Dangerous Trade

The Washington Post, June 6, 1991

Mary McGrory’s column of May 24 ["Victory — The Policy Cleanser"] correctly criticizes the Bush administration for abysmal shortsightedness with regard to the transfer of dangerous, militarily relevant technologies to Iraq prior to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Ironically — in castigating the administration in general and in particular one of its senior officials, Undersecretary of State Robert Kimmitt, on this score — Miss McGrory has improperly helped blur the record of two others who are culpable for that fiasco: former undersecretary of commerce Dennis Kloske and Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on international economic policy and trade.

Mr. Kloske was personally involved in promoting a number of dubious commercial ventures with Iraq prior to August 1990. One of the most notorious of these capers involved the attempted sale to Baghdad immediately prior to the invasion of state-of-the-art furnaces with considerable utility for the manufacture of missiles and nuclear arms. Far from imposing obstacles or "red tape" to stymie the sale (as he claimed to have done), Mr. Kloske and his colleagues at the Commerce Department did everything possible to override the objections expressed by concerned Defense Department officials.

For their part, Rep. Gejdenson and his subcommittee have consistently failed to perform the sort of critical oversight of U.S. export control policy that might have prevented such disasters. For example, it was not until April 8 — fully eight months after the invasion of Kuwait — that the Gejdenson subcommittee saw fit to hold a hearing on the problems arising from disastrous technology security policies toward Iraq. (Even then, the object of the hearing appeared to be simply to promote the preposterous notion that the Department of Commerce was blameless for such failed policies.) Instead of rigorous oversight, the subcommittee has busied itself with drafting legislation that would make it far easier for potential adversaries to obtain an array of strategic technologies surpassing Saddam Hussein’s wildest dreams.

Still more ironic is the fact that, on the very day that Miss McGrory bemoaned the administration’s past inattention to technology security, the United States and other industrialized nations were agreeing in Paris to a wholesale decontrol of militarily relevant "dual use" technologies. As a result, sophisticated computers, microelectronics, sensors, machine tools, telecommunications equipment and the like will be made available to such nations as Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union. Neither Dennis Kloske nor Sam Gejdenson objected to this action, even though its strategic consequences are likely to make those precipitated by ill-advised sales to Saddam Hussein pale by comparison. On the contrary, they both actively promoted the new policy of technology insecurity, just as they did the earlier one toward Iraq.

FRANK J. GAFFNEY JR. Director Center for Security Policy Washington