GEJDENSON DOESN’T GET IT: HIS H.R. 3489 IS A FORMULA FOR TECHNOLOGY INSECURITY, DISASTER

(Washington, D.C.):
As early as tomorrow, the U.S. House of
Representatives will consider H.R. 3489,
legislation that ostensibly would
reauthorize the Export Administration Act
(EAA). In fact, this bill — like one
drafted last year by Rep. Sam Gejdenson
(D-CT) — would have the effect less of
reauthorizing the existing EAA than of gutting
it.

What About Lessons Learned
in the Gulf?

In 1990, the dangerous effects of such
a weakening of U.S. export controls on
militarily relevant technologies were not
as self-evident as they are today. In the
wake of the Gulf war and the subsequent
revelations concerning Saddam Hussein’s
systematic acquisition of dual-use
equipment and know-how, however,
lawmakers have no such excuse. Under
present circumstances, one would have
thought any legislation that would
greatly facilitate potential adversaries’
efforts to obtain strategic Western high
technology would be laughed off Capitol
Hill.

Instead, the Gejdenson bill — which
would have precisely such an effect —
was actually favorably reported out last
week by the House Foreign Affairs
Committee! More remarkable still, the
Speaker of the House and the Rules
Committee acted to allow H.R. 3489 to
receive accelerated
consideration by, among other things,
rejecting a request for sequential
referral to the Armed Services Committee
which has serious concerns about this
bill’s implications for the national
security.

H.R. 3489’s Fatal Flaws

In short, the House of Representatives
will shortly be asked to disregard the
fact that H.R. 3489 would: encourage the
spread of militarily vital dual-use
technology; emasculate U.S. leadership in
the multilateral control of potentially
harmful exports; unnecessarily interfere
with U.S. proliferation-related
intelligence efforts; fail to take into
account that the Soviet Union continues
to engage extensively in Western
technology theft; and undermine on-going
U.S. initiatives to safeguard
nuclear-related technology. Consider the
following specific problems with the
Gejdenson bill:

• It further dilutes the
  role of the Secretary of Defense
  in export control matters. If
  anything, authority should be
  taken away from the Commerce
  Department which repeatedly
  ignored DoD warnings against the
  sale of militarily relevant
  technologies to Iraq. (Commerce’s
  notorious efforts to push through
  the sale of Consarc skull
  furnaces — devices capable of
  casting highly enriched uranium
  for nuclear bomb cores and of
  melting titanium for to fabricate
  ballistic missile components —
  is but one case in point.)
• It removes controls on
  the sale of state-of-the-art
  fiber optic technology to
  the former Soviet Union and any
  other destination. One result
  would be that the Soviet defense
  establishment would be able to
  overhaul its telecommunications
  network with vastly more secure
  fiber optic cables. The effect
  would be to reduce drastically
  transparency into Moscow center’s
  military activities — at
  precisely the moment when vexing
  questions about its future
  direction and character are
  growing — especially with regard
  to the command and control of the
  USSR’s nuclear forces.
• By eliminating most re-export
  requirements, the legislation surrenders
  U.S. control over its
  intermediaries and consignees.
  The United States would thus be
  forced to rely on the governments
  of other countries to prevent the
  unauthorized transfer of
  technologies that could be
  applied to the development and
  manufacture of ballistic
  missiles, biological and chemical
  weapons and nuclear devices.
• The bill places a blanket
  presumption of approval
  for export license applications
  indicating that the export is
  destined for “civilian
  end-use.” The burden of
  proof to the contrary would
  reside with the U.S. government.
  Such language directly conflicts
  with efforts to require U.S.
  companies to exercise greater
  care with respect to their
  customers.
• Under the bill, the Secretary of
  Commerce is required to establish
  a performance-based indexing
  system intended automatically to
  peg the relaxation of controls in
  the supercomputer industry to
  technological advances. Moreover,
  no security safeguards at
  all will be required for the
  export of any supercomputers
  with performance capabilities at
  or below 25 percent of the
  average of the two most powerful
  supercomputers available
  commercially, unless the
  destination is a controlled
  country (i.e., a communist
  country). If enacted, the
  provision would essentially
  require the United States to
  break its agreement with other
  COCOM partners to restrict the
  transfer of supercomputers to
  developing country destinations.
• The bill places the Secretary
  of Commerce exclusively
  in charge of compiling the
  Control List — the
  roster of goods and technologies
  which have potential military
  uses and thus require U.S.
  government approval for export.
  The bill also provides for the
  automatic expiration of the
  Control List every two years.
  Items can only be reinstated on
  the Control List if the Secretary
  of Commerce determines that
  it would make a significant
  contribution to the military
  potential of any country which
  would prove detrimental to the
  national security of the United
  States. Given the Commerce
  Department’s record of disastrous
  miscalculations concerning high
  technology sales to Iraq, for
  example, one would conclude that
  very little Western technology
  would be safeguarded on the
  Control List.

Gejdenson’s Flim-Flam

It is worth noting that such flawed
provisions need not have been
incorporated into H.R. 3489. While many
of them had appeared in last year’s
version of the Gejdenson bill — H.R.
4653, the “Export Facilitation Act
of 1990″ — few survived the
Senate-House conference. While the
product of that conference unfortunately
was pocket-vetoed by President Bush (on
the grounds that it required too
draconian a punishment on foreign
companies engaged in the export of
chemical weapons-related technologies),
it represented a far more responsible
approach to export security than
that enshrined in either of the
Gejdenson’s drafts. It is nothing
less than outrageous, therefore, that
Rep. Gejdenson has suggested in the
Foreign Affairs Committee report on H.R.
3489 that this legislation’s provisions
are “based in large part on the
conference report to accompany H.R.
4653.”

In considering H.R. 3489, Members of
Congress would be well-advised to assume
that their constituents have longer
memories about the lessons of the Gulf
war for technology security than Rep.
Gejdenson evidently expects. The American
people understandably have little
appetite to pay once again the costs
associated with a threat like Saddam’s,
one born in no small measure of lax
controls on dual-use Western exports. Woe
to those on Capitol Hill who ignore this
reality by voting for the Gejdenson bill;
in so doing, they will not only fail to
correct past mistakes but increase
substantially the likelihood of future
threats to U.S. national security.