Cheney Threatens He’ll Urge Veto if ‘Star Wars’ Is Cut

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in a spirited defense of the proposed “Star Wars” missile defense system, said Thursday he will urge President Bush to veto the 1990 defense appropriations bill if it provides “inadequate funding” for the program.

Cheney’s comments came as House and Senate lawmakers entered their fifth week of negotiations on the military funding measure. Differences between the two chambers on “Star Wars” funding have been one of the most divisive issues in the conference.

Cheney, a former Republican House leader who was an ardent supporter of the program on Capitol Hill, refused to specify what level of funding would prompt his veto recommendation.

The House has proposed to cut the Bush Administration’s $4.6-billion “Star Wars” request to slightly less than $3 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The Senate has approved a budget of just over $4 billion.

Several Democratic lawmakers reacted skeptically to Cheney’s threats. By not specifying a minimum funding level, they maintained, Cheney implicitly left the figure open to negotiation. They said the defense secretary’s threats might have been designed to appease conservative backers of the program rather than to boost the 1990 funding figure.

In a speech before a Washington-based defense group, Cheney touted the technological progress of the Strategic Defense Initiative, as the “Star Wars” program is formally known, saying it has proven that space weapons can be built to blunt a Soviet first strike and provide U.S. cities with a defense against a Third World missile assault.

“An effective strategic defense could be the single most important military bequest this generation could make to the future,” he said.

In another effort to solidify support for “Star Wars,” the Pentagon is circulating the results of two scientific studies that favorably assess the Pentagon’s proposed development of missile-killing bullets known as “brilliant pebbles” as an initial space-based defense.

According to knowledgeable defense officials, the Defense Science Board, a team of independent technical experts, recently told senior Pentagon officials the brilliant pebbles proposal is feasible. A second advisory board of independent scientists, known as the Jasons, also concluded that brilliant pebbles is worthy of further research, the officials said.

At a recent Washington symposium, however, the director of the Jasons’ brilliant pebbles study was highly critical of the project. John M. Cornwall, a physicist at UCLA, recently told the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science that brilliant pebbles could be countered by the Soviets. He added that despite claims by the program’s proponents, the system could not be built cheaply using components already readily available.

Cheney, however, offered a buoyant assessment of the program.

“I am very encouraged by the potential contribution that brilliant pebbles can make to strategic defenses,” Cheney said.

The defense secretary also sought to deflect charges by the program’s opponents that the Bush Administration’s scaled-back plans for “Star Wars” would result in an imperfect defense that would allow nuclear warheads to leak through.

“I call on the critics to cease their attempts to make perfection the enemy of the good, and let’s get down to the real debate about how defenses fit into our strategy for nuclear stability, deterrence and arms reductions.”

The Pentagon believes that the first-phase of a “Star Wars” deployment, which could begin as early as 1994 “could provide effective population defense against limited missile launches,” Cheney said.