2 Ex-Officials Assail U.S. Policy on Past Technology Sales to Iraq

Two former officials of the Reagan Administration sharply criticized U.S. export policies Thursday, charging that efforts to curry favor with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein have allowed Iraq to receive sensitive technology and develop a missile program that now may be aimed at American troops in the Middle East.

“If young American soldiers find themselves in the sights of Iraqi military surveillance, the (weapons of war) that could mean their identification and destruction may well turn out to be of American manufacture, licensed for sale by the United States Department of Commerce,” said Richard N. Perle, former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan.

During testimony before the House Government Operations subcommittee on commerce, consumer and monetary affairs, Perle and Stephen D. Bryen, former defense undersecretary for trade security policy, linked past U.S. trade with Iraq and the current Persian Gulf crisis.

Their harsh testimony added a measure of reinforcement to critics who have argued that U.S. trade polices that were aimed at gaining favor with Hussein had the effect of emboldening him to invade Kuwait and triggered the Middle East confrontation.

Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and a leader among critics of U.S. exports of goods used in the development of nuclear weapons, said he found a measure of vindication in the testimony of the two former Pentagon officials.

“Their comments showed that our export-control system isn’t working,” Milhollin said in an interview after his testimony. “What happened here today focused attention on that process.”

Shortly after the hearing, subcommittee Chairman Doug Barnard Jr. (D-Ga.) asked a Senate-House conference to examine more closely legislation to reauthorize the Export Administration Act, which regulates U.S. foreign trade and expires in a few days.

Both houses have passed legislation to extend and amend the existing law. The Senate version calls for an extension of the current law, but the House bill, which Perle labeled the “Saddam Hussein sensitive technology endowment program,” would reduce the Defense Department’s influence over the export of some materials.

In a letter to the conference committee, Barnard urged his colleagues “to carefully consider the testimony presented at our hearing” and to consider “the important and perhaps vital role to be played by the Department of Defense in the evaluation of the military significance and potential of proposed dual-use exports.”

California Rep. C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) called on commerce officials to disclose any sales by U.S. companies to Iraq and other hostile countries in the last five years. He also called on the department to say why the sales are hidden from public scrutiny.

The department wants to “sell, sell, sell to whomever they can,” he charged, noting that even the Pentagon is denied access to some export information. “There is an enormous and powerful lobby . . . promoting the sale of potentially sensitive technologies to our potential enemies,” he added. “There isn’t a lobby for the good of the American national security, because there isn’t any money in that.”

James M. LeMunyon, the Bush Administration’s deputy assistant secretary of commerce for export administration, defended the export-control program as “the most extensive and complex in the world” because, he said, the United States maintains more export controls than any other nation.

He said, however, that international rules governing arms sales should be strengthened to prevent some nations from securing nuclear or chemical weapons. “U.S. export controls, though critically important, cannot by themselves provide a foolproof guarantee against proliferation concerns,” he said.

But Bryen, who served in the Pentagon from 1981 through 1988, said Commerce Department officials could do more. He said he waged a “terrific fight” with the department to prevent shipments to Iraq of “dual-use” goods and technology, referring to material ordered for commercial reasons but potentially useful in nuclear, chemical and ballistic missile programs.

Perle and Bryen said the Bush White House had continued the Reagan Administration’s eagerness to sell sensitive materials to Iraq before the Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

Specifically, they criticized the Administration’s recent failure to carefully monitor a transaction licensed by the Commerce Department that almost allowed Iraq to obtain a set of high-technology furnaces. Iraq ordered the furnaces last year from Consarc Corp., a New Jersey firm, saying that they were needed to produce artificial limbs for victims of its eight-year war with Iran.

Perle said that defense officials learned of the sale last July as the crated furnaces were on a Baltimore loading dock and ready for shipment to Iraq, and the sale was stopped. The furnaces could be used to melt plutonium and uranium for nuclear bomb cores.

“Instead of devoting its energies to stopping Saddam Hussein from acquiring things like a specialized furnace that the seller itself warned could have nuclear weapons applications, the Department of Commerce has busied itself with a continuing and unrelenting campaign to sideline the Department of Defense,” Perle said.

LeMunyon said that Commerce officials did their job properly in the furnace transaction, noting that at the time of the sale, U.S. policy permitted the transaction and the furnaces were not on the government’s list of prohibited products for export.

Staff writer Sue Ellen Christian contributed to this report.