Dole Blasts Administration Over Missile Defense Needs

In a harsh indictment of current defense policies, Bob Dole blasted the Clinton administration on Tuesday for policies that he said had encouraged a “rogue’s gallery of terrorists” to develop nuclear and missile technologies that could be aimed against the United States.

“From Libya to Iraq to Iran to North Korea and elsewhere, a rogues’ gallery of terrorists and aggressive anti-American regimes I believe in effect are being encouraged by the administration’s attitude, and they are developing or acquiring nuclear and missile technology,” the Republican presidential candidate told about 300 aerospace workers in the parking lot of the Lockheed-Martin space systems plant here.

“In face of that fact, Mr. Clinton’s opposition to a missile defense is one of the most negligent, short-sighted, irresponsible and potentially catastrophic policies in history,” Dole said.

At issue between the two is the proper pace for developing an antimissile defense system for the United States. Dole has pushed for immediate action to begin building such a system, while Clinton has called for more research first, arguing that the country has enough time to study its options before committing billions to what might be the wrong system.

Dole has sought to make the subject a major issue for the campaign, although his efforts to push antimissile legislation in Congress were derailed by skyrocketing cost estimates.

In the meantime, however, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s caustic rhetoric seemed to leave the crowd here less than overwhelmed. The workers, dressed in hard hats and blue lab coats, paid attention to his remarks, but their applause seemed more polite than fervent.

Afterward, some, like Ray Hill, a 62-year-old receiving inspector and longtime Republican, praised Dole, saying he is “looking out at what’s best for our country.”

Others, however, like Bob Patton, a 44-year-old carpenter from San Jose, were less impressed. “It sounded like a lot of rhetoric to me. I keep hearing the same thing over and over,” said Patton.

Pentagon officials may have partially dampened Dole’s appearance here by announcing late Monday that Lockheed would be one of two companies picked to compete for a new missile contract that will eventually be worth some $3 billion. The Clinton administration has become adept at timing the announcement of new contracts and other beneficial actions so that they interfere with Dole’s schedule.

Dole promised the morning rally of aerospace workers that he would build a missile defense system to defend the country and to save California jobs.

During a hectic second day of a three-day California campaign swing, Dole, who has been talking up national polls that showed a tightening race, received bad news from a new Field Poll that, his aides said, showed him still far behind Clinton in California--57% to 34%, with 9% undecided.

The former Kansas senator also attacked Monday’s deal between the administration and China. The new pact to stop Chinese copyright piracy of U.S.-made compact discs, software and other products is only the latest installment in the “three-and-a-half-year saga of weakness and uncertainty” in U.S. trade policy toward China, Dole said. “You have very high-profile threats, $2 billion in sanctions, followed by agreements at the last moment that the Chinese in this case feel no incentive to honor.”

Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor, in an interview, rejected Dole’s charge. The agreement requires the Chinese to take actions that are “concrete, tangible and specific,” Kantor said, adding that the Chinese already have closed 15 plants that were making pirated CDs and have begun serious efforts to track down more.

Although Dole has criticized Clinton’s trade policies toward China before, he has yet to say what he would do differently. Dole has supported Clinton’s main trade policy toward China--the “most favored nation” trade status that allows Chinese goods to enter the country without restrictive tariffs.

Asked what Dole would do that Clinton hasn’t, campaign spokesman Nelson Warfield declined to elaborate but said that there are a “wide array of diplomatic options” possible.

But the centerpiece of the lengthy campaign day, which started in the Silicon Valley and ended 400 miles later in Newport Beach, was Dole’s attack on Clinton’s national defense policies. The administration’s defense cuts had cost 215,000 California jobs, Dole charged. ‘I want to end this neglect,” he said.

“I believe America needs a president who will defend the jobs of those who defend America. This is very serious business.”

The administration’s opposition to a missile defense system has left the country open to “nuclear blackmail,” Dole added, citing a report that last winter while China was threatening Taiwan on the eve of the island’s first democratic elections, “Chinese officials had threatened to ‘rain nuclear bombs on Los Angeles.’ ”

The United States, he said, has “no means to defend against this threat” because of the Clinton administration.

Dole’s account involved considerable exaggeration of the original incident. Last year, Charles W. Freeman Jr., a former U.S. diplomat, related a warning he had received from a ranking Chinese official, whom he did not name, that China was prepared to use nuclear weapons, if necessary, to prevent Taiwan from achieving independence.

The official did not directly threaten the United States, but, Freeman said, had added that the United States would not come to Taiwan’s aid because Americans “care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan.”

At the time, administration officials dismissed the threat as Chinese hyperbole.

It remains unclear whether the missile defense system Dole backs would have much impact if any Chinese leader did threaten an attack on the United States. To avoid the potentially huge costs of a full-scale “Star Wars” defense system, Dole has pushed a cheaper plan that supporters say would protect against the possibility of a terrorist group or a small country like North Korea gaining control of a small number of missiles.

After leaving Sunnyvale, Dole flew off on a tour of the Central Valley that included a rally at Calcot Limited, a cotton co-op in Bakersfield; a ranch rally, and a visit with a paraplegic artist in the Fresno area.

With bales of hay at his back, a pond in front of him and cattle nearby, Dole lit into the Endangered Species Act and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and praised family farmers as the “original environmentalists.”

Dole’s extensive schedule in the Central Valley underscores the critical importance of the California heartland to his strategy.

Perhaps Dole said it best on the rolling acres of Coombs Ranch: “We’re serious about California. Well, I would say to the media, if there’s still any doubt: Elizabeth said she would move out here if that would erase the doubt.”