TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION: THE REAL REASONS WHY DENNIS KLOSKE MUST BE FIRED

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for
Security Policy today welcomed the
publication on the front-page of this
morning’s New York Times of the
news that the Under Secretary of Commerce
for Export Administration, Dennis Kloske,
has been fired by the Bush
Administration. The Center long has
believed that Kloske was neither
qualified to hold such a senior position
nor constitutionally disposed to
administer properly the vital technology
security responsibilities within its
purview.

The report in the Times,
however, was seriously deficient in at
least one respect: It accepted at face
value Kloske’s assertion in testimony
before Congress on Monday that he opposed
the Administration’s reprehensible policy
of appeasing Saddam Hussein during the
period prior to Iraq’s invasion of
Kuwait. That explanation permitted him to
be portrayed as the innocent victim of
White House and State Department
retribution reserved for those who dare
to break ranks with the party line. This
prompted Representative Sam Gejdenson
(D-CT), who chaired the hearing of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee at which
Kloske’s testimony occurred, to use
characteristically inflammatory language
to decry this personnel action at a press
conference today:

The firing of a government
official because he
comes before the U.S. Congress
and tells the truth is an
outrageous act that bastardizes
the process by which a democratic
government functions….The White
House, to fire a public official
who has done his job for telling
the truth and responding to
questions from the U.S. Congress,
undermines our democratic form of
government and for [the]
principle of free speech.

Gejdenson then went on to allege
a “cover-up
by the Administration of the
State Department’s role and the
role of the National Security
Council in providing to Iraq high
tech equipment with military
applications up until the time
Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait.”

The truth of the matter is that there
is a cover-up underway.
It is, however, one to which Under
Secretary Kloske and Rep. Gedjenson
appear both to be parties: They are bent
on concealing the direct, pivotal role
these individuals have played in
weakening American — and Western —
technology security policies and
mechanisms. A bill of particulars for
judging their past performance, and their
fitness for positions of trust and
responsibility in the future, should
include the following:

• Far from being, as he claimed, an
  opponent of liberalized sales of
  militarily relevant technologies
  to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Kloske
  was a prime mover behind such
  transfers. In the
  infamous case involving
  state-of-the-art furnaces with
  utility for the manufacture of
  missiles and nuclear arms,
  instead of imposing obstacles or
  “red tape” to stymie
  the sale (as he claimed to have
  done), Kloske and his colleagues
  at the Commerce Department did
  everything possible to override
  the objections expressed by
  concerned Defense Department
  officials.
• Speaking of firing government
  officials, Kloske
  actually demanded that his
  counterpart at Defense, Under
  Secretary for Policy Paul
  Wolfowitz, dismiss Michael Maloof
  in the course of the Consarc
  furnace controversy.
  Maloof, a dedicated career civil
  servant, played a key role in
  thwarting this dangerous sale by
  bringing the “facts” to
  light in the face of concerted
  efforts by Commerce to minimize
  the risks involved in the
  transaction. When Wolfowitz
  declined to fire his subordinate,
  Commerce Department officials
  like the then-Counselor to
  Secretary Mosbacher, Wayne
  Berman, took up the Kloske line
  by demeaning Maloof publicly as a
  mere “ankle-biter.”

• Importantly, Kloske’s real
  role in approving the transfers
  of strategically sensitive
  technologies to Iraq was of a
  piece with his views on selling
  such technologies to other
  potential adversaries, including
  the most significant one of all
  — the Soviet Union. As
  the Times report noted,
  Kloske received “generally
  high marks from the business
  community for his efforts to
  restructure and simplify the
  export-control program.”
• Put simply, Kloske exemplified
  the attitude prevalent not only
  in the Bush White House and State
  Department but most especially in
  the Commerce Department — namely
  that technology security
  was an issue with which the
  United States and its allies need
  no longer be overly concerned.
  This view has dominated the
  sweeping review of the list of
  technologies (or Core List)
  controlled by COCOM, the
  organization responsible for
  multilateral export controls.

• It is also a view
  unmistakably shared by Rep.
  Gejdenson — and many of
  his colleagues on the House
  Foreign Affairs Committee. Until
  recently, Gejdenson’s
  subcommittee on International
  Economic Policy and Trade
  exercised exclusive jurisdiction
  over export administration in the
  House of Representatives.
• Jurisdiction does not necessarily
  translate into oversight,
  however; in fact, it was
  only on 8 April 1991 — fully
  eight months after the invasion
  of Kuwait — that the Gejdenson
  subcommittee saw fit to hold a
  hearing into the problems arising
  from disastrous technology
  security policies towards Iraq —
  and then only to defend
  Commerce’s role.

• This deplorable performance is of
  a piece with the Gejdenson
  subcommittee’s attitude toward
  export controls more generally.
  With the active — albeit covert
  — assistance of Kloske’s office,
  the subcommittee drafted
  legislation last year entitled
  the Export Facilitation Act of
  1990. This legislation
  would have done irreparable harm
  to the U.S. and multilateral
  export administration mechanisms;
  fortunately, it was virtually
  entirely rewritten in conference.
  In the end, President Bush
  pocket-vetoed this legislation
  because, as a result of this
  rewriting, it would have unduly
  limited his flexibility to allow
  sales of certain militarily
  relevant technologies.
• Fortunately, a number of other
  committees — including House
  Government Operations, Armed
  Services, Ways and Means and
  Banking — whose equities are
  clearly affected by U.S. export
  administration policies, have
  begun to get into the act. Each
  of these have either scheduled or
  held hearings and/or sought joint
  referral of legislation now being
  drafted to extend the Export
  Administration Act.

• In connection with one such
  investigation by the House
  Government Operations Committee,
  Kloske was extremely
  uncooperative and only provided
  requested information long after
  it was subpoenaed. Even then,
  according to reliable reports, Kloske
  directed that certain sensitive
  data concerning licenses approved
  by Commerce to Iraq not be
  supplied to the committee.
  It can only be hoped that congressional
  turf-fights — if not a more
  responsible attitude on the part
  of members of the Foreign Affairs
  Committee — will produce greatly
  improved oversight of this vital
  policy area.

In the aftermath of the New York
Times report several interesting
facts have come to light:

• Commerce has circulated a letter
  of resignation to Secretary
  Mosbacher signed by Kloske and
  dated 8 March 1991. While not
  effective immediately, it
  supposedly establishes that Kloske
  could not be fired, as he had
  already quit. What
  it also suggests is a serious
  potential conflict of interest:
  He intends to head a New York
  investment bank’s international
  division dealing with, among
  other things, trade to Eastern
  Europe — an area in which Kloske
  has been — and remains —
  intimately involved in his
  present incarnation.
• White House press spokesman
  Marlin Fitzwater, expressing some
  bemusement at Kloske’s testimony
  criticizing the Administration’s
  policy on technology transfers to
  Iraq, said today that the
  same Dennis Kloske had
  called him a few weeks back to
  request permission to do a media
  blitz defending that
  policy. He actually did
  so on the ABC News program,
  “Nightline.”
• A senior Administration official
  who had been present in all of
  the so-called “Deputies
  Meetings” — the senior-
  level policy-making sessions at
  which decisions about sales to
  Iraq were taken — described
  Kloske’s contention that he had
  raised national security concerns
  over such sales a “complete
  fabrication.”

In light of the foregoing, the
Center for Security Policy urges that the
Bush Administration terminate Under
Secretary Kloske’s appointment without
further ado and that it use this event as
an opportunity to chart a new, more
responsible course toward technology
security. For its part, Congress
should conduct a thorough investigation
of the implications of the dangerous
technology transfer policies with which
Kloske has been associated and demand a
fresh approach toward the on-going COCOM
Core List Review and related decisions.