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The New York Times
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New York: Today, mostly cloudy, high 83, warm and muggy, low 73. Tomorrow, cloudy with a few showers, high 80. Yesterday, high 83, low 72. Weather map is on Page A20. VOL. CXLIX....No. 51, 498
Copyright © 2000 The New York Times
NEW YORK, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2000
$1 beyond the greater New York metropolitan area
75 CENTS
PENTAGON LIKELY TO DELAY NEW TEST FOR MISSILE SHIELD
JANUARY DATE
EXPECTED
Deployment Decision Would Fall to Next President – Treaty Issue Remains
By ERIC ACHMITT
WASHINGTON, Aug, 31 – The Pentagon will probably postpone the next test of a national missile defense system until January, administration officials said yesterday. Any decision to deploy the antimissile shield now seems certain to pass out of President Clinton’s hands to his successors.
Administration officials had previously said Mr. Clinton would be decided this summer in deploying a $60 billion antimissile system that would be ready by 2005. To meet this schedule, the Pentagon has been under heavy pressure for two years to conduct enough flights to show Mr. Clinton and his advisors whether the systems was technologically feasible.
But now officials are signalling that Mr Clinton merely plans to decide whether to go ahead with the program’s initial development. The change follows events that include test failure, opposition from Russia as well as European allies and a legal dispute over how far the system could proceed before violating an important arms control treaty.
To keep the option of initial development open for Mr Clinton, the Pentagon has requested bids for initial construction of a radar site in Alaska, setting Sept. 7 as a deadline for technical cost proposals form contractors. The first contacts would have to be awarded by December to permit building to begin next spring and to have a working system in place by 2005. Under the schedule the Pentagon has set in light of conditions in Alaska, it has to start the process soon, subject to later presidential approval.
The more politically volatile decision of whether to file the system – and break the Antiballistic Missile treaty of 1972 – would be left to administration, whether that of Al Gore of George W. Bush.
In a sign of this political evolution, senior military officers, including the program’s executive officer, Maj Gen. Willie Nance of the Army, have argued that there is no reason to rush more tests. Critics of the program have consistently complained that the military operation was on an artificially fast schedule.
“General Nance is not going to conduct a test unless he’s fully confident that everything is fully ready for the test,” said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Mr Clinton is awaiting a recommendation from Defense Secretary William S. Cohen on the project and
Continued on Page A9
Ozier Muhammad / The New York Times
Exit Agassi
The top-seeded Andre-Agassi, right, congratulating Arnaud Clément of France yesterday after Clément defeated him, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4, in the second round of the United States Open in Queens. SportsFriday, Page D1.
Lazio Closes In On Mrs. Clinton In Money Race
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
Representative Rick A. Lazio may be less well known than his opponent in the New York Senate contest (not to mention the Republican who dropped out), but in terms of fundraising, he has already entered her league. Mr Lazio collected $10.7 million in just seven weeks this summer, his aides said yesterday, leaving little doubt that he will have means to battle for the seat despite his late start.
Mr Lazio has taken in a total of $19.2 million since jumping into the Senate race in May, nearly as much as Hilary Rodham Clinton, who has been raising money for more that a year and has collected $21.9 million. She raised $3.3 million in the seven-week period this summer: July 1 to Aug. 23.
Mr. Lazio’s success with donors suggest that no matter who is on the Republican line – mayor, congressman, school board member – the checks will pour in because of hostility among the county to the Democrat Mrs. Clinton. And Mr. Lazio, a once-obscure congressman from the Suffolk County, has readily harness that sentiment.
“I’m Rick Lazio,” he wrote in an unusually short, one-page fund-raising letter this summer. “It won’t take me six pages to convince you to send me an urgent needed contribution for my United States Senate campaign in New York. It will take
Continued on Page B7

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