The Drop In
Leo favors a missile defense shield (1) and hopes that a test succeeds, eager to use it to convince the President to support it. Bartlet greets new ambassadors, including Lord John Marbury, who is now Great Britain's ambassador to the United States. Sam writes a strong pro-environment speech, unaware that Toby plans to scold the group for not taking a stronger stand against environmental terrorists (2). CJ asks a comedian to not host the Will Rogers dinner in order to avoid drawing attention to when Bartlet laughed at a joke about racial profiling (3).
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Missile Defense (last updated November 23, 2001) (back to top)
For two decades, a vocal segment of policy makers and military leaders have sought to develop a broad, multi-faceted program involving land, sea and space-based means to protect the United State from limited ballistic missile attacks.
Expectations for such a shield have risen and fallen in scope over the years. Missile-defense proponents started with highly ambitious goals under Reagan, went to more limited expectations in the 1990s, and gained ground in the later days of the Clinton administration and now under George W. Bush. Currently, the goal of missile defense is to deter hostile countries such as North Korea from launching a limited attack against the United States.
Development efforts have met with difficulty on two fronts. Technologically, efforts have not yet with reliable success. Politically, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 bans development of missile defense systems, and countries such as Russia and China view the United States' efforts destabilizing the nuclear balance of power. The Bush administration has devoted much resources on both obstacles; in recent months, Bush has dramatically increased missile-defense spending and met often with Russian President Vladimir Putin to amend the ABM Treaty to allow missile-defense research.
The Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, as modified by a later protocol, limited the United States and the Soviet Union to one missile-defense site each and prevented each country from moving that site even if the first one later closed. The Soviet Union established its site in Moscow and still operates it today. The United States established its site at Grand Folks, North Dakota, in 1976 but closed it after a few months; it is not active now.
In 1983, Reagan revived and expanded missile-defense as a military strategy by making achieving an antiballistic missile system capable of resisting a large-scale attack one of his biggest military strategies. The research program to examine this program became the Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as Star Wars. Originally, Reagan had hoped to protect the United States fully from the "mutually assured destruction" scenario wherein the Soviet Union was deterred from the total annihilation of the United States by the prospect of similar retaliation; even the strongest proponents of missile defense have conceded that such an effective shield is beyond current capabilities.
With the end of the Cold War, Bush announced a shift in focus in 1991 from protecting against a massive attack towards global protection against limited strikes. The Gulf War provided the first operational engagement between ballistic missiles and theater missile defense (TMD) systems able to protect US forces from short-range attacks, and the defense systems had some success.
The Clinton administration continued the trend towards TMD but cut funding of missile-defense research. However, in 1998, developments revived the efforts in favor of NMD and pushed the Clinton administration to consider laying the foundations for an NMD system of its own.
That year, a committee led by Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had been Secretary of Defense under the Ford administration and holds the post again under George W. Bush, reported that the threat of ballistic missiles from rogue countries such as North Korea, Iran or Iraq was growing. A month later, North Korea fired a missile over Japan; the test failed but the debris did land not far from Alaska.
Additional funding for NMD quickly followed, and in early 1999, Clinton's Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, the sole Republican on Clinton's Cabinet, foreshadowed Bush by saying that the US would withdraw from the ABM if the Russians were not willing to amend it so that the US could develop NMD, but the Clinton administration quickly disavowed Cohen's statement. The armed forces continued to work on efforts to develop NMD while the State Department tried unsuccessfully to convince the Russians to amend the ABM treaty.
Finally, on September 1, 2000, Clinton expressed his general support for NMD, but decided to delay the beginning of long-term NMD plans until the next president could come in, citing both the technological difficulties still plaguing the program and the long-term nature of the program.
That next president would be George W. Bush, and on May 1, 2001, Bush called for an expansive missile defense program and said that the ABM treaty was effectively dead. His plans include a network of land-based installations (not simply in North Dakota) and sea-based systems that could be moved to appropriate hot spots. His approach is thus more in the lines of his father, a national missile-defense system that would work against limited attacks. Along with this expanded defense, Bush has called for large cuts in the United States' nuclear capabilities.
Funding has jumped dramatically since Bush took office, particularly in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Just days before the attacks, the Senate Armed Forces Committee, headed by Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), announced it would increase NMD funding in FY 2002 to about $7.0 billion, a 20 percent increase but still less than the $8.3 billion Bush had requested. The committee supported the "development and deployment of improved theater missile defense systems as soon as possible after rigorous testing has proven these systems to be operationally effective," but said the additional $1.3 billion requested was "poorly justified and would better be used to meet more pressing needs."
In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Levin and the other Democrats on the committee backed away from this position and restored full funding as Bush had requested. Accordingly, missile defense spending in FY 2002 will be more than twice what it was just two years earlier.
With accelerated funding and a strong commitment from the Bush administration, the Army expects to have a ground-based NMD system in place by 2004, complete with a radar system and a handful of interceptor missiles. In addition to NMD, the Air Force is continuing its plans to develop an Airborne Laser program, wherein a space-based laser would shoot down ballistic missiles before leaving the origin country's boundaries. The Airborne Laser program, run by the Air Force, aims to put a laser aboard a modified Boeing 747 and begin tests by 2003.
Still, broad political and technological concerns about NMD remain.
First, critics say that NMD forces other countries, notably Russia and China, into upping their own military capabilities in order to maintain the balance of power. Russia in particular is threatened by the US's plans to develop a space-based laser that could target launches made from Russian territory, though Bush has made efforts to reach a compromise with Russian President Vladimir Putin. China is threatened by smaller-scale programs that could be used to protect Taiwan. Critics within the United States thus favor developing more limited defense systems within a broader international consensus.
Second, even if tests do show that missile-defense systems can stop a missile, it simply shifts any attempts to use of explosive or nuclear armament to other delivery systems. Even the most comprehensive program envisioned by Bush and Rumsfeld would do nothing to minimize the threat of a small device smuggled inside a country's borders (as in so many Hollywood action movies).
Sources: Frances FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue (Touchstone, 2000). Missile-defense development is coordinated within the Department of Defense by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which is available on-line here; histories of missile-defense development are available here. The Senate Armed Services Committee is on-line here; Chairman Carl Levin, a critic of Bush's efforts on missile defense, has a website available here. Adam Clymer, Democrats in Senate back down on missile shield issue, New York Times, September 22, 2001.
Environmental Terrorism (last updated July 21, 2001) (back to top)
The environmental movement comprises people with vastly different ideas on how to attain the shared goals of protecting the environment and promoting a sustainable lifestyle. On the more mainstream side are groups such as the Audubon Society and Greenpeace. And on the other is what proponents call the underground or direct-action movement and what critics call environmental terrorism (or eco-terrorism).
In some ways like the anti-abortion rights movement, the mainstream environmental movement is demonized along with the extremists and its effectiveness as a moral argument is undermined by the damage to personal property (it should be noted that even the so-called ecoterrorists have never resorted to murder as extremists in the anti-abortion rights movement have). At the same time, the mainstream environmental movement does benefit by looking more moderate and more willing to negotiate and compromise than its more radical allies.
Greenpeace and Earth First! have been called environmental terrorists in the past, but Greenpeace generally works within the law and is an established mainstream advocacy organization. Founded in 1971, Greenpeace urges members to send letters and to boycott certain companies' products; its watching ships are used to conduct legal protests and to monitor compliance, not to break laws themselves.
Earth First!, co-founded in the early 1980s by Dave Foreman (then a registered Republican in the libertarian, Goldwater mold), is a more radical, loosely-affiliated group that publishes an instruction manual on how so-called "ecotage," but even it officially takes an agnostic position on such actions.
Now, the extreme edge of the environmental movement is "organized" as the Earth Liberation Front, a diffuse label for individuals acting along a set of principles designed to "remove the profit motive" from environmentally destructive activities as they see them. ELF advocates, as represented by spokespeople in Portland and on the Internet, say that the popular environmental movement following legal tactics has not been successful and that more drastic measures are necessary (they also say that their guidelines specifically require members to take precautions to prevent personal injury).
The ELF, which seems to have spread from England to the United States in the mid 1990s, claims responsibility for more than two dozen major actions in the United States resulting in about $40 million in damages since November 1997.
ELF's best-known alleged action was the October 18, 1998 fire set at Vail Resorts in Colorado. Vail had been planning an 885-acre expansion of ski terrain in an area considered a habitat for the endangered Canadian lynx, and after court efforts had failed to stop the expansion, ELF members set fires to five buildings and four ski lifts at Vail. Despite the fire and an estimated $12 million in damages, Vail has continued its expansion plans. Colorado state wildlife officials have condemned ELF's actions and have focused on releasing Canadian lynx into the environment in controlled circumstances. However, whether the ELF was actually involved is still in dispute. The ELF claimed responsibility in an e-mail three days after the fire but gave no information that was not already publicly available (in contrast to some other actions), and some still doubt whether the ELF was truly involved.
ELF also has taken actions against the lumber industry (including the December 27, 1998 arson at the corporate headquarters of US Forest Industries in Medford, Oregon and the December 25, 1999 arson at the northwest regional headquarters of Boise Cascade in Monmouth, Oregon), genetic engineering (such as the December 31, 1999 arson of Michigan State University genetic researcher Catherine Ives' office), and what it considers urban sprawl (the arson of luxury homes in Indiana and Long Island).
ELF has also taken responsibility for spiking trees in Oregon and Indiana (a controversial, potentially life-threatening practice that tries to prevent the cutting down of trees by inserting a metal spike that makes logging more difficult) and attacking various outlet stores and McDonald's restaurants.
The first arrests connected to ELF occurred in January 2001, when four teenagers were arrested for conducting a conspiracy of arson and destruction of suburban homes in Suffolk County, Long Island. Three of the teenagers pled guilty to arson charges; a fourth, Connor Cash, has pled not guilty to arson and conspiracy charges and apparently is raising money for a legal defense.
It is worth noting that environmental leaders apparently have faced persecution from law-enforcement for their beliefs and the alleged threat they pose. One particular incident has given rise to a civil suit that is expected to go to trial later in 2001. Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were both injured as a result of a carbombing in May 1990, and Bari was arrested just hours later for possession of the bomb; Cherney was arrested soon after. They filed suit for false arrest and civil rights violations, and the suit continues despite Bari's death due to cancer in May 1997. Information revealed in the discovery process suggests that the FBI at best ignored information as to who actually planted the bomb in favor of prosecuting Bari and Cherney, who were ultimately never indicted by a grand jury. Read more about that case here.
Sources: David Helvarg, The War Against the Greens (Sierra Club Books, 1997). For more on the Vail fire, see Daniel Glick, Powder Burn (PublicAffairs 2001).
Racial profiling (last updated October 31, 2001) (back to top)
Racial profiling describes police tactics that target individuals for searches and more intense scrutiny based on their racial identity, rather than other non-racial factors that could give rise to the belief that one is involved in criminal activity. National attention to racial profiling as it relates primarily to black and Hispanic motorists began largely in 1998 due to a confluence of high-profile incidents, lawsuits and media coverage.
Legally, a police officer may not order a person to halt or remain in a particular place unless the officer has a reasonable, articulable suspicion to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. A traffic violation can serve as such sufficient grounds, even if police are using the traffic violation as a pretext to justify a stop (as the United States Supreme Court approved in its 1996 decision in Whren v United States). Once police stop someone, they can seize contraband that is in plain sight and can ask a motorist to allow them to search the car, a request to which many people surprisingly do consent.
The problem of racial profiling arises in the application of these procedures, when police use their discretion in making such stops to target blacks and Hispanics. Some have said the problem stems from the war on drugs, in which federal and state law enforcement authorities were allegedly trained to single out such minorities as potential drug couriers.
Racial profiling has become a prominent issue in New Jersey, initially in response to an April 1998 shooting incident. The state attorney general's office then conducted a study of the state police and released a report in July 1999 detailing the tactics of state police troopers at two stations (Cranbury in the northern part of the state near Princeton, and Moorestown in the southern part near Camden) along the New Jersey Turnpike, the toll road that runs through the state.
According to the attorney general's report, of the traffic stops made by state police from April 1997 through November 1998, 59.4 percent of the individuals stopped were white but only 21.4 percent were then searched. Blacks comprised 27.0 percent of the stops but 53.1 percent of the searches, and Hispanics comprised 6.9 percent of the stops and 24.1 percent of the searches.
In other words, blacks were twice as likely to be searched as would be predicted based on their share of the stops, and Hispanics were almost four times as likely. Whites represented half of the searches that would have been predicted based on their share of the traffic stops.
From these stops, searches of white and black motorists resulted in arrests or seizure of contraband in roughly the same amount, with 10.5 percent of searches resulting in arrests for whites and 13.5 percent for blacks. Hispanics were more likely to have searches result in arrests, at 38.1 percent.
Other states have seen controversies over racial profiling as well, oftentimes in lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
An Illinois study showed that while Hispanics comprise less than eight percent of that state's population, they comprise about 30 percent of the motorists stopped by state police drug interdiction officers for discretionary offenses, and about 27 percent of the searches made by those officers. A Maryland study found that whites made up about 75 percent of the motorists along the I-95 corridor and about the same percentage of traffic violators, and that blacks made up about 17 percent of the motorists and violators. But of the 823 motorists searched by the Maryland State Police between January 1995 and September 1996, 72.9 percent were black and only 19.7 percent were white.
In June 1999, the Clinton administration participated in a conference with civil rights leaders and police leaders. There, Clinton called racial profiling a "morally indefensible, deeply corrosive practice" and that "racial profiling is in the fact the opposite of good-police work, where actions are based on hard facts, not stereotypes. It is wrong, it is destructive, and it must stop." Clinton directed federal agencies to begin gathering more data, and the Department of Justice published a resource guide in November 2000 to assist such efforts.
President George W. Bush called for an end to racial profiling in his first State of the Union address in February 2001. He then directed Attorney General John Ashcroft to review federal law enforcement's use of race as a factor, and to collect such data.
Sources: David A. Harris, Driving while Black: Racial profiling on our nation's highways, American Civil Liberties Union, June 1999, available on-line here. Interim Report of the State Police Review Team Regarding Allegations of Racial Profiling, published by the New Jersey State Attorney General's Office, April 20, 1999, available on-line here. Deborah Ramirez, Jack McDevitt, Amy Farrell, A resource guide on racial profiling data collection systems, Department of Justice, November 2000.
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