-Caveat Lector-
"Dave Tarbell bears personal responsibility for giving the
Chinese military everything they need to fight the next war,"
Stephen D. Bryen, a DOD official under Reagan/Bush, tells
Insight. "He has been highly successful — in giving away our
military technology."
Insight
March 12, 2001
Bill’s Holdovers Grab DOD Agency
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
Clinton Democrats tried to shut down the Pentagon’s
export-control agency, but as Bush comes in they have turned it
into a Disney World of fat salaries for their own.
Clinton holdovers rapidly are expanding a Pentagon agency they
twice tried to eliminate and are rewarding their friends with a
taxpayer-paid trip to Walt Disney World. On the agenda: cozying
up to U.S. exporters seeking Department of Defense (DOD) favors,
and photo-ops with Mickey and his pals.
The Pentagon’s Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA)
was created by President Reagan to thwart Soviet attempts to
acquire Western military technology. DTSA was widely criticized
by U.S. industry groups for impeding the sale of American
high-tech products to governments hostile to the United States.
President Clinton did his best to get rid of DTSA, and twice it
was brought back from the dead by congressional supporters led by
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa. Now called the Technology Security
Directorate (TSD), it has been rolled into a larger Pentagon
entity known as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
So why did technology-security chief Dave Tarbell, a Clinton
appointee, go on a hiring spree just as a new administration was
coming to town? And why is he sending more than a dozen new
export-licensing officers on a government-paid junket to Walt
Disney World to cozy up to representatives of the very export
industries DTRA regulates?
Insight spoke with a number of the 35 new DTRA hires, most of
whom were Clinton appointees from Commerce, State or DOD weapons
labs. All acknowledged that they were being sent down to Orlando
to learn about export licensing — from industry representatives,
not DTRA professionals.
Organized by SIA, the Society for International Affairs
(www.siaed.org), the Feb. 15-16 Orlando meeting was billed as a
basics conference. This time, according to DTRA spokesman David
Rigby, DTRA would send its trainees to learn from industry and to
become acquainted with members of the exporting community with
whom they would deal daily. Conveniently, most of the DTRA people
would arrive a day early and stay a day late, according to hotel
records obtained by Insight.
SIA members include satellite makers and operators such as
Orbital Sciences and INTELSAT, as well as the nation’s largest
defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin Corp., TRW Inc.
and ITT Defense. "SIA is a private association of all the big
exporters who license into DTRA," a senior DTRA official told
Insight. "They want to make sure that the new people get the
industry gospel, so they’re taking them down to get
indoctrinated."
The U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill for hotel and per-diem
costs, conference-registration fees and round-trip travel (at
government rates, which mandate high-cost, refundable tickets) in
addition to salaries. Most of the engineers attending the
conference have reached the highest General Service rank, GS-15,
and are paid $84,648 to $110,028 annually.
This is not the first instance of alleged waste, fraud and abuse
at DTRA. Insight has obtained a copy of a whistle-blower
memorandum, dated April 24, 2000, sent to the Pentagon Inspector
General’s (IG) office by a senior DTRA engineer. The memorandum
alleges that the agency’s political bosses "have systematically
been misleading the public, Congress and internal oversight
authorities by deliberately overstaffing … as the volume and
seriousness of export licenses have declined over these past
seven years."
The complaint, which the IG never pursued, alleges that DTRA
added personnel as justification to isolate this organization
physically from the interagency community. Plans twice were
approved by the Pentagon to move DTRA from prime office space
just across the street from the Pentagon to more spacious digs at
Washington Dulles International Airport, far from the day-to-day
policy tug-of-war. The move was significant because DTRA
officials continue to share hard-copy files on sensitive export
licenses with other agencies and must physically transport them
from agency to agency in downtown Washington. Moving out to
Dulles also isolated DTRA licensing officers from the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and their intelligence wings, which all maintain
Pentagon offices, effectively taking them out of the policy loop.
One DTRA licensing engineer contacted by Insight acknowledges the
agency’s rationale: "Sure, it’s unusual for DTRA to hire so many
new people at any one time. But we need these new people to
expedite export-licensing cases that are getting bogged down. We
need to get these cases out the door so commerce can take place."
What kind of commerce? DTRA engineers review proposed exports of
U.S. weapons systems, military subsystems and so-called dual-use
technology that has direct military applications. The bulk of the
cases involve sales to Communist China and India.
Getting such cases out the door is precisely what worries critics
of the Clinton administration’s export policies. "Dave Tarbell
bears personal responsibility for giving the Chinese military
everything they need to fight the next war," Stephen D. Bryen, a
DOD official under Reagan/Bush, tells Insight. "He has been
highly successful — in giving away our military technology."
Bryen created DTSA in 1985 as part of President Reagan’s effort
to deny the Soviet Union access to advanced Western military
technology. He has been a vocal critic of the Clinton
administration’s decontrol of sensitive technology, testifying
before Congress repeatedly on the importance of maintaining
controls on U.S. military exports to slow China’s military
modernization.
"Tarbell was the point man, and he has to take responsibility,"
Bryen says. "He endorsed the Clinton administration plans to
decontrol supercomputers, which have all gone into the Chinese
nuclear-weapons and missile programs. He backed the release of
hot-section technology, which has enabled the Chinese military to
build new combat jet engines. He promoted the decontrol of
military-grade Global Positioning System technologies, which the
Chinese are now using to guide their nuclear missiles. He ought
to be fired and find another job."
DTRA insiders say Tarbell is hoping to impress his new bosses by
expanding his agency’s size and by setting up a new policy shop.
"This is precisely the type of thing he has tried to cut us out
of for the past eight years," a senior DTRA engineer tells
Insight. "He’s running around these days like the Energizer Bunny
because he wants to save his job and continue to implement the
policies of the Clinton administration."
Tarbell refused repeated requests for comment on this story and
referred Insight’s questions to a public-affairs officer.
On June 25, 1998, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee heard
testimony from Peter Leitner, a senior trade analyst working
under Tarbell, who cited instances where Tarbell leaned on him to
change his license recommendations from denials to approvals.
Leitner cited one instance where his superiors tampered with
official government records on his computer while he was on
vacation. Virtually all his cases involved the sale of sensitive
technology to Russia and Communist China.
Leitner gave examples of critical technologies, including
precision-machine tools and high-performance computers, which
were transferred to both Chinese and Russian military
establishments despite strong opposition by DTRA licensing
analysts. The U.S. equipment ended up in facilities that design
cruise missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear
weapons.
Commenting on Leitner’s revelations, Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.,
noted: "The process is rigged in favor of commercial interests
rather than our national-security interests. It is time to
address this issue. We should not be selling critical
technologies at the expense of our nation’s security."
Also testifying at the hearing was Franklin C. Miller, principal
deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat
reduction. Miller debunked Leitner’s claims that the
export-control process was broken. Recently, Miller was appointed
the top National Security Council official for military affairs.
Bush White House officials credit him with having added China to
the nuclear targeting list while he was a Clinton appointee.
But, before a DOD restructuring in 1998, Tarbell and DTRA’s
export-licensing office reported to Miller at the Pentagon,
making him ultimately responsible for some of the most sensitive
and controversial sales of military technology the Pentagon
approved to Communist China during the Clinton years.
Welcome to Disney World!
Leading the Pentagon junket to Walt Disney World is DTRA’s
director of technology security, Dave Tarbell, a Clinton
political appointee. Tarbell and his deputy, Ken Shelly, arranged
for more than a dozen DTRA employees to stay at the Disney
Coronado Springs Resort, conveniently located inside Disney World
itself.
When the harried government workers get tired of meetings, they
can head over to Disney-MGM Studios and watch a live performance
of the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular or board their own
Star Wars "Star-Speeder" for a ride through hyperspace. Why not?
It’s all on the taxpayers’ nickel.
Among the government employees scheduled to join the fun were:
Paul Chung, Walter Cybrowski, Jerry Frontiero, Robert Guckian,
Ricky Jones, Gray Kwitkoski, Donald Maziarz, Jim Miles, Joe
Omaggio, Soo Young Shin, Darrel Vidrine, George Woodford
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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