I was most impressed by the chairman of the national commission of ballistic missile threats work, Bush said. Vice president-elect Dick Cheney, a former secretary of Defense, and State Department nominee Colin L. Powell, who previously headed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also have publicly supported the missile defense program. Both men served in the administration of Bush s father. DOD last month extended an existing contract for developing the National Missile Defense program, following a September announcement from President Clinton that he would continue to fund the study and testing of the system. Clinton said he would leave decisions about the future of the system to the next administration.
Critics say the program is risky.
In September, Lisbeth Gronlund of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations that the system cannot cope with measures designed to circumvent it. But Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said at the same hearing that more testing, including the use of realistic decoys, would be finished by 2004 and would solve that problem. The tests also would prove the system s viability, he said. Besides Rumsfeld, Bush has leaned toward experienced candidates in his other Cabinet nominations. Former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton, whom the president-elect tapped as Interior secretary, previously served in that department, and Anthony J. Principi, Bush s choice to head the Veterans Affairs Department, was formerly a VA deputy director.