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To: Investor-ex! who wrote (14480)	7/15/1998 4:08:00 PM
From: Alex	Respond to of 116759

Commission sees serious missile threat (UPI Focus) Commission sees serious missile threat By JENNIFER BROOKS WASHINGTON, July 15 (UPI) The U.S. intelligence community has seriously underestimated the threat posed to America by rogue nations that have or are trying to develop ballistic missile systems, a bipartisan commission has informed Congress. The commission, which had unprecedented access to classified security data for the past six months, concluded that nations such as Iran and North Korea pose an immediate threat to the United States and are capable of deploying their systems with little or no warning. The commission's report says current intelligence analyses fail to take into account the fact that nations regularly sell and share technology with each other. Nations with well-developed missile technology, such as Russia and China, have sold entire ballistic missile systems to countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union squared off with hundreds of thousands of missiles. Today, says the report, the threat comes mostly from a handful of nations working to arm a few missiles with conventional, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who headed the commission, says, "A single ballistic missile that can reach the United States is not to be dismissed just because it's not hundreds of thousands." The commission, which Congress empowered last year to assess ballistic missile threats, found North Korea is working hard to develop a ballistic missile system, the Taepo Dong 2, theoretically capable of striking as far into the United States as Madison, Wis., while Iran is making "rapid progress" on its Shahab-3 system, which would be capable of striking Philadelphia. Nations that make the decision to develop a ballistic missile system are now capable of doing so within five years or 10 years, in the case of Iraq and most have ways of hiding their progress from U.S. intelligence, the commission found. Rumsfeld said: "Ours is a big world. There's a lot we don't know, can't and won't know. So many out in the intelligence community think they can know everything, and so are surprised by the so-called surprises." House Speaker Newt Gingrich today called for Congress and the administration to work together to come up with responses to the ballistic missile threat. He and others in Congress hope one of those responses might be a "Star Wars"-style national missile defense system. Gingrich said: "This is the most important warning about national security since the end of the Cold War....We have two or three regimes that in the near future will have access to weapons of mass destruction, (regimes that) in all likelihood will not respond to deterrence." nt.excite.com