unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (09/19/89)
Hollings position is a better one.
Q: If Hollings would cost you $660 million and Byrd is costing
$1.7 billion out of other programs, and under your own plan
you're going to shift things around, how much is that going to
take from other programs to put into drugs?
A: I can't remember the precise figures, Charlie. I just don't
happen to have them with me. It seems to me it's, well, I'd
better not guess.
Q: Is it much less than Byrd?
A: Yes.
Q: And Hollings?
A: Yes. But let me take the question. It's in the President's
budget and I just don't remember the figure. Maybe somebody
could go out and find that. There is also an OMB memo. This is
all being worked out by OMB and I don't think we've precisely
submitted it yet. But we'll take the question so we can give
you a more precise answer. I don't want to just stand up here
and guess.
Q: You said you have a plan to meet the strategy within the
existing budget. What's the plan?
A: That's what the Secretary will announce on Monday.
Q: I mean in terms of where the money is coming from?
A: I think I was asked about that on Tuesday and my answer at
the time was that it's something that OMB and the Defense
Department are currently trying to work out. I don't think
there's a precise answer to that yet, John.
Q: So there really isn't a set plan.
A: There is a plan, but I don't think everybody has finally
agreed on it yet.
Q: Will the Secretary be discussing specifics of the plan or
just broad policy and strategy? Will he be saying as far as
units and people?
A: I don't think he'll get down to the units and people thing.
He wouldn't anyway. It will be more than just a broad
generalization, though.
Q: Do you have a reaction to the report that Special Forces
have accompanied Latin American forces on raids in the past?
A: I am aware of only one report, and that was a report that
made the allegation that I think an Army sergeant in Special Ops
went on an operation in 1987. Let me first of all say that I
don't think there's any way that I can definitively say that
happened in that experience in 1987. It's pretty hard to go
back to a single operation on a single day in '87.
Now I don't believe I have any reason to doubt the word of the
congres- sional staffers, the Senate staffers who went along on
the trip. If it's the case, if it were to turn out to be the
case, and I don't know that this is in fact what happened, but,
if a member of the armed forces went along on an operation, that
would clearly be in violation of the policy that was in place
then and the policy that is in place now. I would emphasize that
I'm not saying that's what happened. However, it could also be
that this Special Ops guy accompanied the mission because there
were congressional staffers on board. I don't know if that's
the case. It could also be the fact that this was a training
mission. I just don't know the details. It's pretty hard for
us to go back to '87 and find out precisely what happened on a
given day.
I guess the point is that it was neither the policy then nor is
it the policy now that U.S. military personnel would accompany
host forces on any of their operations. We're down there for
training.
Q: Are you aware of many situations in which congressional
staffers attended raids?
A: No, and I think the best guess that I can give, and from what
we've been able to find out this morning, the best information I
have is that this was probably a training mission. Any time you
have VIPs going into an area, and congressional staffers would
be considered such, you sometimes shift things around in order
to accommodate them. So this may well have been an example of
the kind of training exercise that our military training teams
do down there. That's a pretty reasonable guess of what
happened. Clearly, it was not intended to be an operation. It
was most likely a training mission an example of a training
mission set up for the staffers. But again, it's not possible
to say with certainty.
Q: Are you now prepared to start talking about the deployments
in number of Special Forces people down there?
A: I can give you the numbers of military training teams that we
have right now in Latin America. I will do that, but let me
just say a couple of things about the policy on military
training teams.
First of all, under the President's Andean strategy, no military
training teams are going to be sent to Latin America before we
have a request from the host country. That's number one.
Number two, decisions to deploy these teams will be made on a
case by case basis. We will examine precisely what the mission
is, who would be the best personnel to fulfill the mission--all
those decisions will be examined case by case.
Finally, no military training teams are going to be sent into an
area in which they would face great risk. That's part of the
assessment that would be made in these case by case judgments.
Now having said all of that, I will say that in the
counter-narcotics operations we have three military training
teams in Peru; we have two in Bolivia; and two in Colombia. Now
as to precisely how many persons that is, that's going to vary.
Military training team missions change from time to time. It
depends on precisely what is being trained at the moment. There
is no magic number. There's no magic ceiling on any of these
things. The number of personnel that's there on any given day
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