Attribution

A retired U.S. Army general has accused U.S. Sen. Bob Smith of interfering
in a criminal probe and other abuses of office in his zeal to protect an
anti-satellite defense program and a contractor whose top executives
contributed heavily to his failed 1999 Presidential bid.

A Smith spokesman called the charges "unfounded and preposterous."

Lisa Harrison said Smith, a Republican, acted non-politically and within his
oversight authority to ensure that the Army used funds for the programs for
which they were appropriated. Smith could not be reached for comment yesterday.

An eight-year-long "war" between New Hampshire's senior senator and the
Pentagon is revealed in the latest edition of The National Journal magazine.

Reporter George Wilson, a former Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post,
authors a detailed story about Smith's tug-of-war with the Pentagon to save the
KE-ASAT program from what he feels is an effort by some Army officials to gut it.

The story says Smith persuaded former Secretary of Defense William Cohen to block
the retirement at full rank of the officer who headed the program "to punish him" for
what Smith perceived as his effort to kill KE-ASAT and lying to Smith about it.
Smith also placed a "hold" on the nomination of the program head's successor.

"I couldn't get any attention," Smith told the Journal. He said Congress'
General Accounting Office had found military officials running the program
had diverted 4 percent of the money appropriated for the system elsewhere.

He said the military officials were so bent on killing the program that they
had manufactured sexual harassment and money laundering charges against the
civilian project head after he had warned Smith that the military leaders
were trying to cancel KE-ASAT.

Smith spokesman Lisa Harrison told The Union Leader Smith's actions were
appropriate and were done to protect what Smith considered whistle-blowers.

"Holds are a common part of the parliamentary process used to engage in negotiations,"
she said. "The bottom line of this entire matter is that it is congress exercising oversight
responsibilities and the Army's accountability for a $350 million investment."

Harrison said it was not the job of the military officers to determine
defense policy, even if they were skeptical of the anti-satellite system.

"Their job is to implement the will of the American people as expressed
through their elected representatives, and they weren't doing it," Harrison said.

But the Journal quotes retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, a former commander of
the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, as saying Smith's actions were
"an abusive use of power."

Garner said Smith "exerted undue influence on the lives of general officers
who tried to do what they though best for the Army and for the nation . . .
He had a tremendously disruptive influence on that command."

Garner also said it was "unthinkable" that Smith would try to get involved
in a criminal investigation.

Harrison said he did not, and she called it "absolutely, positively
preposterous" that Smith would act in response to political contributions.

Smith told the Journal he saw the Army investigations against the civilian
program chief, Steve Tiwari, as part of a pattern of Army retaliation
against defenders of KE-ASAT.

Army leaders "began to pull people off the program who knew what they were
doing and punished these people by coming up with trumped-up charges like
sexual harassment," Smith said. "They began to discriminate against good
people whose only sin was to be strong for the program."

Smith told the Journal that while the congress appropriated $450 million
over 10 to 15 years to build the system, the Army spread it around and spent
part of the money on other programs.

Spokesman Harrison said the report was biased.

She said the implication that "this is a one-man crusade" is inaccurate
because the majority of congress backed funding for KE-AST many times.

Although the story is the first word New Hampshire has received of Smith's
feud with the Army, Harrison said that in Washington, it is nothing new.

"It is certainly a subject that has gone back and forth and up and down for
years" in defense and trade journals, she said. "The story is that this is a
senator taking issue with the Pentagon bureaucracy, and Pentagon bureaucrats
not liking his independence."

Smith has long been a strong supporter of Star Wars-style anti-missile defense
during his 11 years of service on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The KE-ASAT program is designed to be "an orbiting battering ram that would
slam into enemy satellites during wartime, destroying them or at least
knocking them out of any useful orbit," according to the Journal story.

While Smith believes strongly in the program, the Journal says the Army and
Air Force believe "there are better ways to disable satellites than by launching this
iffy flyswatter in the sky. Having already spent about $350 million on the KE-ASAT
in the past decade or so, the Army would rather take the millions more that would
have to be spent to make it work, and use the money for something else."

Smith, though, believes an elected official has a right to "pull every power
lever he can to . . . make sure that the funds appropriated for a program
are spent on that program." But the Army "thinks that Smith has simply gone
too far - way too far."

"Officers say he has insulted generals, put unfair holds on the nominations
and promotions of distinguished officers, interfered with the retirement of
a three-star general, and unfairly tried to involve the Attorney General and
Defense Secretary," the story says.