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As Clinton Pushes for Radical Approach to Global Warming, Will Impacts on U.S. National Security Be Frozen Out?

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, it was
the “media meteorologists”
turn; today, it is the Big Three
auto-makers; next Monday, it will be an
Amen Chorus drawn from the environmental
movement, academe and industries hoping
to capitalize on the economic dislocation
arising from President Clinton’s radical
response to the claimed threat of Global
Warming.(1)
Curiously absent, however, from the
high-profile “consultations”
the Clinton Administration is conducting
in the run-up to the Kyoto signing
ceremony in December are folks likely to
be particularly hard hit by draconian
reductions in American greenhouse gas
emissions — arguably with the most
serious repercussions of all:
the U.S. military.

As the attached
remarks delivered by Center for
Security Policy director Frank J.
Gaffney, Jr. at a Capitol Hill briefing
on Monday make clear, U.S. national
security may be jeopardized in numerous
ways by mandatory near-term reductions in
fossil fuel consumption. These include:
still further degradation of military readiness;
curtailed overseas presence;
diminished willingness
on the part of the American people to
support the defense of U.S. interests
if doing so risks crippling the country’s
economy as a whole; serious implications
for the quality and costs of
weapons procured by the armed
forces; further exacerbation of the trend
toward undue dependency on
foreign sources for materiel
critical to preparedness for warfighting;
and impingements on American
sovereignty that could
conceivably constrain the Nation’s
ability to go to war should the need
arise. As Mr. Gaffney concluded:

“Perhaps the
greatest danger of all is that
the cumulative effect of these
impacts could be to create the
impression in the minds of
prospective adversaries that the
United States is unable or
unwilling to protect its
interests around the world.
History suggests that such a
perception is an invitation to
aggression, making war more
likely and adding further, albeit
utterly unquantifiable costs to
the potential bill associated
with greenhouse gas emission
control regimes.”

No Time to Be Taking Such
Risks

The seriousness of
this danger was underscored in remarks by
General Binford Peay, on the occasion of
his 26 September retirement as
Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central
Command. According to today’s Washington
Times, Gen. Peay said:

“I am convinced that
we are living in the ‘interwar
years’ — a period akin in so
many ways to that of the 1920s
and ’30s, when Americans
failed to recognize the war
clouds gathering in Europe and
Asia, embraced isolationism and
refused to maintain a properly
equipped, trained and ready
military.”(2)

Such a warning from a respected military
commander should assure that actions
which would compound the already serious
problems associated with
“maintain[ing] a properly equipped,
trained and ready military” are not
taken without the most rigorous
deliberation and debate. Unfortunately,
while there is evidence that the Clinton
Administration is increasingly wracked by
disagreements between the in-house
environmentalists and officials
responsible for the American economy,(3)
those responsible for safeguarding the
national security — and the
survivability and effectiveness of the
forces maintained toward that end — have
not been much in evidence to date.

This is all the more remarkable in light of
the explicit commitment made recently by
President Clinton with regard to the
latters’ views. In explaining his refusal
to accept a defective ban on
anti-personnel landmines, Mr. Clinton
said on 17 September 1997:

“As Commander-in-Chief, I
will not send our soldiers to
defend the freedom of our people
and the freedom of others without
doing everything we can to make
them as secure as
possible….There is a line that
I simply cannot cross, and that
line is the safety and security
of our men and women in
uniform.”

The Bottom Line

As the experience in the landmine fight made
clear, opposition from the U.S.
military to harebrained schemes can have
a salutary effect on President Clinton,
even in the face of intense pressure from
some of his core constituencies.
Given what is at stake for the national
security, it behooves the armed forces to
engage directly and promptly in
Administration deliberations about global
warming — not simply react to an
Executive Order or Global Climate Change
Treaty that will have widespread and
deleterious, if as yet largely
unquantifiable, impacts on their ability
to survive and prevail in the Nation’s
future conflicts. It equally behooves the
President, Vice President and others
fashioning U.S. policy in this area to
give great weight not only to the
economic arguments against radical and
unjustified action on global warming
but also to those that should now be
forthcoming from the national security
community.

– 30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Center Asks: Are
White House Climate Change Extravaganzas
Meant To Facilitate Informed Debate — Or
Just The Party Line? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_146″>No. 97-D 146, 30
September 1997).

2. The Center has
reached a similar conclusion. See its Decision
Brief entitled Clinton
Legacy Watch # 5: Welcome To The New
Inter-War Era ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_129″>No. 97-D 129, 8
September 1997).

3. See, for
example, “Clinton Aides Duel Over
Global Warming Action,” in today’s Wall
Street Journal, which depicts an
Administration “roiled by
differences between economic and
environmental teams over just what U.S.
policy for reducing carbon emissions
should be. The team’s daily deliberations
amount to a disaster, as some officials
see it: behind schedule, buffeted by
domestic and foreign pressures and
unlikely to please anyone in the
end.”

The French and Russians Certainly ‘Don’t Get It’ on Iran — The Question Is: Does the Clinton-Gore Team?

(Washington, D.C.): Just fourteen
months after President Clinton signed
into law the historic Iran-Libya
Sanctions Act (ILSA) — an act that
established as a matter of law
America’s opposition to state-sponsors of
terrorism and provided new tools to make
that opposition effective — his
Administration seems poised to undermine
the law, and with it, any semblance of
credibility still attached to the stated
policy of “dual containment”
toward Iran and Iraq.

What ‘Containment’?

In recent days, official Washington
has been rocked by fresh revelations of
steps taken by “friendly
nations” that are making a mockery
of Clinton efforts to contain Iran.
First, the Washington Times has
revealed that U.S. and Israeli
intelligence have hard evidence that
Russian and Chinese entities are
providing technology that will help Iran
build long-range ballistic missiles
— weapons that could, within three years
or less, be capable of delivering
nuclear, chemical, biological or
radiological weapons against cities
throughout Europe, including ironically
Moscow. Incredibly, according to the New
York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning
syndicated columnist, William Safire, the
United States has been sitting on this
information for a full year.

Then, a consortium lead by
France’s Total and the state-owned
Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom, announced
a $2 billion energy deal to develop new
offshore Iranian natural gas deposits.
To add insult to injury, the European
Union immediately expressed solidarity
with France and contemptuously dismissed
any concern about American unhappiness
over this, the largest single foreign
investment in Iran since the U.S. Embassy
in Tehran was sacked in 1979.

The stakes involved in the Clinton
Administration’s response extend far
beyond the possibilities of frictions
with key allies and upset in trade
relations with friendly states. If the
United States decides to
look-the-other-way it will accelerate the
evisceration of economic sanctions as a
U.S. foreign policy tool.

Economic Sanctions: An
Effective Weapon That Must Not Be
Abandoned

Foreign governments and business
interests — and, indeed, a growing
number of American multinational
companies — have made no secret of their
desire to achieve just such an
evisceration. Their most immediate
targets are ILSA, which was championed by
Senators Alfonse
D’Amato (R-NY) and Edward
Kennedy (D-MA) and the so-called
LIBERTAD Act, better known by the names
of its principal sponsors, Sen.
Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Rep.
Dan Burton (R-IN). The former
authorizes the President to impose
sanctions — up to and including denial
of access to the U.S. market — against
companies that make investments of $20
million in Iran and $40 million in Libya.
The latter would penalize foreign
companies trafficking in U.S. property
confiscated by the Castro regime.

On 1 October, Senator D’Amato and the
Chairman of the House International
Relations Committee, Representative Benjamin
Gilman (R-NY), wrote President
Clinton, warning of the serious
consequences of inaction:

“If we do not sanction Total
as an ILSA violator it is likely
that foreign investment will pour
into Iran’s oil and gas
fields….According to testimony
from several State Department
officials who have appeared
before our respective Committees,
this investment will help
finance Iran’s continuing effort
to develop long-range ballistic
missiles and nuclear weapons. Our
vital national interests are at
stake as well as those of our
European, Asian, and Persian Gulf
allies.” (Emphasis
added.)

Not surprisingly, those pushing this sale
would rather not talk about these
repercussions. Instead, they tend to
complain about the perceived U.S.
application of its laws
extraterritorially and, more generally,
about the ineffectiveness of economic
sanctions. As the European Commission’s
Ambassador to the U.S. Hubo
Paemen recently said, “We
don’t think that economic sanctions have
a good historic record.”

The Reagan Legacy

Contrary to the Ambassador’s assertion,
history shows that while multilateral
sanctions are certainly preferable in
stifling a nation’s economy (e.g., South
Africa), when properly employed, even
unilateral U.S. economic sanctions
can take a toll on the hard currency
revenue base of a targeted country. A
case in point was the American use of
such sanctions in 1981-82 in response to
the Soviet Union’s intention to construct
a massive two-strand Siberian gas
pipeline project as Moscow was
simultaneously massing troops on Poland’s
borders and sponsoring martial law in
that country. In that particular case, a
determined stand by President Reagan
resulted in a costly two-year delay in
the construction of the first strand of
the planned two-strand 3,600 mile
Siberian gas pipeline project. More
importantly, the second strand of
that vast project was effectively killed
by U.S. unilateral sanctions,
resulting in an estimated annual hard
currency cost to the Soviet economy of
some $10-12 billion (at a time when the
USSR’s total hard-currency income was
only around $32 billion annually).

This
debilitating blow to Moscow’s hard
currency cash flow — coupled
with implemented alliance agreements
forced on Europe by the Reagan
administration in the areas of: enhanced
European energy security (i.e., capping
Soviet gas deliveries to Western Europe
via the May 1983 International Energy
Agency Agreement); strengthened export
controls (i.e., achieved at the
high-level meeting of COCOM in April
1983); and the elimination of officially
subsidized credit arrangements (i.e., via
the OECD agreement in early 1983) — combined
to constrict substantially Western life
support to the anemic Soviet economy and
ultimately to hasten the demise of the
Soviet empire. In the absence of
this determined unilateral American
economic sanctions policy (which was
vehemently opposed by the Europeans),
there is little doubt the Soviet Union
would still be menacing Western interests
today, despite the rigidities of its
flawed command economy.

Is the ‘Fix’ In?

Unfortunately, the Clinton
Administration, which appears
approximately as anxious as its foreign
counterparts to end economic sanctions
that interfere with American business
opportunities, seems determined to ignore
this important historical precedent. On
30 September, State Department spokesman James
Rubin signaled the
Administration’s willingness to exercise
its right to waive sanctions against the
consortium:

“…It is important to bear
in mind what — the reasons why
we supported this legislation in
the first place, and that is
because we share the view of
Congress that we need to get
other countries in the world to
agree to ratchet up the pressure
on a government that has so
blatantly supported international
terrorism, that is determined to
develop weapons of mass
destruction and is such a
determined opponent of the peace
process.

“So the objective of the
legislation is not to
impose sanctions. The
objective of the legislation is
to get other countries, in Europe
in particular, to work with us on
the subject of tightening up
pressure on Iran. And what we
have been doing in that regard is
we have had an intensified
dialogue with the European Union
and Canada aimed at seeking
greater convergence in our
policies towards Iran….In this
coming month, we’re going to be
talking with our allies about
ways to ratchet up the pressure.
That is a factor that will go
into any decision-making because the
law itself specifies that the
option of waiving a sanction in
the event that the governments
themselves have agreed to tighten
the pressure up.”

Then Rubin took the following summary
question: “As far as what France or
the Europeans might be willing to do,
what you’re saying is that, if you’re
satisfied with a set of new conditions or
steps or whatever, then you may
reconsider — or you will consider
favorably the possibility of waiving the
sanctions?” Rubin responded,
“I’m — you can draw that
conclusion.“

Interestingly,
Rubin’s soft-pedaling was in stark
contrast to his boss’ vaunted trademark
“tough” talk in New York the
same day. Secretary Albright
said, “It is also a grave
concern to us that our friends and allies
don’t get it. They seem to think
that there is some way we can deal with
[Iran] without in some way supporting
[Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism].”

‘Moscow Rules’

Congressional sources tell the Casey
Institute that, even if the
Clinton Administration wanted to give the
French a bye on ILSA, they would have a
hard time doing so for the Russians.
After all, Russia has been so blatant in
its determination to aid Iran’s nuclear
and ballistic missile programs that even
a Clinton team determined to see-no-evil
when it comes to proliferation(1)
would be subject to ridicule if
it tried to argue that Russia’s good
behavior on other scores entitles it to
an ILSA waiver on the Total-Gazprom gas
deal. Consider just some of the
evidence to the contrary:

  • Vice President Gore
    was firmly rebuffed by his
    Russian counterpart,
    Prime Minister Victor
    Chernomyrdin     when, in
    the course of their latest
    meeting in Moscow,(2)
    Mr. Gore expressed his concerns
    over Russian cooperation with
    Iranian efforts to build a nuclear
    power complex in Bushehr.
    (Incredible as it may seem, a
    recent General Accounting Office
    report suggests that the U.S.
    taxpayer is contributing to this
    malevolent undertaking via its
    support of the International
    Atomic Energy Agency’s [IAEA]
    technical training program, of
    which the U.S. funds some 30
    cents of every dollar. According
    to the GAO, the Iranians have
    already received U.S. aid for
    their Bushehr facility from this
    international agency.)

  • On the same trip, Mr. Gore cited
    intelligence reports which
    unequivocally declare that
    “a vigorous effort by Iran
    to obtain the technologies it
    needs to build a ballistic
    missile and to build nuclear
    weapons.” As noted by 33
    Senators and 63 Representatives
    in a letter sent to President
    Clinton yesterday, “Missile
    technology and technical advice
    have been provided to Iran from
    the Russian Federation in
    violation of the Missile
    Technology Control Regime
    (MTCR).” Russian assistance
    has “includ[ed] the transfer
    of wind tunnel and rocket engine
    testing equipment.” Worse
    yet, intelligence reports
    indicate that the Russian Space
    Agency and its head, Yuri Koptev
    — beneficiaries of American
    taxpayer largesse under
    U.S.-Russian space cooperation
    and the Nunn-Lugar program — are
    directly linked to the
    Russian missile technology
    transfer to Iran.

  • The Center has learned that
    Iranian and Russian intelligence
    agents and special forces have
    stepped up their efforts to
    penetrate Azerbaijan
    over the past several months
    (principally via Armenia) in a
    joint effort to destabilize the
    pro-Western leadership in Baku.
    These actions represent a direct
    threat to vital future U.S.
    energy security interests, and
    are indicative of Russo-Iranian
    strategic cooperation in the
    area.(3)

The Bottom Line

Acts of appeasement and treachery by
nominally friendly states are,
unfortunately, just one manifestation of an
all-too-familiar pattern: The cycle of
behavior that typically precedes — and
gives rise to — war. As
General Binford Peay noted on the
occasion of his 26 September retirement
as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central
Command, the regional command responsible
for contingencies in the Persian Gulf:

“I am convinced that
we are living in the ‘inter-war
years’ — a period akin in so
many ways to that of the 1920s
and ’30s, when Americans
failed to recognize the war
clouds gathering in Europe and
Asia, embraced isolationism and
refused to maintain a properly
equipped, trained and ready
military.”(4)

Several actions are clearly in order if
this cycle is to be broken — or at least
attenuated. (5)
These include the following:

  • Deny Total, Gazprom and
    their Malaysian partner,
    Petronas, access to the U.S.
    market    , including
    America’s equities and bond
    markets.

  • Deny access to
    Export-Import Bank
    guarantees and funding and Overseas
    Private Investment Corporation
    credits and insurance coverage to
    American companies doing business
    with these firms.

  • Suspend all U.S. taxpayer
    assistance flows — including
    space-related funding — to
    Russia     unless and until
    it verifiably quits all aspects
    of its strategic cooperation with
    Iran (nuclear, military,
    intelligence, supplier credits,
    etc.) and severely penalizes the
    Russian enterprises and
    individuals involved in the
    missile and nuclear technology
    transfers.

  • Withdraw all U.S. funding related
    to IAEA for programs in Iran and
    Cuba.

  • Provide the resources immediately
    to initiate broadcasts of Radio
    Free Iran     and to
    intensify those of Radio
    Liberty’s Russian Service
    in order, among other things, to
    illuminate the dangerous
    activities of their audiences’
    respective governments.

  • Defer Senate action on the
    nomination of Martin Indyk
    to be Assistant Secretary of
    State for Near East Affairs until
    the Clinton Administration has
    taken satisfactory steps to
    ensure that the policy of
    “dual containment” is
    enforced, and not
    undermined.

– 30 –

1. For example,
see the Casey Institute’s Perspective
entitled Lying for Dollars:
Expected Clinton Certification on P.R.C.
Proliferation Would Demean U.S., Disserve
Its Interests ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_140″>No. 97-C 140, 18
September 1997).

2. See the
Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled Talbott’s ‘Vision
Thing’: Renewing Mission on Mir Just
Latest Manifestation of Clinton’s
‘Integration’ Policy Toward Russia
(No. 97-D 143,
25 September 1997) and Clinton
Watch # 6: Crises Involving U.S.-Russian
Space ‘Cooperation’ Shows Clinton-Gore
Errors, Need For Changes ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_139″>No. 97-D 139, 18
September 1997).

3. See the Center’s
Decision Brief entitled Caspian
Watch #7: President Aliyev’s Visit Should
Translate into the ‘Beginning of a
Beautiful Friendship’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_107″>No. 97-D 107, 29
July 1997).

4. The Center for
Security Policy has reached a similar
conclusion. See its Decision
Brief entitled Clinton
Legacy Watch # 5: Welcome To The New
Inter-War Era ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_129″>No. 97-D 129, 8
September 1997).

5. Unlike the
measure of merit in evaluating
“engagement” policies
(appeasement by another name), a
containment policy cannot be said to have
failed simply because it has not resulted
in the near-term transformation of the
targeted state. The correct test of the
latter type of policy is, rather, whether
the nation in question would have become
even more dangerous if not contained.

Lying for Dollars: Expected Clinton Certification on P.R.C. Proliferation Would Demean U.S., Disserve Its Interests

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s
Washington Post lets the cat out
of the bag: Citing congressional sources
who were briefed last week by a senior
State Department official,(1)
President Clinton is preparing to
certify that Communist China “has
stopped exporting nuclear weapons-related
materials to countries such as Pakistan
and Iran.” Such a
certification is being aggressively
promoted by U.S. nuclear power companies
who believe it will clear the last
obstacle keeping them from cashing in on
a Chinese market for their products said
to be worth $60 billion.

‘Fool Me Once…’

Unfortunately, neither the hopes
inspired by Mr. Clinton’s “Good
Housekeeping Seal of Approval” nor
the riches American firms think await
them at the end of China’s nuclear
rainbow are likely to pan out. For one
thing, China is now and will
continue to be one of the most
egregious proliferators on the planet.(2)
There is no evidence that it has
slackened its nuclear cooperation with
Pakistan — a nation that does not permit
“full-scope” safeguards
required under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nor has it
given up its involvement in the
aggressive Iranian nuclear program, a
program whose purpose as a cover for
weapons activities is self-evident, given
Teheran’s abundant oil reserves.

No less problematic are the prospects
of American nuclear companies actually
benefitting from China’s potential
requirement for new reactors and related
technology. Even if its ultimate value were
as much as $60 billion, past
Chinese practice suggests that Beijing’s
commitment to self-sufficiency will
sharply limit its actual purchase of
expensive U.S. nuclear power plants.
More likely, the PRC will buy perhaps as
few as one or two American reactors (and
perhaps a few from other foreign
suppliers) with a view to ripping off
their technology — both for the
purpose of supplying China’s domestic
needs and in order to enhance their
international competitiveness. Low wage
rates and a willingness to sell its
products indiscriminately — including to
rogue states — virtually assures that
China will be able, in due course, to
secure a dominant market share in the
nuclear trade.

The Shape of Things to Come

The following are among the likely
repercussions should President Clinton
chose to make the certification to
Congress required pursuant to a 1985
joint resolution concerning the
“U.S.-China Agreement for Nuclear
Cooperation”:

  • Such a step would formalize America’s
    willingness to overlook
    activities that are inimical to
    its strategic interests as long
    as some sector of the economy —
    no matter how small — might
    benefit from doing so    .
    This message has already been
    telegraphed to some extent by
    recent executive branch decisions
    to delink trade and human rights
    (followed by renewal of Most
    Favored Nation status for China,
    even though delinkage has only
    led to an intensification of
    Beijing’s repressive behavior.)(3)
    More recently, the U.S. Senate
    showed that the legislative
    branch is also capable of putting
    a few companies’ profits ahead of
    the national interest in voting
    not to impede the sale of
    militarily relevant
    supercomputers even to
    Chinese nuclear weapons
    facilities    .(4)
  • Still, the effect of the
    President of the United States
    formally confirming that China is
    satisfying U.S. non-proliferation
    requirements — the practical, if
    not literal, meaning of the
    required nuclear cooperation
    certification — can only have
    undesirable consequences for U.S.
    national interests and security. China
    will be emboldened to proceed
    with at least the level and type
    of dual-use nuclear trade in
    which it is currently engaged.
    Worse yet, if, as some are
    suggesting, the President will
    certify to China’s restraint in nuclear
    proliferation even if it
    is still aggressively
    disseminating chemical and
    biological weapons technology and
    that involved in delivering such
    weapons    , the effect could be
    to cause the PRC to redouble the
    latter proliferation activities.

  • The U.S. nuclear power
    industry will continue to
    atrophy.     If American
    companies wind up being denied a
    significant share of the China
    market — reputed to be the last
    great sales opportunity for
    nuclear power suppliers(5)
    — they will either shift into
    other fields of endeavor, whither
    away or be bought out. For
    example, some experts believe
    that in the event Westinghouse’s
    nuclear reactor division actually
    gets to sell China a reactor or
    two, it may be promptly purchased
    by FRAMATOM, the French nuclear
    power conglomerate that a
    generation ago ripped off the
    same American company’s light
    water reactor design. The net
    result would be little, if
    any    , benefit to the U.S.
    economy and labor force.

The Bottom Line

The Casey Institute of the Center for
Security Policy believes that the
United States requires a healthy nuclear
power industry. The Nation’s
current dependency on imported oil for
approximately 50% of its needs is a
national security disaster waiting to
happen. And the looming block
obsolescence of its existing nuclear
energy infrastructure — which currently
supplies 8% of total U.S. daily
consumption — means that, unless steps
are promptly taken to prepare, certify
and bring on-line safe, modern
replacement reactors, America will become
still more vulnerable to threats, or
actual interruptions of, its overseas oil
supplies.

The obvious solution to the legitimate
need to maintain a viable American
nuclear energy industry — without
compromising the Nation’s security
interests by selling reactors to China —
is to embark upon a major public
education and infrastructure upgrade
program. The objective of such a program
would be ensure that advanced designs for
fail-safe nuclear reactors are built to
serve the largest energy market of all, that
of the United States.(6)

Naturally, under present
circumstances, such an initiative would
take enormous leadership, political
capital and courage on the part of the
President and Vice President. Given
their intense concerns about the effects
of fossil fuel emissions on global
warming, however, a program to bring
about a new generation of clean-burning
nuclear power for the 21st
Century may be the only hope for
containing — to say nothing of reducing
— greenhouse gas emissions without
savaging the American economy.

In this way, the Clinton
Administration can accomplish a
“three-fer” involving what it
maintains are some of its highest
priorities: curbing proliferation,
promoting American businesses and
reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By
contrast, its China deal will exacerbate
proliferation, have little if any benefit
for the U.S. economy and ensure that any
future cuts in emissions that might
affect the environment come at great
expense to the Nation’s economic growth.
Congress should ensure the latter course
of action does not eventuate, even if the
President opts for it.


– 30 –

1. The official in
question is Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State Robert Einhorn. For more on his
present and prospective role, see the
Center’s Decision Brief
released earlier today entitled Clinton
Legacy Watch # 6: Crises Involving
U.S.-Russian Space ‘Cooperation’ Show
Clinton-Gore Errors, Need for Changes
(No. 97-D 139).

2. An unclassified
assessment of the extent of Beijing’s
systematic and ongoing effort to
market weapons of mass destruction and
their delivery systems to some of the
world’s most dangerous nations can be
found in the current volume of The
Middle East Quarterly. The article,
entitled “China Arms the
Rogues,” was written by Center for
Security Policy Director Frank J.
Gaffney, Jr. and provides a
country-by-country assessment of the
“matches” China persists in
throwing into the Mideast tinderbox.

3. See the Casey
Institute’s Perspective
entitled Non-Renewal of
M.F.N. for China: A Proportionate
Response to Beijing’s Emerging,
Trade-Subsidized Strategic Threat
(No. 97-C 76, 9
June 1997).

4. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled What’s Good for
Silicon Graphics Is Not Necessarily Good
for America: Some Supercomputer Sales
Imperil U.S. Security ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_102″>No. 97-D 102, 21
July 1997).

5. This conclusion
derives from the perception that other
markets will either remain closed to U.S.
companies (in order to protect domestic
manufacturers of reactors and related
nuclear equipment and materials) or
non-existent in deference to pervasive
nuclear phobia and/or cost
considerations. The latter condition, it
is assumed, will continue to apply in the
United States, itself.

6. For more on
such “accident proof” reactor
designs, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Strategic
Meltdown at Savannah River: Time to
Revisit Watkins’ Tritium Decisions
(No. 92-D 2,
6 January 1992).

Nobel Laureates in support of the letter to congress, re: Senate Bill 507

Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Sloan School of Management
Room E52-443
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347

Franco Modigliani,
(1985, Economics) MIT

Robert Solow, (1987,
Economics) MIT

Mario Molina, (1995,
Chemistry) MIT

Roald Hoffman, (1981,
Chemistry) Cornell

Milton Friedman,
(1976, Economics) University of Chicago

Richard Smalley,
(1996, Chemistry) Rice

Clifford Shull,
(1994, Physics) MIT

Herbert A. Simon,
(1978, Economics) Carnegie-Mellon

Douglass North,
(1993, Economics) Washington University

Dudley Herschbach,
(1986, Chemistry) Harvard

Herbert C. Brown,
(1979, Chemistry) Purdue

David M. Lee, (1996,
Physics) Cornell

Daniel Nathans,
(1978, Medicine) Johns Hopkins

Doug Osheroff, (1996,
Physics) Stanford

Har Gobind Khorana,
(1968, Medicine) MIT

Herbert Hauptman,
(1985, Chemistry) Hauptman-Woodward
Medical Research Institute

John C. Harsanyi,
(1994, Economics) UC Berkeley

Paul Berg, (1980,
Chemistry) Stanford

Henry Kendall, (1990,
Physics) MIT

Paul Samuelson,
(1970, Economics) MIT

James Tobin, (1981,
Economics) Yale

Jerome Friedman,
(1990, Physics) MIT

Nobel Laureates to the Rescue on Patent Deform: Will Congress Heed Call to Protect a National

(Washington, D.C.): The
ranks of those opposed to impending
legislative efforts to alter the
time-tested U.S. patent system beyond
recognition were powerfully swelled
yesterday by the entry into the fray of
twenty-two Nobel Laureates. Among those
registering their strong objection to S.
507, the so-called “The Patent
Improvement Act,” were: economist Franco
Modigliani of MIT; Harvard
chemist Dudley Herschbach;
MIT physicist Jerome Friedman;
University of Chicago economist Milton
Friedman; and MIT economist Paul
Samuelson.

A letter signed by 22 of the Nation’s
Laureates (see the
attached) urges Congress to oppose
the passage of S. 507 on the grounds that
it:

“…Could result in lasting
harm to the United States and the
world….It will prove very
damaging to American small
investors and thereby discourage
the flow of new inventions that
have contributed so much to
America’s superior performance in
the advancement of Science and
technology. It will do so by
curtailing the protection they
obtain through patents relative
to the large multi-national
corporations.”
(Emphasis added.)

Under the Shadow

This concern is rooted in part in the
“streamlining” envisioned by
this legislation — which is being
championed in the Senate by Sen.
Orrin Hatch (R-UT) — at the
expense of the constitutionally-mandated
patent rights of American citizens.
Particularly worrisome is the fact that
S. 507 would require the publication
of patent applications 18 months after
filing, irrespective of whether a
patent has been issued or not.

This would have the effect of denying
U.S. inventors protection against large
multinationals or foreign-owned
enterprises with a demonstrated interest
in stealing America’s technological
seed-corn. In War by Other Means,
an in-depth study by John Fialka of
economic espionage employed by foreign
governments and companies to the
detriment of the United States, President
Clinton’s former chief economist, Laura
D’Andrea Tyson, is quoted as estimating
that the U.S. lost $105 billion
in potential sales from 1985-1989 due to
patent theft by the Japanese.

Threat to National Security

Such expedited publication of patent
applications — entailing the disclosure
of sufficiently detailed information to
produce working models — would
not only make wholesale patent
infringement likely. It would
also increase the chances that technology
with considerable potential in the
national security field may be released
before that potential is properly
evaluated and protected by patent secrecy
orders.

A Voice of Reason

In the months leading up to the
Laureates’ intervention, one of the most
prominent and effective opponents of the
kind of patent deform proposed
by S. 507 has been Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-CA). In lengthy
remarks extemporaneously delivered on the
House floor on Wednesday night, Rep.
Rohrabacher illuminated some of the
serious problems with this legislation.
He then addressed the larger syndrome of
which the “Patent Improvement”
bill is just one manifestation:

“[In the future,] we are
going to be facing more and more
challenges to our freedom and to
our prosperity as Americans from
those who are trying to foist off
on us the necessity of
transferring authority and power
to world organizations and to
multinational organizations. The
patent fight is the first fight,
because it has been the first one
we have been able to identify
where actual legal
protections enjoyed by
Americans are being diminished in
order to have a harmonization of
law overseas. That, in itself,
would be wrong. But the
side effects of giving huge
multinational corporations and
foreign corporations the power
over Americans to steal their new
ideas, which will undermine our
economy, not
even to mention what it does to
the lives of these poor inventors
who spent their whole lives
trying to develop something, this
shows that it is a bad idea on a
number of levels.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy commends the
22 Nobel Laureates, Rep. Rohrabacher and
all those opposed to S. 507 and the
assault on the Nation’s inventiveness —
with all that implies for its security,
economic and technological interests. It
seconds the appeal issued by the
Laureates who write “We hold that
Congress, before embarking on a
revision of our time-tested patent system,
should hold extensive hearings on whether
there are serious flaws in the present
system that need to be addressed and, if
so, how best to deal with them.”

Indeed, the Center notes that the
hearings held to date have been almost
exclusively vehicles for proponents of
dumbing-down the U.S. patent system by
“conforming” it with the
demonstrably less effective ones in place
in Europe and Japan. If the
recommendations of some of the country’s
most brilliant citizens — on behalf of all
its people — are heeded, Congress will
urgently act to take testimony from its
Nobel Prize winners, as well as from
those who can address the national
security implications of the proposed
patent deforms.

–
30 –

1. For more on the
shortcoming of S. 507, see the Casey
Institute’s Perspective
entitled Hatch’s ‘Submarine’
Patent Deform Bill Threatens To Sink The
Engine of U.S. Competitiveness, National
Security ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_70″>No. 97-C 70, 21
May 1997).

Nobel Laureates to the Rescue on Patent Deform: Will Congress Heed Call to Protect a National (Security) Asset?

(Washington, D.C.): The
ranks of those opposed to impending
legislative efforts to alter the
time-tested U.S. patent system beyond
recognition were powerfully swelled
yesterday by the entry into the fray of
twenty-two Nobel Laureates. Among those
registering their strong objection to S.
507, the so-called “The Patent
Improvement Act,” were: economist Franco
Modigliani of MIT; Harvard
chemist Dudley Herschbach;
MIT physicist Jerome Friedman;
University of Chicago economist Milton
Friedman; and MIT economist Paul
Samuelson.

A letter signed by 22 of the Nation’s
Laureates (see the
attached) urges Congress to oppose
the passage of S. 507 on the grounds that
it:

“…Could result in lasting
harm to the United States and the
world….It will prove very
damaging to American small
investors and thereby discourage
the flow of new inventions that
have contributed so much to
America’s superior performance in
the advancement of Science and
technology. It will do so by
curtailing the protection they
obtain through patents relative
to the large multi-national
corporations.”
(Emphasis added.)

Under the Shadow

This concern is rooted in part in the
“streamlining” envisioned by
this legislation — which is being
championed in the Senate by Sen.
Orrin Hatch (R-UT) — at the
expense of the constitutionally-mandated
patent rights of American citizens.
Particularly worrisome is the fact that
S. 507 would require the publication
of patent applications 18 months after
filing, irrespective of whether a
patent has been issued or not.

This would have the effect of denying
U.S. inventors protection against large
multinationals or foreign-owned
enterprises with a demonstrated interest
in stealing America’s technological
seed-corn. In War by Other Means,
an in-depth study by John Fialka of
economic espionage employed by foreign
governments and companies to the
detriment of the United States, President
Clinton’s former chief economist, Laura
D’Andrea Tyson, is quoted as estimating
that the U.S. lost $105 billion
in potential sales from 1985-1989 due to
patent theft by the Japanese.(1)

Threat to National Security

Such expedited publication of patent
applications — entailing the disclosure
of sufficiently detailed information to
produce working models — would
not only make wholesale patent
infringement likely. It would
also increase the chances that technology
with considerable potential in the
national security field may be released
before that potential is properly
evaluated and protected by patent secrecy
orders.

A Voice of Reason

In the months leading up to the
Laureates’ intervention, one of the most
prominent and effective opponents of the
kind of patent deform proposed
by S. 507 has been Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-CA). In lengthy
remarks extemporaneously delivered on the
House floor on Wednesday night, Rep.
Rohrabacher illuminated some of the
serious problems with this legislation.
He then addressed the larger syndrome of
which the “Patent Improvement”
bill is just one manifestation:

“[In the future,] we are
going to be facing more and more
challenges to our freedom and to
our prosperity as Americans from
those who are trying to foist off
on us the necessity of
transferring authority and power
to world organizations and to
multinational organizations. The
patent fight is the first fight,
because it has been the first one
we have been able to identify
where actual legal
protections enjoyed by
Americans are being diminished in
order to have a harmonization of
law overseas. That, in itself,
would be wrong. But the
side effects of giving huge
multinational corporations and
foreign corporations the power
over Americans to steal their new
ideas, which will undermine our
economy, not
even to mention what it does to
the lives of these poor inventors
who spent their whole lives
trying to develop something, this
shows that it is a bad idea on a
number of levels.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy commends the
22 Nobel Laureates, Rep. Rohrabacher and
all those opposed to S. 507 and the
assault on the Nation’s inventiveness —
with all that implies for its security,
economic and technological interests. It
seconds the appeal issued by the
Laureates who write “We hold that
Congress, before embarking on a
revision of our time-tested patent system,
should hold extensive hearings on whether
there are serious flaws in the present
system that need to be addressed and, if
so, how best to deal with them.”

Indeed, the Center notes that the
hearings held to date have been almost
exclusively vehicles for proponents of
dumbing-down the U.S. patent system by
“conforming” it with the
demonstrably less effective ones in place
in Europe and Japan. If the
recommendations of some of the country’s
most brilliant citizens — on behalf of all
its people — are heeded, Congress will
urgently act to take testimony from its
Nobel Prize winners, as well as from
those who can address the national
security implications of the proposed
patent deforms.

–
30 –

1. For more on the
shortcoming of S. 507, see the Casey
Institute’s Perspective
entitled Hatch’s ‘Submarine’
Patent Deform Bill Threatens To Sink The
Engine of U.S. Competitiveness, National
Security ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_70″>No. 97-C 70, 21
May 1997).

What’s Good For Silicon Graphics is Not Necessarily Good for America: Some Super Computer Sales Imperil US Security

(Washington, D.C.): Earlier in this
century, the sentiment that U.S. national
interests were defined by those of
powerful domestic economic interests was
summarized by the expression,
“What’s good for General Motors is
good for America.” Although such
narrow parochialism has subsequently come
to be viewed as a generally unsound basis
for policy-making, it seems to have been
embraced by the United States’ computer
industry and its friends in the Clinton
Administration.

Specifically, the desire to improve
the international market-share enjoyed by
this well-heeled and politically active
industry prompted President Clinton on 6
October 1995 to effect a very substantial
liberalization of export controls on
powerful computing technologies and
systems. Unfortunately — as demonstrated
in recent hearings conducted by the
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee’s
Subcommittee on International Security,
Proliferation and Federal Affairs,
chaired by Senator Thad Cochran
(R-MS)(1)
— what companies like Silicon Graphics
have deemed to be good for their
bottom-line is manifestly not good
for U.S. security. In the roughly 18
months following President Clinton’s
decision unilaterally to decontrol
supercomputers capable of making
2,000-7,000 million theoretical
operations per second (MTOPS), such
devices have wound up in several ominous
locales.

For example, according to a floor
statement made by Sen. Cochran on 19
June:

“Based on statements from
the Russian Minister of Atomic
Energy and from United States
Government officials, that there
are at least five American
supercomputers in two of Russia’s
nuclear weapons labs:
Chelyabinsk-70 and Arzamas-16.
Minister Mikhailov of the Russian
Ministry of Atomic Energy has not
been reluctant to proclaim what
these high-performance computers
will be used for, and he said in
a speech in January they will be
used to simulate nuclear
explosions, and that the
computers are, in his words, ’10
times faster than any previously
available in Russia.’ Four
of the five supercomputers we are
aware of publicly in Russia’s
nuclear weapons labs came from
Silicon Graphics…”

Sen. Cochran noted that the Chinese
military was also benefitting from such
American-made computers:

“We also know at
least 47 high-performance
computers have been exported
without licenses to the People’s
Republic of China. One
of the computers sold also by
Silicon Graphics is now operating
in the Chinese Academy of
Sciences. The Chinese Academy of
Sciences is a key participant in
military research and
development, and works on
everything from the DF-5 ICBM —
which, incidentally, is capable
of reaching the United States —
to uranium enrichment for nuclear
weapons. There can be no question
about the Chinese Academy of
Science’s status as a military
end-user.”

Sen. Cochran added on 7 July,
“…One Sun Micro systems machine
that we just learned [about] last week is
now running at a Chinese military
facility in Chungsha after being diverted
from Hong Kong.”

‘Selling
the Rope’

Such findings led Senator Cochran to a
grim conclusion:

“We learned that the
United States was a proliferator
of weapons technology that was
threatening the security of the
United States, and putting at
risk United States servicemen,
servicewomen, other interests,
and other assets and interests
throughout the world….We
were giving countries like Russia
and China and others the capacity
to improve the lethality, the
accuracy, and the capabilities of
nuclear weapons systems through
the exporting of technology that
they were using to simulate tests
— which they would not otherwise
be able to do — and to upgrade
the quality and accuracy of their
missile delivery systems and
weapons systems.”

The fact that Senator Cochran’s
amendment, which was co-sponsored by Senator
Richard Durbin (D-IL), had been
overwhelmingly approved in the House
meant that its defeat in the Senate
became the object of a concerted effort
by the Clinton Administration and its
friends in the U.S. computer industry. As
members of the conference committee
responsible for resolving differences
between the two versions of the FY1998
Defense authorization bill are likely to
be subjected to similar pressure from the
CEO of IBM and other interested parties,
it is useful to examine critically some
of the arguments made by opponents of the
Cochran-Durbin amendment:

    Item: ‘These
    Computers Are Not Really
    Supercomputers’

Senator Barbara Boxer
(D-CA), who co-sponsored with Senator
Rod Grams (R-MN) a substitute
amendment that called simply for a
further “study” of the issue,
made a point repeatedly argued by
industry opponents of the Cochran-Durbin
proposal:

“…Computers in the 2,000
through 7,000 MTOPS ranges are
mid-level computers that are
widely available. They are not
supercomputers. Let me repeat
this because I know there is a
lot of confusion on this issue.
Computers in the 2,000 MTOPS
through 7,000 MTOPS range are not
supercomputers. In fact, many
computer servers will top the
2,000 MTOPS threshold next
year.”

While it is true that the
state-of-the-art in computing has
inexorably increased the power of
advanced computers, machines in the
2,000-7,000 range still represent
extremely potent machines. The best
personal computers on the market are
presently in the 250-300 MTOPS range.
Relatively small numbers of workstation
systems used for specialized applications
such as computer-aided design and
manufacturing — not office
networking and other common
administrative functions — are in the
low 1,000 MTOPs range. Systems
capable of performing between two and
seven thousand million theoretical
operations per second represent a
computing power that qualifies them
clearly as supercomputers.

    Item: ‘These
    Computers Are Not Militarily
    Relevant’

Opponents of the Cochran-Durbin
amendment went on to make an even more
startling assertion: They argued
that supercomputers in the 2,000-7,000
MTOPS range had no military value.
As Senator Kit Bond put
it: “Supercomputers that do military
work these days are 20,000 MTOPS to
650,000 MTOPS. They are talking about
computers 10 times — 10 times — the
range that would be covered by this
[proposed requirement for export
licensing].” This argument reflected
the Clinton Administration’s assessment
of the situation as expressed in an 8
July letter to Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott from Secretary of
Commerce William Daley. It
argued that “critical defense
applications that justified export
controls were clustered at levels above
7,000 MTOPS.”

Of course, the relevant test
is not how fast the fastest computers can
perform, but how much value would
2,000-7,000 MTOPs supercomputers be to
potential adversaries’ militaries.
In fact, such devices are substantially
more powerful than those are being used
today in various U.S. weapon systems —
and that are likely to be used for years
to come. The utilization of these
supercomputers by the Russian and Chinese
nuclear weapons design bureaus speaks
volumes about the considerable military
significance of this sort of computer
technology — especially when
combined for use in parallel processing.
As Sen. Cochran pointed out on 19 June:

“In 1986 [when the upper
bounds of supercomputing
performance were considerably
lower than today’s], the
Department of Energy published an
unclassified report entitled, The
Need for Supercomputers in
Nuclear Weapons Design. The
report’s conclusion included this
statement: ‘The use of high-speed
computers and mathematical models
to simulate complex physical
processes has been and continues
to be the cornerstone of the
nuclear weapons design
program.'”

Interestingly, Sens. Grams and Boxer went
to some lengths to express their
commitment to preventing, as Senator
Grams put it,”computers above the
7,000 level from reaching military end
users, that’s for sure.” Sen. Boxer
waxed even more emphatic: “Does [the
Grams-Boxer amendment] mean we should
allow companies to sell any computer at
any level to any country notwithstanding
our national security interests? Of
course not. Our national security
interests are paramount. They are
paramount. Our export policies absolutely
must ensure that our foreign policy and
security objectives, particularly as they
relate to non-proliferation and
counter-terrorism, are maintained.”

It will be worth watching to see how adamant
these and like-minded Senators will be
about preserving the 7,000 MTOPS limit
when Dr. Seymour Goodman — the academic
and long-time advocate for decontrolling
computers, whose sole-source-contracted
study was used to justify ending
licensing requirements for 2,000 to-7,000
MTOPS supercomputers — completes a
follow-on study that is expected to
argue for decontrolling still faster
machines.

    Item: ‘These
    Computers Are Available from
    Foreign Sources’

A number of Senators argued that
foreign availability ensured that the
only effect of denying export licenses to
U.S. firms would be to give overseas
competitors the business. As Sen. Boxer
put it:

“We know the Japanese make
these computers. We also know
companies in France, Taiwan, the
United Kingdom, and Germany all
manufacture computers in the
2,000 through 7,000 MTOPS range.
And how about this? China is
producing computers at the 13,000
MTOPS level, far above the level
which the Cochran amendment seeks
to control.”

In point of fact, at this
juncture, foreign availability for
supercomputers is very limited.
As Senator Cochran advised his colleagues
on 19 June: “It is not like some
other country has these systems available
for sale on the market. They do not.
We are the state-of-the-art producer of
the supercomputers. Japan has the
capacity to produce supercomputers as
well, but their export policy is more
restrictive now than ours is.”
(Emphasis added.)

It is to the credit
of the Japanese government that it
continues to exercise stringent controls
on the sale of supercomputers. It has
done so in the face of “foreign
availability” created by the Clinton
Administration’s irresponsible decision
to make many of these devices available,
even to nations that have been enemies of
Japan and America — and that may revert
to that status in the future. Thanks to
this Japanese restraint, it is
not too late for the United States to
restore effective export controls on
supercomputers in the 2,000-7,000 MTOPS
range.

Unless corrective action is promptly
taken, however, the Clinton policy of
indiscriminately transferring advanced
computer chips and manufacturing
technology to the vast majority of
nations around the world will, in due
course, give rise to a situation in which
there are indeed many alternative foreign
suppliers of supercomputers. The wisdom
of laissez-faire export policies with
respect to both of these key technologies
needs to be urgently reassessed.

    Item: ‘Alternatives
    Exist to Government Licensing of
    Supercomputers’

1) The Honor System: Opponents
of the Cochran-Durbin amendment claimed
that the present arrangement — in which
computer exporters are left to judge the
character of the prospective end-user —
is working satisfactorily. As Sen.
Cochran pointed out on 19 June, though,
this amounts to an “honor system,
[whereby companies are] policing
themselves and deciding themselves
whether or not the end user is going to
be a military entity or will be putting
the supercomputer to a military
use.” He went on to observe that:

“Unfortunately, some
companies have already been
tempted to take a chance.
Maybe they were not sure; maybe
they were tempted by the profits
of the transaction. Whatever the
motivations and the
understandings or lack of
information, or for whatever the
reason, we have known that some
transactions have involved the
sale of supercomputers, without
objection from our Department of
Commerce or our Federal
Government to those who may be
putting computers to a military
use, or maybe military entities
themselves.”

This reality prompted Sen. Cochran to
declare with evident exasperation:

“According to the CEO [of
Silicon Graphics], Edward
McCracken, it was his company’s
understanding that the computers
were for environmental and
ecological purposes. It may
be that Silicon Graphics was
unable to determine whether a
Russian nuclear weapons lab was
going to be the military end-user
or if its supercomputers would be
put to a military end-use. But it
seems from the statements made by
the Atomic Energy Minister in
Russia that they certainly are
available to them for those
purposes….

“The Commerce Department
maintains that President
Clinton’s supercomputer export
control policy is working.
Commerce continues to make this
claim despite the fact that the
administration’s policy has
allowed American supercomputers
to be shipped to Russia’s and
China’s nuclear weapons
complexes, and who knows where
else. If this policy is
working, what would a policy that
wasn’t working look like? Would
there be more
supercomputers in Russia and
China, or would we know
absolutely that our
supercomputers were in Iran,
North Korea, or other terrorist
states?”

The following day, Senator Cochran
elaborated on the folly of this approach:

“Computer companies
do not have the capacity to make
determinations on their own about
the use to which the computers
they are selling in the
international market will be put,
or the relationships between
prospective purchasers and
governments, particularly in
the case of China or Russia.
The U.S. government, though, has
the capacity, through its
contacts worldwide, to do a much
more reliable and accurate job of
assessing whether or not someone
would be a purchaser who would
use these computers to enhance
the [lethality] of nuclear
weapons or missile technology to
put our own citizens at risk, the
lives of Americans at risk, in a
way that they would not otherwise
be, but for the sale of our
computer technology.”

2) Commerce’s Selective,
Public List of Bad Actors: The
evident salience of the Cochran argument
prompted his opponents to suggest a
no-less-defective approach: having the
Commerce Department publish a list of
end-users who are security risks. On 20
July, Sen. Cochran analyzed the flaws in
this scheme:

“…In our hearings in the
Governmental Affairs Committee
the Administration officials
talked about the fact that the
reason they did not publish and
make available a list of end
users or potential purchasers of
these computers at this time was
because of diplomatic
considerations and the questions
about whether it puts in jeopardy
our intelligence-gathering
capabilities and a
number of other issues that
concerned them enough so that
they do not now make available
this list even privately to
exporters of
supercomputers.”

It is further evidence of the
readiness of the Clinton Commerce
Department to subordinate national
security to trade interests that it
decided on 30 June to publish what it
called an “Entities List.”
On 7 July, Senator Cochran dissected its
shortcomings:

“…The ‘Entities List’
consists of 13 locations in 5
‘Tier 3’ countries that can
receive an American supercomputer
only…subject to a license. So,
now the total list of proscribed
end users consists of 15
entities. On this list are
Chelyabinsk-70 and Arzamas-16 in
Russia which have already
received at least five American
supercomputers and parts of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences,
which also is now manufacturing
more modern nuclear weapons with
America’s finest technology.

“Because of this list, now
America’s computer exporters know
that they need a license to ship
a high-performance computer to
any of these entities. What
about other entities, though?
What about the Chinese company
that shipped ring magnets to
Pakistan last year for use in its
nuclear program? Why isn’t that
company on the list? It has been
subjected to sanctions imposed by
our Government, and it is not on
our Government’s list as a
prohibited end user. What about
the Chinese company or government
entity that shipped M-11 missiles
to Pakistan and now, according to
press reports, is helping
Pakistan build a factory for the
indigenous manufacture of M-11
missiles? Why isn’t that entity
on the list? What about the
Russian company or government
entity helping Iran to upgrade
its nuclear program and ballistic
missile programs, why aren’t they
on the list?”

“…This list does
not solve the problem. If
anything, it makes it more
confused, it makes it more
difficult for American exporters
to determine who should or should
not receive American
high-performance computers. In
many ways, this list is worse
than nothing.”

The Bottom Line

In the end, the salience of the arguments
made by Senators Thad Cochran and Richard
Durbin proved insufficient to overcome
relentless lobbying by the executives and
employees of companies like IBM and by
senior Clinton Administration officials.
The Senate agreed by a vote of 27-72 to
the substitute amendment offered by
Senators Grams and Boxer. The
Center for Security Policy commends Sens.
Cochran, Durbin and their 25 colleagues,
however, for putting the national
security before the parochial
self-interest of a relatively small
number of computer firms.(2)

The issue now goes to a House-Senate
conference committee where similar
pressures will doubtless be brought to
bear. If Senate conferees have any
question about whether to recede to the
House position, they would be
well-advised to bear in mind a
development that occurred immediately
after the Senate vote: On 14 July, Agence
France Press reported that the PRC’s
official China Daily served notice that:

“China will open up
its defense sector to foreign
investors next year as a
way of bringing electronic
warfare technology to its army.
The decision, which the newspaper
called ‘crucial to ensure rapid
technical renovation’ of the
People’s Liberation Army,
received the endorsement of one
of China’s top army directors,
General Liu Huaqing.”

The report went on to note that Liu
called for “strengthening
international military-related electronic
technology exchanges and upgrading
China’s military electronic
equipment” and that “the
decision was adopted by the Commission of
Science, Technology and Industry for
National Defense and by the PLA’s
equipment department. ‘China’s
defense-related electronics should no
longer be hidden from foreign investors,’
Su Huining, an official of the national
defense commission, said. He called on
foreign investors to display their wares
in Beijing next May during the China
International Defense Electronics
Exhibition.” (Emphasis added.)

The time has come to discourage American
companies from seeking short-term profits
at the expense of long-term national
security. As Sen. Cochran put it on 20
June: “[The Administration’s
supercomputer decontrol decision] was
supposed to be a policy that both
enhanced our ability to compete in the
international computer market but at the
same time protected our national security
interests. It worked on the one hand, but
it has failed on the other.” We can
ill-afford any more such failures.

– 30 –

1. See the
Center’s recent Decision Brief entitled
Profile In Courage: Peter
Leitner Blows The Whistle On Clinton’s
Dangerous Export Decontrol Policies
(No. 97-P 82,
19 June 1997).

2. According to
the sponsors of the Cochran-Durbin
amendment, only 6.37 percent of
American computer exports would be
affected by the amendment’s licensing
requirement.

Will Moscow Be Allowed To Recreate In Cuba The Nuclear Nightmare It Has Bequeathed To Bulgaria?

(Hong Kong): On the evening of 19 June
1997, the CBS Evening News broadcast a
chilling report about an incipient
nuclear catastrophe on the continent of
Europe: Five years after the U.S. and
other nations began a multimillion-dollar
repair effort aimed at correcting some of
the worst design and day-to-day operating
procedures associated with four
Soviet-designed VVER-440 reactors located
in Kozloduy, Bulgaria, this complex
remains a “ticking nuclear time
bomb.”

In fact, according to CBS, the plant
is “just as dangerous as it was five
years ago. No amount of Western expertise
or aid can change that.” During this
period, there have been over twenty
“incidents” — a euphemism for
serious nuclear problems — involving the
Bulgarian reactor complex.

Although a meltdown at Kozloduy would
have catastrophic consequences, the
Bulgarian government continues to operate
this facility on the grounds that its
economy requires the electricity
generated by the four reactors — nearly
half of Bulgaria’s total requirement. In
the absence of an alternative source of
supply, Bulgaria seems determined to keep
the Kozloduy complex on-line even though,
in CBS’ words “… the basic design
of the Russian-built reactors is
flawed.”

Unfortunately, Sofia seems tempted to
use its “ticking nuclear
time-bomb” as a means of playing
what CBS called “nuclear
blackmail”: By operating these
reactors without regard for the danger
that would arise should Kozloduy
experience a Chernobyl-style catastrophe
— disseminating lethal levels of
radiation over populations downwind,
Bulgaria evidently hopes to euchre
Western nations into paying
“millions in aid for maintenance and
repairs” at a plant that is, as CBS
notes, “unrepairable.”

The Next Nuclear
Blackmailer — Castro’s Cuba

As it happens, the folks who brought
the world Bulgaria’s dangerous VVER-440
reactors — Russia’s Ministry of Atomic
Energy (Minatom) — remain determined to
create a similar nuclear nightmare and
the potential for nuclear blackmail
180 miles from the United States. Agence
France Presse reported on 6 June 1997
that Russian and Cuban officials had
reached agreement to “relaunch”
construction of two VVER-440 reactors at
Juragua, Cuba.

Just last January, Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro declared that he was
“indefinitely halting” work at
the Juragua complex, despite the roughly
$1.2 billion investment (nearly the
equivalent of Cuba’s annual hard currency
income) made to-date in trying to bring
his VVER-440 reactors on-line.

The proclamation by Russian Minister
for Nuclear Energy Yevgeny Reshtnilov
came on the heels of the signing by Cuba
and Russia of the final document of the
Intergovernmental Commission for
Economic, Scientific, and Technical
Cooperation, which calls for the two
nations to promote cooperation for mutual
benefit in the scientific, technical and
trade spheres. It also follows blithe
assurances by both nations that
installations at the Juragua plant
“are in excellent condition and meet
all contemporary safety
requirements” and that “[the
plant] poses no danger to [Cubans], much
less to others.”

The reality, of course, is very
different. As the Center has repeatedly
documented, (1)
the partially completed Cuban VVER-440s
have, if anything, more serious
problems than their Bulgarian
counterparts. According to defectors from
Cuba’s nuclear industry, the General
Accounting Office and other experts, the
following are among the reasons why the
Juragua complex is every bit as serious a
time-bomb as its sister plant in
Bulgaria:

  • As many as fifteen
    percent of the 5,000 welds
    joining pipes used in the
    reactors’ auxiliary cooling
    system, containment dome and
    spent fuel-cooling system are
    believed to be defective. In the
    United States, a flaw in a single
    weld would cause the Nuclear
    Regulatory Commission to suspend
    operations.

  • Sixty percent of the
    materials     supplied by
    the former Soviet Union are of
    uncertain — if not deficient —
    quality. Moscow’s representatives
    reportedly told Cuban officials
    they could not guarantee that
    valves installed in the first
    reactor’s emergency cooling
    system would function under
    certain conditions.

  • Much of the reactor’s equipment
    — including the reactor vessel,
    six steam generators, five
    primary cooling pumps, twelve
    isolation valves and other
    sensitive gear — was left exposed
    to the elements     and the
    sea air for as long as three to
    four years. In tropical areas,
    such machinery must be stored in
    climate-controlled facilities to
    avoid serious corrosion and other
    damage. In addition, equipment
    designed for one specific
    function has been used for other
    purposes when the appropriate
    components were unavailable, a
    formula for failure.

  • Construction supporting
    components of the primary reactor
    contain numerous
    structural defects    .

  • The first reactor’s dome would not
    be able to contain overpressures
    associated with meltdown
    conditions. The upper portion of
    the containment dome has been
    designed to withstand pressures
    of just seven pounds-per-square
    inch — versus some fifty
    pounds-per-square-inch required
    of U.S. reactors.

In the event one or more of these
problems translated into a catastrophic
accident should the Juragua reactors come
on-line, the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration has estimated
that the prevailing winds could expose
much of the U.S. eastern seaboard or
southern United States to dangerous
levels of radiation. By some official
estimates the number of Americans that
could be affected by a Cuban-originated
radioactive plume may be as high as 50 to
80 million.

These realities are now being
acknowledged, at least implicitly, by the
Russians. According to the French wire
service, Minister Reshtnilov said on 6
June that a consortium involving Russia,
Cuba and German, Brazilian and British
companies were “reviewing documents
to finance construction of a nuclear
power plant [in Cuba] as early as
1998″ but that it might “choose
to build a different facility…” In
that event, “some of [the existing]
facilities would be used in construction
of the new plant, which could also mean
cannibalizing Juragua’s most valuable
elements.”

In point of fact, it seems
improbable that a genuinely new
facility will emerge given the immense
investment already made in the Juragua
complex. With both Russia and
Cuba strapped for cash and notoriously
willing to cut corners on safety and
environmental concerns, prudence dictates
that the United States should expect the
“new” quality of the revived
Cuban reactor program to be more cosmetic
than real.

Why Is the Cuban Nuclear
Menace Still Abuilding?

The Center for Security Policy has
long believed that the very viability of
Castro’s despotic regime is contingent
upon finding a way to address Cuba’s
severe economic problems associated with
its reliance on imported oil supplies.
The Agence France Presse report confirms
this view, noting that “With 11
million people, Cuba’s energy shortfall
remains among its key obstacles to
continued economic growth. Blackouts
plunge most of the country into darkness
on a weekly basis.” Arguably, to an
extent even greater than Bulgaria, the
Cubans must satisfy not only domestic
energy requirements but also those of
Canadian, Spanish and other investors who
might otherwise decline to underwrite
development of Fidel’s infrastructure and
tourism sector.

Regrettably, there is probably
another, even more worrisome dimension to
Castro’s determination to proceed with
the Juragua project: The Cuban despot is
second to none, certainly not the
Bulgarians, when it comes to blackmail.
In fact, an article by Martin Arostegui
in the 30 June 1997 edition of National
Review entitled “Return of the
Godfather, Part II,” documents any
number of shakedown operations Castro has
mounted. For example, Mr. Arostegui
describes how Fidel has utilized the
influence he enjoys with terrorist cells
in Latin America — thanks to the
financial, logistical and training
support he offers them — to run a
protection racket against the Japanese,
Argentine and other governments.

It is entirely possible that,
like the Bulgarians, Castro sees an
opportunity to exploit Western concerns
about nuclear safety as a desperately
needed tool for leveraging concessions
from the United States. Not
since the abortive Cuban missile crisis
of 1962 has Fidel had the means for
engaging in nuclear blackmail against
this country. It seems possible that at
no time has he felt a greater need for
such a capability than now as his regime
totters toward collapse.

For the Russians, the imperatives for
bringing the Juragua complex on-line are
more complex — probably involving both
business and strategic interests:

  • The Russian Ministry for Atomic
    Energy (Minatom) is in the midst
    of a world-wide marketing
    campaign aimed at defraying the
    costs of — and otherwise shoring
    up — Moscow’s decaying nuclear
    infrastructure by selling
    reactors to nations like Iran,
    China and India. Obviously, it
    would not be good for business if
    one of Russia’s premier overseas
    initiatives remained an
    inoperable white elephant.

  • The sales campaign is already
    reeling from the track record of
    other VVER-440 reactors. One of
    West Germany’s first orders of
    business after reunification was
    to shut down four East German
    reactors of this basic type.
    Bulgaria’s reactors are, as noted
    above,
    disasters-waiting-to-happen.
    Clearly, neither Russian national
    pride nor marketing efforts can
    tolerate the sort of public
    relations setback that an aborted
    Cuban program would represent —
    despite Moscow’s bids to
    repackage its VVER technology
    with new model numbers and
    promises of technical upgrades.

  • The promise of help with the
    Juragua project has also proven
    helpful to the Kremlin in
    finessing Castro’s periodic
    demands for increased payments —
    some reports suggest a five-fold
    increase from the $200 million
    annual charge — to permit
    continued operation of the Russian
    signals intelligence facility at
    Lourdes, Cuba    . The truth
    is that Moscow is in a tough
    spot: Its cash flow remains
    inadequate to accommodate major
    new outlays, yet the declining
    condition of its space-based
    “national technical
    means” makes Russia
    unusually dependent upon the
    Lourdes facility to collect
    intelligence against the United
    States. (2)
    Keeping Castro happy by arranging
    for U.S. embargo-busting foreign
    funding to underwrite completion
    of the reactor complex is
    probably seen by the Kremlin as
    the least negative alternative.

  • What is more, it may
    serve Russia’s perceived
    interests to have the United
    States subjected to nuclear
    blackmail by its client, Fidel’s
    Cuba    . Such blackmail
    could come in handy in euchring
    the U.S. into (a) participating
    in multilateral efforts
    ostensibly aimed at
    “fixing” Cuba’s fatally
    flawed reactors and/or (b)
    getting America to agree to help
    ease Castro’s economic plight in
    other ways.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that every effort must
be made promptly to shut down the
dangerous Bulgarian VVER reactors and to
prevent those still in prospect in Cuba
from ever coming on-line. Until
these results are achieved, the United
States should:

  • impose sanctions on Bulgaria,
    e.g., by cutting off any taxpayer
    money for the Bulgarian regime;
    barring Bulgaria’s entry into
    international organizations; and,
    if necessary, adopting
    legislation to block U.S. support
    for disbursements to multilateral
    institutions like the World Bank
    and International Monetary Fund.

  • Russia — and any other
    prospective foreign suppliers
    (e.g., German, British, French,
    Italian and Brazilian firms)
    reportedly now poised to supply
    equipment and services to help
    complete Fidel’s dangerous
    nuclear reactor program — should
    be put on notice that they will
    face a choice: Supply the Cuban
    market or participate in the
    American market. Specifically, Congress
    should serve notice that foreign
    suppliers will be subjected, in
    the event that sales to Cuba are
    consummated, to immediate U.S.
    import controls, thereby denying
    those firms access to the
    American marketplace.

The Congress should also work to
devise a strategy aimed at shutting down
Russia’s Lourdes facility — a step that
would simultaneously eliminate this
source of Castro’s leverage on Russia and
sharply curtail its malevolent
exploitation of signals intelligence
collected there for both strategic and
commercial purposes.

– 30 –

1. For more on the
Cuban nuclear reactors, see the following
Center products: How To
Respond To The Cuban K.A.L. 007: Shut
Down The Cuban Chernobyl ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_19″>No. 96-D 19,
26 February 1996 ); Center’s
Robinson Urges Congress To Thwart The
Coming Cuban Chernobyl Nuclear Crisis
(No. 95-P
51, 2 August 1995); Castro’s
Potemik Nuclear Shutdown: Chernobyl At
Cienfuegos Still In Prospect
(No. 92-D
108, 10 September 1992); A
‘Ticking’ Anniversary Present: Will
Russia Give Us A Chernobyl Ninety Miles
Off The U.S. Shore? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_41″>No. 92-D 41,
23 April 1992); and Cienfuegos
— ‘A Hundred Fires’: Muchas Gracias
Moscow, But No American Chernobyls
(No. 91-P
44, 31 May 1991).

2. For more on the
Lourdes facility, see the Casey
Institute’s Perspective
entitled Guess Who Else Was
Listening To Newt Gingrich’s Phone Call
— And To Those Of Millions Of Other
Americans Every Day? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_09″>No. 97-C 9, 16
January 1996).

Excerpts of Testimony by Dr. Peter Leitner before the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress

Washington,
D.C.
17 June 1997

Introduction

Mr. Chairman, members of the
Committee, I am the author of the book
entitled Decontrolling Strategic
Technology 1990-1992: Creating the
Strategic Threats of the 21st Century.
I need to state up front that the
opinions and analysis I express here are
my own….

* * *

My motivation in writing this
book stemmed from the dramatic politicization
of the export control process. I have
seen the blatant manipulation of honest
technical and engineering analyzes that
warned of the dangers to U.S. national
security posed by the proliferation of
advanced dual-use technologies.
Unfortunately, as I have documented, the
campaign to weaken or eliminate the
concept of “non-proliferation”
by undermining the export control system
— its chief operational vehicle — has
been remarkably successful and can
accurately be characterized as a
scorched-earth policy.

It has been so successful, in fact,
that the Coordinating Committee on
Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) and
the national security export controls
that we came to know and rely upon no
longer exist. In their place are
a handful of weak, ineffectual regimes
which are little more than cardboard
cut-outs designed to maintain the facade
of an international technology security
system, but offer virtually no protection
from nations seeking to develop advanced
conventional weapons or weapons of mass
destruction.

These so-called follow-on regimes are limited
notification fora, similar in
function to a post office box, where
nations inform each other of
denials of technology transfers if they
so desire. The national discretion nature
of decision-making common to these
regimes…ensures that suppliers may do
what they wish so long as some post
facto notification is made to the
partners. This de minimis
approach is a far cry from COCOM’s
consensus-based regime where
pre-notification was the rule and a
negative vote cast by any of the 16
member states could actually prevent a
dangerous transfer from taking place.

The current Administration was
responsible for the elimination of COCOM before
any replacement regime was installed.
The result was loss of any possible
negotiating leverage in ensuring that a
follow-on regime would have any teeth. The
so-called Wassenaar Agreement which was
eventually formed is little more than a
kabuki-like construct intended to provide
the appearance of technology control
while affording none. The
unnecessary destruction of COCOM opened
the floodgates of technology to China as
it was subject to few restraints other
than in the narrow realms of ballistic
missile and nuclear technology. As the
Chinese are already a nuclear and
ballistic missile power, the restraints
serve only to place obstacles in front of
Chinese acquisition of technology they
already have — while allowing the
unrestricted flow of militarily important
power projection and command, control,
computers and communications information
technology that they need.

* * *

Possible Implications to
U.S. National and Economic Security

This dramatic weakening of the
international system of export controls
lies at the heart of a series of
independent developments that are gnawing
away at our defense industrial base and
are spilling over into our civil
industrial base as well. Several parallel
developments have long-term implications
for the economic health and
competitiveness of our economy as well as
the safety of our men and women in the
armed forces. They include:

  • The open penetration of
    U.S. high-tech industries, and
    national and military labs by
    Chinese and other foreign
    nationals     who carry home
    critical military or
    manufacturing technology.

  • The massive unilateral
    U.S. decontrol of supercomputers
    and supercomputer manufacturing
    technology    .

  • The wholesale transfer of
    military factories to China    ,
    including a Columbus, Ohio B-1
    bomber, C-17 airlifter, and ICBM
    factory as documented most
    thoroughly in John Fialka’s book War
    by Other Means.

  • The widespread auctions
    of defense manufacturing plant
    and equipment    , often to
    foreign buyers, and the loss of
    skilled personnel, experience,
    and productive capacity of our
    industrial base.

  • Permitting Chinese agents
    to purchase state-of-the-art
    military parts, components, and
    weapons systems directly from DoD
    surplus property auctions    ,
    as reported by U.S. News
    and “60 Minutes”….

  • The flooding of the
    domestic and international market
    with state-of-the-art
    manufacturing equipment at
    cut-rate prices and the
    undermining of efforts to
    strengthen the American machine
    tool industry    .

  • The lease of the former
    Long beach Naval Station
    to a shady arm of the Chinese
    government and the construction
    of a Chinese “Wholesale
    Mall” next door to the
    recently closed George Air Force
    Base in San Bernardino County,
    CA. George AFB is strategically
    located 70 miles from the Navy’s
    China Lake Weapons Development
    Center, only 40 miles from the
    Palmdale stealth and “black
    program” aerospace test
    facility, and just 30 miles from
    Edwards AFB — the primary U.S.
    military aerospace test flight
    center. If a permanent PRC
    presence develops at such a
    strategic location it may offer
    China unparalleled eavesdropping
    and intelligence collection
    opportunities.

* * *

Instead of preparing prospective
remedies to serious potential threats, the
Administration diverts attention by
focusing exclusively on small, almost
irrelevant, pariah states such as Cuba,
Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, and Libya to
deflect attention away from the fact that
big money was being made modernizing our
most likely future adversaries.
Chief among them is China.

* * *

Self-Inflicted Wounds

…The greatest single point of
failure in maintaining a credible export
control system was the neutering of the
Defense Department’s traditional role as
the conservative anchor of the process.
This action was carried out very quickly
by freezing DoD’s key staff out of the
chain of command and isolating them from
the decision-making process within DoD.
DoD abandoned its traditional role and
instructed DoD employees to side with the
Commerce Department and isolate the State
Department and ACDA on many issues. This
bizarre role change finds the State
Department at times in the farcical
position of being the lone agency making
the national security case and opposing
liberalization positions from DoD.

Beyond these actions our strategic
position is being further eroded from
other angles. The much-ballyhooed
“Dual-Use Initiative” was
advertised as the Defense Secretary’s
plan to cut DoD procurement costs by
using commercial technology in weapons
systems wherever possible. This
initiative is, unfortunately, a
double-edged sword, which, while
promising some potential cost-savings,
will also slash critical advantages in
U.S. technological superiority by forcing
weapons systems to use the same
decontrolled technology potential enemies
are now allowed to build their own
weapons around. It also forces
our military to rely upon critical
microelectronics and components that are
designed and manufactured abroad, thus
making them extremely vulnerable to
supply cut-offs, countermeasures,
spoofing or even sabotage….

Ignoring History’s Lessons

Former Secretary of Defense Dick
Cheney observed in 1992:

“We field the most
technologically advanced weapons
in the world. This factor
partially offsets the need to
match potential adversaries’
quantitative advantages. The
combination of the technological
superiority of U.S. military
systems and the result of 49
years of preparation to fight a
global war provided us with the
capability to effectively contain
and counter aggression.”

However, current polices, which emphasize
the funding of research and development
activities but put production and
implementation in abeyance, will further
compound the erosion of the technology
gap that the taxpayer worked so hard to
achieve….Unfortunately, the
technological gap between the U.S. and
many potential adversaries, in particular
China, is closing from both ends of the
strategic equation. Fold in the unabated
takeovers of U.S. defense companies by
foreign entities and the process
accelerates further and takes overtones
of irresponsibility.

* * *

I am afraid that we are witnessing
history repeat itself. Chamberlain called
Churchill a warmonger for his warnings of
the dangers posed by the German monster
looming in the East. Chamberlain even
came out and said, in 1934, that he could
only base his decisions upon his
predictions for the next two years.
Looking beyond that limited horizon could
not be done. Unfortunately, the United
States is conducting its foreign and
military policies in much the same
fashion. Preparing for future threats is
given credence and funding only when it
does not interfere with moneyed interests
or large adversaries.

Profile In Courage: Peter Leitner Blows The Whistle On Clinton’s Dangerous Export Decontrol Policies

(Washington, D.C.): An experienced
career Pentagon professional, Dr. Peter
Leitner, said the unsayable Tuesday in
testimony before the Joint Economic
Committee: Mincing no words, he warned of
the “dramatic politicization of the
export control process” under
President Clinton. The result, he said,
has been the evisceration of “the
national security export controls that we
came to know and rely upon [during the
Cold War].”

“In their place are a
handful of weak, ineffectual
regimes which are little more
than cardboard cut-outs designed
to maintain the facade
of an international technology
security system, but offer
virtually no protection from
nations seeking to develop
advanced conventional weapons or
weapons of mass
destruction.”

As a Senior Strategic Trade
Analyst for the U.S. Department of
Defense, Dr. Leitner is in a position to
know whereof he speaks. His critique is
informed by years of service in the
Defense Technology Security Agency, where
he has closely monitored trends in the
transfer of technologies which — in the
hands of adversaries of the United States
— could cause grave harm to American
armed forces and national security
interests more generally.

Dr. Leitner’s testimony illuminated the
particular danger associated with the
access the People’s Republic of China
has achieved to a host of U.S.
and Western military and dual-use
technologies. His remarks — and
prescriptions for corrective action —
are especially timely given that Congress
is preparing to debate President
Clinton’s proposal to renew China’s Most
Favored Nation status, a status that is
contributing to Beijing’s systematic
efforts to acquire and otherwise
compromise American strategic
technologies.

The Center for Security Policy
commends Peter Leitner for his courage in
authoring his important book entitled Decontrolling
Strategic Technology 1990-1992: Creating
the Strategic Threats of the 21st Century
(University Press of America, 1995)
and for reinforcing its warnings about
the recklessness of Clinton export
decontrol policies before the Congress on
Tuesday.

It is incumbent on Members of
Congress to come to grips with the
ominous implications of Dr. Leitner’s
critique — and to ensure that his candor
does not cause him to be subjected to
punitive actions by an
Administration that has gone to such
great lengths to eviscerate critical
export control arrangements governing
dual-use technologies and exhibited
contempt for those who oppose its
reckless policies in this area.

Three pages of excerpts
of Dr. Leitner’s extraordinary testimony
are attached. A copy of his complete
remarks submitted to the Joint Economic
Committee may be obtained by contacting
the Center.