CSI Honored by U.S. Customs for Role in Blocking Nuclear Parts to Iraqi Firm

In retrospect, Jerry Kowalsky says his good deed is all the more important, now that Saddam Hussein’s army has conquered Kuwait and lurks only a few miles from U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia.

“I think we helped put a dent in Saddam Hussein’s development of nuclear weapons,” said Kowalsky, the 57-year-old president of CSI Technologies of San Marcos.

Friday morning, Kowalsky received the Yorktown Certificate, which can only be bestowed by the Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service, for his part in cracking an Iraqi plan to illegally export nuclear weapon detonation devices made by his firm.

“I feel it was a privilege to have been put in a position to have slowed down Saddam Hussein’s development program for nuclear weapons,” he said. But “sooner or later,” he added, the Iraqi leader is bound to obtain nuclear weapons.

In September, 1988, Kowalsky received a transmission from a London exporter inquiring about the purchase of high-voltage capacitors, which, aside from detonators, have a wide range of uses--depending on their power--including flashcubes and heart defibrillators.

But the specifications that came with the request made it clear to Kowalsky that a hospital was not the final destination.

So he called federal officials and soon was teamed with San Diego Customs agent Daniel Supnick, who also received the award, but privately, as he is still undercover.

The work of those two resulted in seven indictments in March.

The episode started when Euromac Ltd., a London firm headed by Ali Ashour Daghir, sent CSI a query about a possible purchase of 40 capacitors.

After Kowalsky notified authorities, customs officials said they identified Euromac as having done millions of dollars of business with Iraq during its war with Iran.

In September, 1989, after a year of correspondence and undercover work, Kowalsky and Supnick, posing as a CSI executive, traveled to London, where they met with Daghir and other Iraqi representatives at the Cavendish Hotel.

There the Iraqi agents specified that the capacitors were to be built to military standards, customs officials said.

The 18-month case culminated in late March with indictments for five individuals--including Daghir--and two British companies, including Euromac.

Since the Iraqi representatives thought CSI was going along with their request, customs let the company handle all the paper work in the transaction, in effect running the operation entirely through them.

As a detonator, the capacitor--a gray cylinder about the size of a small soup can attached to a black plastic stem about 14 inches long--is used to ignite conventional explosives, which implode the nuclear fuel, bringing it to critical mass, Kowalsky said.

CSI, which has 35 employees, makes capacitors primarily for medical use, including defibrillators and lasers.