Testimony of
Dr. Peter M. Leitner
before the Committee on Government Reform
of the United States House of Representatives
June 24, 1999
10:00 a.m.
REPRISALS & RETALIATION: SPEAKING TRUTH
TO POWER ON CHINA
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I would like to
express my appreciation for your collective concern over the mistreatment of career civil
servants for ìspeaking truth to powerî concerning the systematic pillaging of the U.S.
defense industrial base and our nation’s most precious military and nuclear secrets
by the People’s Republic of China. Appearing before you today is both an honor and a
rather dubious distinction. To be victimized by my own government ñ particularly the
Defense Department ñ for consistently putting the near- and long-term national security
of the United States ahead of all other considerations is something that I still find
astounding to this day.
I believe that a deadly combination of corruption, greed, careerism,
indolence, and possibly darker motives have brought us to this sad turning point in the
nature of the military threats to the United States and along the Chinese periphery ñ
extending from the Central Asian republics through the Indian Ocean and along the Pacific
Rim.
History of Reprisals
My particular story revolves around my documenting evolving
military threats to the United States spurred by reckless transfers of advanced Western
technology, —technology capable of allowing potential military rivals such as the PRC
to leapfrog generations of technological development and trillions of dollars of
expenditures and to field advanced weapons systems faster than our experts have predicted.
I have been systematically penalized for my initiative and efforts. From 1986 to 1990 I
was consistently praised by DoD officials for my effectiveness in documenting and
persuasively defending American technology security interests around the world in
international negotiations. At that time I was DoDís principal CoCom negotiator and head
of the DoD team on such issues as machine tools and manufacturing technology, advanced
materials, and, for a time, computers. In addition, I served as chairman of a Paris-based
military study group on advanced materials for weapons systems that turned out 15 reports
and as the head of the U.S. team to another group on defense production technology and
test equipment.
But all that changed in 1990, shortly after I received a Special Act
Award for preparing the Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary for Policy to effectively
argue in favor of rigorous machine tool controls. That was when I authored the memo and
charts included as Attachment A. That memo pointed out dangerous flaws in the methodology
DoD was using in determining which technology to drop from international export control
lists. For the mere act of composing this message to my chain of command I was summarily
recalled from Paris at 5 a.m. and told to abandon my technical team in France and get on
the next flight home. There I was confronted by the first in a series of DTSA managers who
place their personal interests and career advancement ahead of all else. I was told, ìYou
are to be placed in a position of least trust in this organization ñ licensing.î A
remarkable statement as export licensing is the legislative raison díÍtre for the
organization.
After being banished into licensing, I began to detect a disturbing
pattern of Indian acquisition of U.S. and British parts and components for India’s
attempts to build a so-called indigenous supercomputer. I wrote a paper on this issue (U.S./India
Relationship: What Are the Ground Rules?) that received the support of the
Defense Intelligence Agency and numerous technical experts. In response, I was barred from
looking at licenses involving India. After these two incidents, my performance appraisal
dropped from ìoutstandingî to an entire level lower. My supervisor at the time told me
he was ordered by the Director and Deputy Director not to give me an outstanding rating.
He then advised me that he would lower my ìWritten Communicationî category because
ìafter all, it was your memos that resulted in all of this.î Earlier that year I had
been told I would be given a quality step increase as a result of my outstanding
performance. This was quickly scrapped, and I was denied that $2,600 pay raise.
This was to be the first in a series of retaliatory financial
sanctions, which, in my reckoning, has cost my family between $75,000 and $100,000 to date
and over the course of my lifetime certainly much more. This loss of income punishes not
only me but also my wife and four children.
In May 1991, I authored a technical paper entitled ìGarrett Engines
to the PRC: Enabling Its Long-range Cruise Missile Program.î The controversy
generated by this paper ran well into 1992 and eventually stopped a potentially disastrous
technology transfer from taking place. The new administration was fighting tooth and nail
to approve the transfer of cruise missile manufacturing technology to the PRC. I was
internally vilified and later penalized even though the Air Force, CIA, and Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency came around to support my position. While the technology transfer
was prevented and the potential threat to the United States mitigated I was nonetheless
punished for having been right.
In 1994, I wrote a technical paper called ìMcDonnell Douglas
Machine Tool Sales to the PRC: Implications for U.S. Policyî and refused a direct
order to change my denial of the transfer of the Columbus, Ohio, B-1 Bomber/MX
Missile/C-17 plant to China. This incident was the subject of a recent 60 Minutes
broadcast. Later that year I co-authored a study entitled ìTransferring Stealth
Technology to the PRC: Three Pieces to the Chinese Puzzle.î This paper revealed how
the PRC was targeting U.S. companies for technology acquisition with surgical precision.
In 1995, I took the initiative and prepared a policy paper called ìNuclear Safety,
Strategic Technologies, and Weapons Proliferation: A New Approach.î This was an
attempt to reduce Indian access to nuclear weapons-related technologies while assisting
India on the civilian nuclear safety issue. Prepared and circulated fully three years
before the most recent round of nuclear weapons tests in the Thar Desert, neither the
paper nor the initiative was acted upon by DTSA management despite strong support for many
elements of the approach internally and externally.
Late in 1995 a series of events heralded a new round of internal
retaliation against me. First was the publication of my book ìDecontrolling Strategic
Technology, 1990-1992: Creating the Strategic Threats of the 21st Century.î This
was followed, in early 1996, by my paper on ìDual-use Exports and Naval Nuclear
Propulsion: Denying Exports to Brazilî; third was my active opposition (Non-Nuclear,
Militarily Critical Uses of Oscilloscopes) to a DoE-led effort to decontrol
oscilloscopes and remove them from the Nuclear Suppliers Group list of proliferation-
related technologies. The reaction of DTSA management, after desperate attempts to prevent
publication of my book, was to artificially lower my performance appraisal and insert all
manner of political language into my Civil Service rating. I appealed the rating and while
the score was raised somewhat, the political language was allowed to stand and I was again
penalized financially. At one point, DTSA attempted to insert a criteria stating that my
licensing decisions had to meet with the approval of my supervisor at least 90 percent of
the time.
Examples of the political characterizations inserted into my Civil
Service performance appraisal as criticisms include:
- ìDr. Leitner is an advocate of tightening export controls.î
- ì. . . he veers to the right as much as possible.î
- ìSome of his denial recommendations push the envelope towards tighter control.î
- ìHe is my most conservative/cautious licensing officer.î
- ìHowever, sometimes his conservative approach causes him to recommend denial based upon
suspicious [sic] and/or assumptions that are not evident in facts, causing those denials
to be overturned during the review process.î
In 1997, reprisals began to intensify with the publication of my
second book, "Reforming the Law of the Sea Treaty: Opportunities Missed,
Precedents Set, and U.S. Sovereignty Threatened,î and my being invited to appear
before the Joint Economic Committee to discuss Chinese economic espionage and strategic
technology transfer. Just before the hearing was to convene, DTSA management held a
ìDirectorsî meeting where it was announced that ìno DTSA employees will be permitted to
attend that hearing and if any apply for annual leave for that purpose it will be
denied.î When I circulated the JEC announcement of the time and place of the hearing to
my co-workers on the office E-mail system attempts were made to somehow construe this as a
ìsecurity violation.î My testimony was entitled ìFeeding the Dragon: Technology
Transfer and the Growing Chinese Threat.î
Two articles published in 1997, ìEthics, National Security, and
Bureaucratic Realities: North, Knight, and Designated Liarsî and ìSupercomputers,
Test Ban Treaties, and the Virtual Bomb,î were met with immediate hostility within
DoD. The first looks at people who lie to Congress ñ the designated liar for their
agency. The second reveals the nuclear proliferation dangers and suspect agenda of the
administration in decontrolling supercomputers ñ a mistake about to be compounded as we
speak. In June 1997, Mr. James Cole and I authored a study entitled Minimum
Requirements to Produce Machine Tools Capable of Manufacturing Weapons of Mass Destruction.
It was in December 1997 that a campaign to further isolate me began ñ
this time to confiscate my office computers, a laptop and a desktop. It began with an
outright lie that the information management staff wanted the laptop assigned to me
returned. Then my desktop unit was removed as well. I was told verbally and in writing by
the information management staff that they never asked for the return of the computers and
that they would only declare the machines excess and get rid of them. They also said that
DTSA management was afraid that I might use the computers to write testimony, books, or
articles critical of DTSA actions or policies. Therefore, DTSA management reasoned, take
the computers away and I will no longer be able to write or testify.
About this time, I began to see and issue denials for a large number of
export license applications originating with the DoE-sponsored national laboratoriesñ
particularly Los Alamos, Sandia, Livermore, and Oak Ridge. These licenses were intended to
facilitate the transfer of a variety of high-tech equipment with direct application to
nuclear weapons development and testing to the most dangerous entities within the Russian
nuclear weapons design, test, and manufacturing complex. I objected then, and continue to
object today, to these so-called Lab-to-Lab transfers because there was no evidence of a
security plan to protect U.S. technologies from being used against us, there was no
evidence that the Department of Energy exercised any credible level of control over these
activities, and after meeting with lab officials it was apparent to me that the labs had
become entrepreneurial and were creating programs not so much to resolve the fictional
ìloose nukesî problem as to keep themselves employed and avoid layoffs. Some of these
programs go by the titles Materials Protection, Control, and Accounting Program,
Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, Nuclear Cities Program, MAGO program (assisting
the Russians to refine and miniaturize an Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapon), etc. Given my
knowledge of how badly managed DoEís nuclear stockpile program was, I found it amazing
that DoE was holding itself up as the paragon of virtue in these areas. My concerns were
strongly validated by the Cox/Dicks Committee and the Presidentís Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board. In the meantime, I was lectured by my supervisor that ìthe Russians are
our friends" and I have "no business standing in the way of these DoE run
programs.î I refused to alter my denial recommendations and virtually all of my denials
were overturned by DTSA management. GAO later confirmed that more than 50 percent of the
tax dollars going into many of these programs were spent in the United States on overhead
and little if any results can be shown regarding lessening the nuclear threat facing the
United States. For these efforts I was again given a poor performance evaluation and
penalized financially. The following is representative of the denial positions I
recommended on such cases;
DOD POSITION: 20 NOVEMBER 1996
DENY
Per Section 10g of the EAA and Sections 770.1 and 778.3 of the EAR
DoD is recommending denial of this application. End-user is an unsafeguarded nuclear
facility and this device is capable of making a material contribution to proliferation
projects of concern.
DoD will either deny or return without action any cases which fall
within this lab-to-lab framework which are not accompanied by a narrative describing how
and why a particular item was selected, a national security impact assessment, a
description of how it fits into the program it is to support, and specific points of
contact at the lab sponsoring the transaction. In addition, DoE should provide a copy of
their security plan covering each of the agreements.
DoE involvement in a materials accounting project notwithstanding, the
end-user is a facility of great concern both for weaponization and naval propulsion
reasons. As the commodity and the device it will power will be under the control of the
Russian end-user there will be virtually no accountability for its eventual end-use. In
addition, the portable nature of the equipment makes it quite suitable for maintaining
strategic weapons and propulsion systems in the field, which would help to improve the
operational readiness of Russian nuclear and naval forces.
This and related cases raise serious concerns as to whether the
verification inspection, inventory, monitoring programs -- of which there appear to be
scores -- are out of control. In every case which has crossed my desk the U.S. side of the
agreement is some sort of private contractor operating on behalf of the USG. More often
than not it is a contractor-run national lab which is negotiating and committing the
United States to fairly open-ended programs of assistance and technology transfer. The
export control process is then faced with license applications to transfer specific
technologies directly to the some of the most sensitive areas of the Former Soviet Union
(FSU) nuclear weapons complex where they will simply be turned over for permanent
unverifiable use in facilities of greatest strategic concern.
The justification given for approval is that the U.S. contractor says
it is needed to support the program all indications are that the various cooperative
programs with the FSU initiated over the past few years are basically lab-to-lab
agreements which have some, but very limited, direct USG oversight. Instead, day-to-day
functioning of these agreements is left to the contractors to decide what technology is
(or is not) relevant, required, or even desirable to transfer to the FSU. Whether national
security concerns are factored in is not evident in any of the applications for export
licenses submitted for approval. Unfortunately, contractors are given to focus upon the
achievement of milestones and satisfying their clients, in this case DoE and Russia. With
such a focus, quibbling over specific capabilities regarding a piece of equipment is not
something that will be given attention. Yet it is precisely this sort of micro-evaluation
which is at the heart of the export control process and must be performed for the system
to function. There is no sign that such analysis is being performed at present in regard
to these Lab-to-Lab agreements.
In almost every such case, licensing
analysts are rubber-stamping approvals based upon the simple test of whether "it
looks reasonable and appears to fit within the lab-to-lab agreement." One cannot even
tell whether the FSU requested specific equipment or if the U.S. side recommended it; or
whether
the FSU rejected a
recommended piece of hardware and insisted on a much more advanced
device capable of performing tasks beyond those called for under the scope of the program.
This was certainly the case with the super computers bound for Arzamas and Chelyabinsk,
and not required by the lab-to-lab agreement which was being cited as cover for this
unjustified export.
Other USG agencies are deferring to DoE on these cases and incorrectly
assuming a degree of control and analysis which doesn't appear to be present. There is no
evidence that real analysis or oversight is actually being performed. Instead we are all
being asked to "believe" that the technology being transferred is the minimum
required to perform the task cited and that there is little to no risk to U.S. security.
In 1997, I witnessed the intentional orchestration by the
administration of a series of events resulting in the false certification to Congress that
China is not a nuclear proliferant. This provided the Chinese legal access to many nuclear
technologies to complement that which the committee so clearly demonstrated they were
engaged in stealing. During that year, I witnessed the development of the twisted logic
that since the PRC lost out in a head-to-head competition with Russia to sell Iran a
nuclear reactor complex it can be construed as being forthcoming on proliferation issues.
The fact that the Chinese withdrew their offer to provide Iran a nuclear reprocessing
plant only after they lost the contract was interpreted by the administration as an
opportunity to ìsellî China to Congress.
In April 1998, I again appeared before the Joint Economic Committee to
discuss continuing problems with the growing strategic threat from China. Next I was
subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in June where I
testified about the intentional systematic failure of the export control process, as
structured by this administration, to protect Americaís precious military technology
advantage. My Senate testimony resulted in an investigation by the Inspectors General of
the management of the export control process by the Defense, Commerce, State, Treasury,
and Energy Departments and the CIA. In August I was called before the Cox/Dicks Committee
where I testified on the PRC threat and worked very closely with that staff ñ providing
over 18 inches of documents and hours of follow-on interviews with staff. Ever since these
testimonies I have been subjected to, in staccato fashion, one adverse harassing act after
another. The most prominent of these are: further lowering of my performance rating,
attempts to isolate me from attending meetings concerning nuclear exports -- particularly
when the IGís were visiting the interagency meetings pursuant to the Senate inspection
request, a trumped-up letter of reprimand, sick leave harassment, a falsified charge of a
security violation, and implied threats to charge me with insubordination or defiance of
authority. In fact, the DoD IG found that of the 16 DTSA licensing officers I am the only
one not to receive a bonus, or an outstanding or superior rating, this in spite of the
fact that I am the only person to have authored any technical or policy analyses or to
have stood up for DoD’s national security mission in the face of interagency
obstructionism. All of this happened since my Cox/Dicks testimony. These actions were
deemed so serious that Senator Thompson twice wrote to the Pentagon, including to
Secretary Cohen, expressing concern for his witnesses. In addition, the Office of Special
Counsel has accepted my case for a full investigation of political reprisals and illegal
retaliation.
Dangers Facing Civil Servants Today
The politicization of the career Civil Service is an
extraordinarily dangerous and insidious process that has been more radically advanced
during the past six years than at any time since the enactment of the Hatch Act. Todayís
hearing is a microcosm of an insidious process aimed at co-opting, by-passing, or
eliminating unbiased professionals from the policymaking/implementation process. Without a
nonpartisan professional civil service this nation will be subjected to wild mood swings
and radical policy changes that will wreak havoc pursuant to the particular agenda of, not
a particular elected government per se, but the armies of non-elected appointees who are
often the advocates of extremist positions. The professional career Civil Service is, in a
manner of speaking, a dampening force, or, the Ritalin the body politic, which prevents
dangerous and intemperate initiatives from getting out of control.
Unfortunately, the present administration has so weakened and abused
the structure of the career civil service that legions of sycophants, carpetbaggers, and
plain old crooks have supplanted civil servants in many key positions. DoD routinely
engages in two questionable personnel practices: the militarization of DoDís civil
service by allowing widespread conversions of military personnel to civilian positions,
and the inappropriate, possibly illegal, use of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act to
directly appoint individuals without competition and avoid ceilings on political
appointments. In many cases, particularly within the Defense Threat Reduction Agency,
civil servants with decades of expertise in strategic weapons programs were shoved aside
and demoted from key positions while DoE lab employees were brought in to fill their
posts. These lab employees/IPA Fellows are then given a strong voice in which programs are
pursued and which research facilities are awarded applied/or basic research contracts.
This is featherbedding at its worst ñ allowing an eventual beneficiary of a program to
determine how and where money is to be spent—yet this is how DTRA is structured. Even
the head of the organization is not a civil servant but an IPA Fellow from Lawrence
Livermore National Lab, one of DoEís problem children.
Between downsizing, contracting out, military rehires, and the abuse of
the IPA program the fundamental relationship and connectedness of government to the
general population is being radically altered. It is a mistake to assume that the military
personnel who are being allowed to ìjump the lineî today, and unfairly receive
government jobs (25 percent of DTSA’s "civilian" staff are retirees
previously assigned there) ahead of the tens of thousands losing their jobs due to base
closures and downsizing, are the same as the WWII, Korean, or Vietnam War citizen
soldiers. Todayís military retirees, particularly the officer corps, are careerists with
a much more tenuous connection to civil values and norms than previous generations of
draftees. All veterans are not the same. In fact, the proximity of career civil servants
to the American people is clearly receding. The shrinking pool of nonpartisan
professionals is instead being replaced by contractors, IPAs, political appointees, and
others who are motivated more by profit than the spirit of dedicated public service. Whose
interests are advanced or protected in this situation ñ good government, the American
people, or special interests?
The overwhelming inclination of many career military people who are
dropped into a civilian policy setting, is to find, or invent, an S.O.P. (Standard
Operating Procedure) manual that will tell them what to do every step of the way. Often
the ambiguity of civilian policy issues imparts an air of desperation to those accustomed
to a more rigid, defined, routine existence. Questioning authority, or pointing out
inconsistencies/contradictions in policy implementation is an activity many find hard to
cope with. For instance, when I made an issue out of the Israeli Arrow missile program
having changed to the point that U.S. assistance may be in violation of our commitments
under the international Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) I was castigated for even
raising the issue. Never mind that that the MTCR is one of the cornerstones of U.S.
non-proliferation policy or that the U.S. publicly accuses other nations of violations
(i.e., the PRC/Pakistan M-11 transfers). Instead of engaging in a productive discussion I
was told:
I would like to call upon members of the civil service oversight
committees to investigate the developments I have just described and prepare a legislative
remedy to ensure that the congressional vision of the character of the career civil
service and its importance to a free and open society is mirrored by reality. In the
meantime Congress should act swiftly to ensure that the pay cap on ìdouble-dippingî by
retired military personnel be kept firmly in place. Removing the dual-compensation ceiling
will only exacerbate the problems I have outlined above.
Failure of the Inspector General
It has been almost exactly one year to the day (June 28,
1998) that I gave sworn testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on the
sad state of the export control process. It was one year prior to that testimony when
Michael Maloof and I went up to the DoD Inspector Generalís Office to request a formal
investigation of technology transfer to China and the national security threats it was
creating. As part of our request we described the internal mismanagement of the export
control process by DTSA managers and retaliatory acts they were engaged in for those who
offer unpopular opinions or positions on issues concerning China. We were quite surprised
when the Division Director said he was not interested in what we had to say and bluntly
asked us to leave.
Is it any wonder that almost ten months after Senator Thompson directed
the IGís of the Defense, Commerce, State, Energy, and Treasury Departments and the CIA to
undertake an extensive review of the export licensing process that the DoD report is very
weak? It does not reflect many of the issues brought up by DoD personnel. I am still
surprised that of the six IGís directed to follow up on the concerns I expressed to the
Committee only one, the DoD IG, even attempted to contact me. While I spent many hours
speaking to the DoD IG, the reams of evidence I presented were minimized or shrugged off
with statements like ìThat is beyond the scope of our audit.î While I have extensive
notes highlighting the fatal weaknesses in the DoD report I think that the point can be
better made by paraphrasing from the Air Forceís preliminary review of the draft report,
which excoriated the IG for rampant failure to utilize evidence provided, downplaying
major issues, and ignoring corroborating material provided by not only the Air Force, but
the Army, Navy, and NSA as well.
In part, the Air Force stated:
The audit report based on word usage, semantics, and
omission of significant and relevant documentation substantially misrepresented the
documented facts, submitted by the Air Force. The seriousness of congressional testimony
and the related congressional concerns that prompted this audit are downplayed when
compared with the facts reported by Air Force and which are in documented OUSD databases,
files and directives.
Those questions and requests from the DoD IG, on behalf of Congress
took approximately 325 hours to perform research and answer specific requests for the
Congressional inquiry. Approximately 194 specific questions were answered. Thirty-three
typed pages were prepared with approximately 74 specifically detailed attachments. Over
124 historical records were reviewed and an additional 9,896 e-mails were individually
reviewed and evaluated for the DoD IG. Air Force examined over 16 linear feet of Air Force
records in order to answer the DoD IG questions.
This documentation revealed: the unauthorized release of classified
futuristic space technology to foreign countries which negatively impacted both U.S.
military and U.S. industry interests; the Defense Intelligence Agency's non-review of over
99% of all submitted munitions licenses; intimidation and related acts against export
licensing officers; and the alteration and deletion of not only submitted positions of
agencies but also the deletion of the coordinated office.
Only one reference could be found to an Air Force input. That input was
in regard to training and that was semantically in error.
The DoD IG downplayed and failed to reference the potential compromise
of numerous advance Air Force systems, directly related to actions by DTRA. The DoD IG
never provided to Air Force specific documents that they requested our comments on,
despite repeated requests by Air Force. The fact that the DoD IG promised to provide such
information, on several occasions, yet elected to finalize a report to Congress purporting
a collective DoD response is disturbing.
A DoD That Wonít Say No
The Defense Department was the leader in successful efforts
to decontrol exports of supercomputers capable of processing vast quantities of complex
information, and it supplied funding and other forms of assistance to contractors hired to
justify preconceived policy initiatives in this regard. In a strategic context, such
computer systems typically figure in weapons development laboratories, nuclear weapon
simulation and modeling facilities, ICBM warhead design activities, and a host of other
critical military applications. DoDís leadership harked right back to the role played by
the new DoD chain of command in decades-long efforts to reform [read scrap] the export
control system centered at the National Academy of Sciences.
Was it any wonder that DoD officials were unhappy when the Congress
mandated, in Section 1211 (a) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year
1998, that Commerce was required to forward to the Defense Department all computer license
applications for systems exceeding a certain level of performance? This new authority was
an unwanted gift to some in DoD who led the charge to decontrol the very computers
Congress addressed in the law. The White House immediately sought to neutralize this
congressionally mandated requirement by requiring the signature of an under secretary in
order to object to such an export (see Attachment 4). The Commerce Department narrowed the
window even more by refusing to recognize the right of DoD officials to delegate authority
internally.
As we meet today, the administration appears poised to announce yet
another round of unilateral supercomputer decontrols. This time many fear that
administration excesses will extend well above the current unjustifiable 7,000 MTOPS
level. In 1995, ìPresident Clinton [unilaterally] decontrolled computers up to 2,000
MTOPS [from the previous CoCom ceiling of 260 MTOPS] for all users and up to 7,000 MTOPS
for civilian use in countries such as Russiaî and China. This will enhance
proliferators’ ability to pursue design, modeling, prototyping, and development work
across the entire spectrum of weapons of mass destruction. The weapons design
establishments of Russia and the Peopleís Republic of China stand to reap the greatest
benefit from further decontrol.
Technology Security vs. Balance of Trade
These philosophies are, of course, diametrically opposed. Technology
sold to a potential adversary that can be used to close the technical gap between its
military systems and ours diminishes our national security. Any short-term gain in our
economy would, with this result, represent at best a Pyrrhic victory. The flip side to the
argument is that by engagement our economy is improved. This provides incentives for
increased R&D to maintain the technical gap. The biggest beneficiary in such a cycle
would be the defense industry, which would be called upon to save us from our own trade
policy.
The National Science and Technology Council Committee for National
Security listed three conclusions in its Phase 1 Progress report briefing (28 April 1997):
- Government controls over controlled technology are effective within legal and regulatory
guidelines, but license decisions are generally made based on narrow evaluation factors
and so do not include analysis of multidimensional and long- term effects.
- The government does not have a comprehensive understanding of the effects on U.S.
national security interests of the international flow of both controlled and uncontrolled
technology.
- Collecting and analyzing sufficient data to develop a comprehensive understanding of the
international flow of both controlled and uncontrolled technology and its effects on U.S.
national interests to determine if adjustments to policy are called for would be a major
undertaking.
Controlled technology is being redefined as uncontrolled technology at
an unprecedented rate and is being exported despite the fact that the government does not
have a comprehensive understanding of the effects on national interests. While claims of
ìregulatory effectivenessî are made relative to controlled technology (again, which is
being nearly defined out of existence), the government has no clue concerning
multidimensional and long-term effects. Why? -- it would be a major undertaking and would
almost certainly expose the recklessness of current export control policy.
The export control system works only when there is a strong degree of
creative tension between agencies. This natural adversarial approach ensures full and open
debate. In addition, it is vital that higher echelons be regular participants in the
process, and this is achieved only through escalation of issues to their level.
Pre-emptive surrender because one does not want to involve higher authorities or because
one is afraid that escalation may be misinterpreted as a personal failure to resolve
issues does a great disservice to the agencyís mission, the process, and this nationís
physical security. DoDís consistent pattern of weak or no opposition, capitulation, and
failure to escalate issues is the single greatest factor in the loss of tension from the
system and its consequent failure to execute its mission.
Cumulative Impact
Tragically, nowhere in this government are analyses being
performed to assess the overall strategic and military impact of the technology decontrols
I described in my testimony before the Joint Economic Committee on June 17, 1997, and
April 28, 1998. Nor are any analyses being performed on the impact of the day-to-day
technology releases being made by the dysfunctional export licensing process. Yet it is
precisely at the ìbig pictureî level where the overall degradation of our national
security will be revealed. Without such assessments the government will continue to
blunder along endangering the lives of our citizens unnecessarily. I was surprised when
the Commerce Department’s IG concluded in response to Senator Thompson’s
question:
The current dual-use licensing process does not take
into account the cumulative effect of technology transfers. While individual technology
sales may appear benign, combining technology sales over a long period of time may allow
U.S. adversaries to build weapons of mass destruction or other capabilities that could
threaten our national security.
On three separate occasions I formally recommended the creation of a
modeling, simulation, and research branch which would be dedicated to conducting such
cumulative and tactical impact assessments. To date, the only cumulative impact analyses
created within DTSA are those which I undertook independently and for which I was
routinely subjected to reprisal. It is notable that the Commerce Department has recognized
the importance of such an effort while DoD still ignores the issue. Perhaps the reason
lies in the following passage from a 1993 memo from DoD’s former DUSD for
Counterproliferation to his boss the ASD for Nuclear Strategy and Counterproliferation. In
describing the role of DTSA in DoD’s pecking order, he stated:
Perhaps, some day, DoD will be blessed with a leadership possessing the
intellectual curiosity, capacity, and attention span necessary to effectively protect
America’s national security equities in this "arcane" but vital field. In
the meantime, however, the special interest juggernaut continues its steamroller tactics
in attempting to "mow down" whatever is left of the export control process. Like
the two-minute warning in a football game, the remaining 18 months of the present
administration will witness a renewed assault on the concept of national security export
controls. The upcoming supercomputer decontrol decision, new DoD initiatives to back
itself out of the munitions licensing business, and an internal move to speed up export
licenses for some of the key players in the China space launch fiasco—the event that
gave birth to the Cox/Dicks Committee—are only the first in what promises to be a
desperate push to completely gut the process. The increasingly politicized and compliant
bureaucracy cannot be relied upon to restore balance to the system. Only detailed and
vigorous congressional oversight is capable of preventing these excesses and their
dangerous legacy from undermining our children’s future.
