through a direct action, but through indirect actions, he's basically, in my opinion, reconstituting what was the former Soviet Union, and he's doing it through energy. If you look at what's happening with Gas Prom (?), there was competition initially in Russia and the former Soviet states. And unfortunately—and I have to blame our own government, my own government—through some actions that we took in not supporting those individual energy companies, Gas Prom has now replaced all of the energy suppliers in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Turkmenistan, and the other -stans, with the complicit assistance of the US, so that now Gas Prom, which is totally controlled—Actually, it's a majority owned by the Russian government. Muller (?), who runs it, is one of Putin's best friends. Putin has now reassembled that leverage of the use of energy over almost every one of those former Soviet states that now is totally dependent on Gas Prom for their energy supply.
What's Putin doing internally? He's trying to bring some reform back to the country. Is he taking things too far, as he did with Kotakofsky (?), who's the magnate that ran the Yucose (?) Corporation, that's now in jail? Yes, that's a political decision he made. But let me say this to you. You know, if you're the average Russian, and you looked at what happened in the 90s—And from the Russian perspective, we helped cause this. Because it was people from America that were helping advise the Russians, in the reforms they were making. And they frequently will point to people like Jeffrey Sachs (?) at Harvard or others, and say, "Well, they were over here advising us. They knew the oligarchs were getting all this benefit, and that's why Mikhail Kotakofsky in eight years made $8 billion dollars, because there was no one there putting the restraints on the oligarchs from being able to take this money and then invest it over in the US, Europe, other nations, people like Abramovitz (?), who just bought the rugby team in London, moving Russian money out of the country.
And so there's a lot of indignation in Russia today, that the assets that should have gone to help them build a stable economy did not. Now, many of us knew in the 90s there were theft of billions of dollars of IMF and World Bank money. We told, in the 1997/98 time frame, that there would be stories of US involvement. The Justice Department indicted Bank of New York officials in 1999 for allegedly working with Russian oligarchs to steal almost $5 billion dollars of IMF money.
So, there's a feeling in Russia that America really doesn't want to be a solid partner, that Americans only wanted to use Russia from time to time, when it was convenient for our foreign policy objectives. Now, I don't fully agree with that, but I understand why they feel that way. Our job is to hold Russia accountable, make sure they are more transparent, make sure that we're their best friend, but we're also their toughest critic. And it's not going to be easy. To do anything less would be a major disaster for us, because Russia still has all those nuclear warheads. They still have that weapons grade plutonium. They still have much of that 100,000 metric tons, or whatever it is, of chemical agent. They still have those biological weapons that Ken Aliback wrote about. And all those materials are the kind of things that terrorists and rogue states want to buy, whether it's Iraq or Iran, or whether it's Syria or Libya, or whether it's al-Qaeda or the FARC. They're the kind of materials they want.
So we have no choice. We have to engage Russia in a way that is transparent, and in a way that holds them accountable, but in a way that lets them understand in the end we want them to succeed, and be a partner of ours. And they're going to go through some extremely difficult times, and you've hit upon some of those issues they have to deal with, namely AIDS, tuberculosis, health problems, and trying to get that economy moving. Thank you.
Dr. Pfaltzgraff: May I express thanks to Congressman Weldon for this outstanding presentation, which has been a fitting culmination to what I believe, and I think we all believe, has been a successful day here. But keep in mind that we have tomorrow morning, to begin at 8:30. So I hope that everyone will be here promptly at 8:30. We have a full day planned for tomorrow. Curt, again, many thanks for being with us tonight. This meeting is now adjourned.