TIMING IS EVERYTHING: CLINTON RESPONDS TO SPY REVELATION BY FACILITATING KGB, OTHERS’ TECHNOLOGY THEFT OPERATIONS

(Washington, D.C.): Today, less than
48 hours after a key CIA operative was
arrested for allegedly doing great harm
to U.S. security by spying for Russia’s
intelligence service, the Clinton
Administration seems intent on making it
up to the KGB. After all, its newest
legislative proposal would greatly assist
the KGB in accomplishing one of its
principal, and abiding, duties —
acquiring sensitive “dual-use”
technology from the United States and
other Western nations. So great
is the strategic significance of this
concession that the Kremlin might view it
as more than offsetting the loss
of even so valuable an agent as Aldrich
Ames.

Such a dramatic conclusion derives
from the fact that the draft legislation
introduced by the Administration on
Capitol Hill this afternoon would have
the effect of largely eviscerating U.S.
national security export controls. To
date, these controls have appreciably
contributed to U.S. and multilateral
efforts to preserve the qualitative edge
long enjoyed by Western military
establishments. At a minimum, past use of
export controls has imposed significant
delays and monetary costs on adversaries
attempting to gain access to the West’s
superior technology. Consequently, the
KGB has historically given a very high
priority to defeating these measures.

Unfortunately, Russian intelligence —
and its clients in the
military-industrial complex — have
benefitted from two trends in recent
years: First, reduced tensions between
the West and Russia after the collapse of
the Soviet Union have encouraged some to
believe that the diversion of Western
high technology was no longer a cause for
concern. This translated into repeated
initiatives by the Bush and Clinton
executive branches and by the Congress to
liberalize the technology transfer regime
administered by the Coordinating
Committee for Multilateral Export Control
(COCOM) and national export control
arrangements.

Second, in the name of encouraging
democratic and free market reforms in
Russia, Washington and its allies have
provided Moscow with billions of dollars
worth of largely unconditioned,
undisciplined and inadequately monitored
aid. Such non-transparent hard currency
flows provided the KGB and other
instruments of the Soviet Old Guard the
means to underwrite certain malevolent
activities — notably, espionage and
strategic technology acquisitions.

An Export Control Shell
Game

The Clinton Administration’s proposal
for reauthorizing the Export
Administration Act will make matters much
worse by largely eliminating the
President’s authority to prevent the
export of U.S. goods and technology unilaterally.
In the place of this presidential
discretion, the Administration proposes
to rely upon what unnamed officials have
called “a heavy emphasis on the
multilateral process.”

Unfortunately, this notion is even
more insidious than the general
“mindless multilateralism”
Clinton security policy-makers like
Morton Halperin and Strobe Talbott
(“Halbotts,” for short) have
evinced since coming to office. After
all, on 31 March 1994, COCOM — the only
effective multilateral export control
organization upon which “heavy
emphasis” might be placed — will
cease to exist. It will give new
meaning to April Fool’s Day if it marks
the beginning of an era in which the
Clinton team is claiming multilateral
arrangements will protect Western export
control interests just as those
arrangements are vaporized.

Make no mistake about it: The
elimination of COCOM before a
successor multilateral export control
organization can be put into place is
nothing less than recklessly
irresponsible. Even if the
follow-on entity were up and running,
however, its utility would be highly
questionable: a member in good-standing
is supposed to be none other than the
world’s most aggressive diverter of
strategic technologies — Russia!

Other Dangerous Features of
the Administration Initiative

No less troubling, however, are other
aspects of the Clinton export decontrol
proposal. These include:

• A deadline imposed on export
  licensing disputes: They must
  be resolved within 90 days —
  irrespective of any need for
  additional data or unaddressed
  national security concerns.
• A so-called
  “forward-looking”
  approach to export controls that
  indexes future controls to
  developments in technology. This
  is as addled an idea as saying
  that cocaine will be legalized
  simply because an even more
  powerful “new
  technology” — like crack —
  has been introduced on the
  market.
• Exporters will be given broader
  rights to petition for further
  decontrols of technologies in
  those few areas where lingering
  national security concerns
  continue to impede technology
  transfers. This is an invitation
  from the special interests to
  wipe out any remaining obstacles
  to their selfish pursuit of
  commerce at the expense of the
  nation’s security.

Clinton Caves to Another
‘Special Interest’

The Clinton Administration’s decision
to gut what remains of the U.S. and
multilateral export control apparatus is,
regrettably, but the most recent in a
series of steps that subordinate the
national interest to the parochial
concerns of special interests. ⁽¹⁾
Shrill protests from exporter groups
claiming that the Halbotts have not gone
far enough in dismantling this apparatus
seem transparently calculated to make the
Administration appear moderate and
responsible. In fact, the special
interests have gotten far more than they
have any right to expect — and than the
nation can afford to give them.

Such Administration kow-towing to
those with vested interests is especially
opprobrious in view of the trivial
adverse impact strategic controls
actually have on U.S. exporters. While
these controls have been endlessly cited
as a major contributor to declining U.S.
competitiveness, the burgeoning trade
deficit and to massive losses in American
jobs and overseas sales, the reality is
very different. In fact, at present,
fully 98 percent of all U.S.
exports do not require a validated export
license.(2)
Only four percent of all manufactured
goods require such licensing. Of this
four percent — which, for example,
amounted to $18 billion in 1992 — only
$700 million were denied export
privileges. In short, about
one-tenth of one percent of all U.S.
exports are actually stopped by export
controls for compelling national
security reasons.