Rumsfeld Commission

[2] Republican lawmakers intent on funding a defensive shield criticized the report and the Clinton administration for inaccurate assessments and distorted intelligence.

Republican Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania walked out of a CIA briefing on the NIE, and later said that it was "the most outrageous politicisation of an intelligence document that I've seen in the 10 years I've been in Washington.

[4] This process was also highly politicized, and the ranking Democrat on the committee, California Congressman Ronald Dellums, accused it of relying far too heavily on outside experts.

The commission eventually began to meet in mid-January 1998 in the Old Executive Office Building and under the chairmanship of the once and future Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

[12] In the unclassified version, the group came to four unanimous conclusions: The findings of the commission generated mixed reactions among lawmakers, intelligence officers, and experts.

The intelligence community was privately angered by the harsh language the report used to describe their own assessments of the threat, although CIA Director George Tenet did not openly criticize it in public.

[3] Many observers took a moderate tone in their reaction, acknowledging that funding should be provided for further national missile defense tests, but also saying that the US should not rush into developing technology that might prove ineffective and too costly.

Robert Gates, the man who conducted the first review of the ballistic missile threat, was appointed Secretary of Defense after Rumsfeld's November 2006 resignation.

In the pre-9/11 days of the Bush presidency, the administration had focused heavily on developing a national missile defense system to counter such threats.