Frank J. Gaffney - coordinator, Coalition to Defend America; columnist, The Washington Times; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy, 1983-1987.

 I would like to start with a short anecdote which I think might set the stage for my remarks tonight.

It is a story I believe to be true. It was told to me by a participant, so that might or might not make it true. It comes from the era when the President of the United States was Richard Nixon. He was making a state visit to Italy. Of course, when in Rome one does what the Romans do, which is try to get on the Pope's schedule.

And he took along with him, as usual, his full national security entourage, which at that time was comprised of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a man I think well known to you all, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.

As you may know, the two cabinet officers did not exactly get along very well. In fact, according to the storyteller, Dr. Kissinger went to some lengths to try to ensure that Melvin Laird did not know about the papal audience and would not be told when it was or where it was. But having served in the Department of Defense, I can tell you that Secretaries of Defense have some access to information in their own right, and he managed to get there. In fact, he got there before Henry Kissinger got there. Time enough, indeed, to light up a good cigar.

Well, when Dr. Kissinger arrived in the Pope's anterooms and not only found the Secretary of Defense present but smoking a cigar on top of it, he was horrified. But there was nothing to be done. It was obvious Secretary Laird was going to go into the meeting. All Dr. Kissinger could do was say, "Well, for God's sake, Mel, put out the cigar." But Mel Laird, not being a man to waste a good cigar, wasn't going to throw it away. So he tapped it out, slipped it in a side pocket and walked in with the rest of the group into the papal presence.

There were two rows of chairs there facing the Holy Father: the front row for the President and his cabinet officers, the back row for the horseholders, bagmen and other hangers-on. A short while into the audience, with the Pope going on at some length about something or other, there was a gentle but audible tapping from the front row. Nobody paid it much attention. A few moments later it was rather more noticeable, so noticeable in fact that the back row mistook it for a signal to begin applauding, thinking that the pope must have said something worthy of applause. So they began clapping. The front row, the President and the cabinet members present, obviously not knowing what the devil the back row was doing but thinking that something must require applause, started clapping, too.

As Dr. Kissinger put it later, in reminiscing about the waft of smoke that was coming up from the direction of the Secretary of Defense, "God alone knows what the Holy Father thought when confronted with the entire American delegation bursting into applause at the sight of the Secretary of Defense self-immolating."

I don't know if it's true, to be honest with you, but it's a great story. And having been in government, I think we can say it probably is true. It certainly sounds about right.

But whether it's true or not, it is as close a parallel as I can give you to describe my emotions in watching the President of the United States of the moment, William Jefferson Clinton, engaging in the incredible performance he put in with his cabinet officers and hangers-on in Moscow last week. And I would like to develop that thought a little bit, for two reasons:

One is because buried in the fine print below the reviews that have generally, I'm happy to say, been dismal for this summit meeting with Boris Yeltsin, is in my view the single most worrisome national security problem we face.

I'll leave you hanging on that for a moment and come to the second point. This summit makes one thing perfectly clear. It showed why we as a people, and most especially we as conservatives, and particularly we as thinking, committed, engaged, activist-oriented conservatives, cannot subscribe to the notion that the world -- with the so-called "end of Communism," with the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the glorious victory over the Evil Empire -- has been transformed permanently and assuredly into a benign environment. The Moscow Summit demonstrates why we cannot continue to indulge in the delusion that we can now safely tend here at home to all of the things we would really rather be concerned with rather than remain vigilant to our interests overseas, to say nothing of the security of our people.

So let me speak first to the micro problem and then to the macro.

I regard the single most serious national security problem of our time to be the fact that we are today -- and, if Bill Clinton has his way, we will remain for the foreseeable future -- absolutely vulnerable as a nation to an attack involving weapons of mass destruction delivered by ballistic missiles.

Now, I'm not going to do what I often do because, frankly, this audience is a bad sample. I'm sure that there is hardly a person in this room who is by virtue of Danny Graham's ministrations over the years -- and those of Morton Blackwell, Paul Weyrich and others -- as ignorant about this reality as I regret to say almost all of our compatriots are.

Frank Luntz did a poll for us -- a little group I've put together called the Coalition to Defend America. He established that approximately six out of ten Americans will, when asked, assert quite blithely that the U.S. government would be able to shoot down a ballistic missile if it were launched at the United States. Frankly, I think most of the other four out of ten were dissembling because a great many other polls indicate that the number is higher than that.

We have begun doing focus groups around the country. We convened one in Columbia, South Carolina recently. It was observed by Floyd Spence -- whom I hope most of you know is now, thanks be to God, chairman of the House National Security Committee. Sixteen out of the 16 of his constituents who participated in that focus group -- white, black, Republican, Democrat, Clinton voters, Bush voters, Perot voters, relatively rich, relatively poor, young, old, educated, -- every single one of those people, ladies and gentlemen, responded to the question, "What would happen if a nuclear missile were launched at Columbia, South Carolina" by saying, "Well, we would shoot it down."

To be honest, some said, "I hope we would shoot it down," or "We would shoot it down, wouldn't we?" In short, they, like most Americans, take for granted a very basic proposition: Our government couldn't conceivably leave us naked to a ballistic missile attack that regrettably is no longer possible simply from the former Soviet Union, or even simply from China. Today -- thanks to policies being pursued by our friend, Boris Yeltsin, and by the leaders of the government in China and by our newfound friends in Pyongyang, North Korea and elsewhere in the world -- there is a burgeoning market in ballistic missile technology.

Indeed, the recently departed director of Central Intelligence, Jim Woolsey, said the CIA believes 25 countries in this world are now engaged in acquiring chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles with which to deliver them rapidly and reliably to places around the world.

Today, with enough money, you can buy a Soviet-built SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missile for what is pocket change in the great scheme of things. Of course, you'll have to go along with the pretense that it's for launching objects into space, but that's not too big a problem for the deceitful dictators who run the world's rogue nations.

 When the Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry, was asked, about the possibility that there is truth to reports that Libya -- LIBYA -- might have already bought some SS-25s and might therefore already be able to launch chemical weapons (which the Germans were kind enough to help them build a factory to produce), or something worse, at Washington, D.C., Colorado, Texas, California -- you name it, well, Bill Perry came up with the comforting response, "We don't think that's true, but even if it were true we don't think they'd know how to use them."

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're smart enough to buy a ballistic missile from Russia and you can come up with the pocket change that is involved, you surely are going to be able to get (on retainer, if not on permanent salary) every missileer and scientist you want from the former Soviet Union. Most of whom don't have anything better or more lucrative to do. I don't mean to make light of this, because it is deadly serious.

The truth is that we live in a world increasingly comprised of people (among Jim Woolsey's list of 25 is every rogue nation on earth) who frankly don't like us very much, often for different reasons. But it really doesn't matter what the reason is. It's enough that they don't like us and that we have, particularly under this administration, been making every effort possible to impress upon them that they can get what they want by threatening us. And how better to threaten us, folks, than threatening to rain down deadly weapons of mass destruction when we can do nothing to stop it?

Let me just play out a scenario for you. Remember Desert Storm -- George Bush's glorious victory. He put together this "grand coalition." Think about it. How many countries do you think would have enlisted in this grand coalition if London, Paris or Rome could have been credibly threatened with destruction by a ballistic missile delivering a nuclear (or some other) weapon from Saddam Hussein's hands?

How many of you, for that matter, think that the vote in the U.S. Senate to go to war against Iraq -- which passed by a margin of just two votes -- would have come out the same way if, indeed, Saddam could have destroyed part of the United States with a missile? Frankly, I don't think we would have gotten Congress' approval.

Some people say, especially in the aftermath of Oklahoma City, "Don't bother me with these ballistic missiles. What happens if the bad guys have a truck"? The difference between a truck and a ballistic missile somewhere in Iraq, or Iran, or Syria, or Libya, or North Korea, to say nothing of Russia and China, is that a missile confers power to deter. Even before it is used, it can get results.

This is not to say that you shouldn't worry about truck-bombs. You should. It is simply to say that, as you would do as homeowners who have a flood, you still better buy fire insurance.

The real message that I want to leave with you is that today, we as a community of people who believe we need to defend our country against missile attack, our forces overseas and our allies, have a realistic option for doing so. It is an extraordinarily simple option, one that we can get behind and support, not only because it is technologically sound and because it is near-term and because it will be reasonably effective, but because, praise be to God, it is cheap! And in an era when Congressman John Kasich has that and very little else on his mind, that's important.

Thanks to approximately $50 billion we as taxpayers have invested over the previous 20 years or so, the United States Navy has already deployed around the world essentially all the infrastructure we need to begin a global deployment against missile attack: the Aegis fleet air defense system.

That may not mean much to you, but an Aegis cruiser, the Vincennes, was the ship that unfortunately took out an Iranian passenger jet some years ago. It is a very competent anti-aircraft system. But it also gives us the platforms, the radars, the launchers, even the missiles, that we need to begin defending ourselves against ballistic missile attack.

For approximately two to maybe three billion dollars more (not peanuts, but the petty cash drawer has more than that at the Pentagon!), spent over the next five years, would begin making our existing Aegis cruisers into missile killers.

Unless Bill Clinton has his way, a captain sitting aboard one of those cruisers off the coast of North Korea would be able to intercept missiles coming out of North Korea. Or if he's sitting off the coast near San Francisco, or Seattle, or Boston, or New York, he'd be able to intercept them before they arrive. If in the Mediterranean, he would be able to defend our friends in Israel and our friends in Europe, and, needless to say, in the western Pacific, our friends there, too.

Now, I say, "Unless Bill Clinton has his way." I must tell you, although you probably won't believe I'm serious. But I am

-- I am deadly serious. The Clinton administration doesn't want to have this system deployed at all. In fact, they have a negotiating position on the table with the Russians right now that would say we won't deploy it unless they give us permission to deploy it.

But let's just say for the purposes of discussion that we get the Russians' permission. Pursuant to arrangements that the Clinton administration arrived at in Moscow this week, the Pentagon will have to say to the captain of that Aegis cruiser off the coast of North Korea, "Sorry, old boy. Either we're going to fix that weapons system in such a way that it won't work to defend our country or we're going to instruct you to operate it in such a way that if the missile is coming out of North Korea and going to Japan, or Taiwan, or South Korea, to shoot it down. But if it's going to the United States of America you may not do so."

Can you imagine a more absurd policy?

My message to you very simply is, we must not let that happen. Within literally the next two to four weeks, the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate will begin marking-up, preparing the annual defense authorization bills, and shortly thereafter the annual defense appropriations bills. We in our Coalition to Defend America -- a distinguished group of former cabinet officers, former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other senior military and civilian officials, past administrations, serving legislators including leaders of both chambers -- are determined to insure that the legislation considered by these members of Congress within the next few weeks, does what the Contract with America promised to do. And that was to protect the people of the United States against missile attack, as well as protect our forces overseas and our allies.

In the absence of the kind of concerted effort that I plead with you to help us make, John Kasich and 23 other Republicans voted against the Contract with America language I just gave you. We must not let that happen when the defense authorization and defense appropriations bills come to the floor.

So we are putting together a campaign: a grass roots campaign; a Congressional education campaign; a press campaign -- in short, an organized, disciplined, coherent effort that will: Educate the American people to their present vulnerability  Acquaint them with what the President of the United States is now trying to do to perpetuate and compound that vulnerability  And to educate their members of Congress that, "Yes, Virginia," their constituents do care about national security and do want there to be real national security in an environment like that we are facing and will face even more so in the years ahead.

I presume to ask of you to help in this great effort. It is a cause that is at least as noble as the ones you've been involved in in the past. Arousing the American people to the need for missile defenses has the potential to do great good, and not only with respect to that micro issue, the most pressing issue of national security today. It can also be of great help concerning the macro issue of helping the American people understand that we may have won a great victory; we may indeed have seen the world made a better place, a place more compatible with our interests and our hopes.

But it is entirely possible -- indeed I fear it is almost predictable -- that in the absence of an educated, concerned, engaged American electorate, we will find ourselves once again led for four more years by people who think they don't have to "do" foreign policy.

The Clinton administration refuses to exercise real American leadership in the world. Their idea of foreign affairs is summits and photo opportunities, events at which they can glad-hand and all too often make fast concessions to appease potential enemies of this country. We must not let that happen either.

In short, I think 1996 affords us an excellent opportunity to bring an informed, engaged electorate once again to the point where they demand leadership that will, in fact, protect our people, our country and our values and ensure that we can leave to our children a far safer and better world for the future.

This address was delivered to the Council for National Policy in McLean, Virginia in May, 1995.