Sale of Military Training Manuals Alleged

The FBI is investigating allegations that a Saudi company illegally sold training manuals for the Army’s Abrams tank, the Patriot missile and other American-made weapons to an arms maker owned by the French government, U.S. officials and other sources say.

Zan Trading, based in Riyadh, which is certified by the U.S. Army to translate weapons documents from English into Arabic, is alleged to have sold training and maintenance manuals for the Abrams tank to GIAT Industries, manufacturer of the rival Leclerc tank. Zan also sold manuals for the Patriot PAC-2 antimissile system, the Bradley fighting vehicle and the Humvee general purpose vehicle, according to the allegations.

The arms documents are not classified and include no data on some highly sensitive features of this materiel, such as their armoring. Their release apparently would not threaten the security of U.S. forces if they fell into the hands of potential adversaries.

But officials of General Dynamics Corp., the tank’s manufacturer, say the manuals are protected by U.S. export-control laws. Their distribution, they say, could give an edge to rivals at a time of fierce competition for overseas sales between American-based defense firms and their foreign counterparts.

General Dynamics turned over information to FBI officials earlier this year after its own inquiries led the company to believe that there were grounds for further investigation, said Peter M. Keating, a spokesman for the company’s General Dynamics Land Systems unit, based in Sterling Heights, Mich.

The allegations were first reported in the trade publication Jane’s Defense Weekly.

Zan Trading came into possession of the tank manual after it was hired by the Army in 1990 to translate the text in connection with a U.S. military assistance package for the Saudis. According to the allegations, an official representing GIAT approached a Zan executive in 1995 or 1996 asking about the manual’s availability. The Zan executive replied that the document might indeed be for sale and asked if the French-based concern would also be interested in other training manuals that had been turned over to Zan for translation.

“I’ll take the whole lot,” the GIAT official replied, according to a source.

There are no indications how much GIAT, which allegedly also hired Zan to provide marketing services at about the same time, paid for the manuals, sources said.

Jon Lonsberg, an attorney for Zan in the United States, said company officials were perplexed by the allegations and had not been contacted by any U.S. officials or General Dynamics executives about them. He said such weapons manuals were “generally not proprietary documents” and could be freely obtained by anyone from the Army.

“We have no reason to believe that there’s any truth to the allegations,” Lonsberg said. But he said the company took the allegations seriously and intended to make its own inquiries.

An official of ZTI Inc., a U.S. affiliate of Zan based in Arlington, Va., suggested that the allegations were concocted by a rival to threaten Zan’s business.

Officials at GIAT headquarters in Versailles, France, did not respond to requests for comment.

Zan is a 19-year-old concern with about 300 employees that describes itself as the “foremost provider” of translations of military, technical and other materials into Arabic.

Led by President Esam Hakeem, the company has more than 100 translators, including technical specialists and retired military officers. Zan also advises defense contractors on navigating the U.S. military assistance program and on sales of weapons and components to various governments in the Middle East.

General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, Va., reported sales of $3.6 billion in 1996 and has 21,300 employees. The company, which also makes submarines and destroyers for the Navy, sold 315 M1A2 Abrams tanks to Saudi Arabia under the 1990 military assistance program.

The company is now considered a top competitor, along with GIAT and Britain’s Vickers Defense Systems, which makes the Challenger tank, for a possible new contract with the Royal Saudi Land Forces.

The Saudis are considering buying another 100 to 150 tanks in a deal that could be worth about $1 billion and is expected to be completed within the next year or so.

A major sale could be especially helpful to GIAT. With its Leclerc tank considered overpriced, the company recently needed a $2-billion infusion from the French government, said Daniel Goure, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “GIAT’s in trouble,” Goure said.

The allegations come at a time of sharp competition among weapons makers, whose business has shrunk since the end of the Cold War. As these companies have competed more vigorously for export sales, allegations of industrial espionage have surfaced repeatedly.

Five years ago, a French government memo suggested that the French had organized a systematic campaign to gather proprietary secrets on American aerospace products. But charges of spying have also been leveled against many other arms firms and governments, including U.S., Israeli and Russian.