News

Plutonium Plunder: Nuclear Smuggling is on the Rise

By Gary Milhollin

The Boston Sunday Globe
September 4, 1994, p. 65

This summer, the German police are suddenly reporting a flood of nuclear smuggling cases. Small amounts of nuclear material have leaked out of the former Soviet Bloc since 1991, but these latest reports are unprecedented. For the first time, more than half a pound of weapon-useable plutonium turned up–confiscated August 10 in the Munich airport on a flight from Moscow. And in May, the German police had found a small amount of exceptionally pure Russian plutonium in Tengen-Wiechs and launched an unfruitful search for 100 to 150 kilograms more, rumored to have gone from Greece to Switzerland.

It took only six kilograms of plutonium -not even thirteen pounds — to produce the world’s first nuclear explosion in 1945. If that much or more is now circulating on the black market, the world will have to rethink its security. The trillion-dollar shield that the Pentagon built against the Soviet Union is no protection against nuclear terrorists. In fact, if nuclear weapon material is now leaking out of Russia, the Soviet arsenal will have entered its most dangerous phase.

The Iraqis were the suspected buyers of the material found in May. If Saddam Hussein starts getting warhead quantities of plutonium under the table, he will completely defeat the current UN monitoring effort, mounted at great cost, to keep Iraq’s industry from going back into the bomb business.

Iran is another potential customer. The Central Intelligence Agency openly accuses Iran of trying to build the bomb, and Iranian terrorist attacks are growing. If Iranian-linked terrorists can blow up the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, it doesn’t take much imagination to see what they might do to Boston, New York or Washington with an atomic bomb.

And there is North Korea. If Pyongyang can set up a plutonium pipeline to Russia, it can agree to anything the State Department asks in the current talks and still build the bomb. International inspectors might be able to keep track of Pyongyang’s reactors and fuel rods, but they could never find a small cache of bombs made from clandestine imports. It would be like trying to find a dozen objects the size of a trash can in the state of New York.

Unfortunately, it is easier to build a bomb today than it used to be. From secret documents discovered in Iraq, we know the design of the bomb the Iraqis were building before the Gulf War in 1991. It was strikingly similar in size and configuration to the one China tested successfully in 1966 and gave to Pakistan in the early 1980s. After getting the design, Pakistan scoured Europe for the parts to fit it. U.S. government analysts speculate that China’s design probably became known to Pakistan’s suppliers, and through them to the Iraqis.

Thus, the design works–and is available. A nuclear-minded Iran or Iraq today starts its climb partway up the mountain. The main bottleneck has always has been the plutonium or enriched uranium needed to fuel the bomb. These two metals are the ones that explode in a chain reaction. Neither is easy to manufacture, and neither has been for sale on the black market–at least not before this summer. If the bottleneck is gone, or if it disappears soon, workable bombs could start showing up in rogue nations in a few years’ time.

How would they be delivered? Not by an intercontinental ballistic missile, as most people think. It takes time and money to miniaturize a warhead so that it fits on a long-range missile. And to be confident that the missile would hit its target, one has to test-fire it across thousands of miles of ocean.

The likeliest delivery methods are simpler. The most straightforward is to smuggle a bomb into a country in parts and assemble it on the upper floor of an office building. Bombs can be taken apart and put together safely. Or a bomb could be assembled in a van and driven across a nation’s border to its target. A bomb could also be put on a ship entering port or on a plane landing at an urban airport.

These “low-tech” delivery options have important advantages. One is cost. Vans, boats, airplanes and even office buildings are cheaper than ICBMs. And there is no question about whether a pre-positioned bomb will hit its target. But the main advantage is anonymity–avoiding detection and retaliation. It would be suicidal for a developing country to launch a missile from its own territory at the United States. But a bomb in a building or a boat or a van would not leave much evidence. A US president would never order a nuclear strike against another country without being certain where an attack had come from. This could be difficult to figure out from a hole in the ground. It took years to solve the mystery of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, despite the extensive physical evidence at the scene.

What conclusions should one draw from all this? First, there is no defense against nuclear weapons. This has been the view of every president from Truman to Carter. Only Ronald Reagan thought the American public was naive enough to swallow the “Star Wars” myth–that an anti-missile system in the sky could actually protect us. The truth is that if someone with a nuclear weapon wanted to deliver it to an American city and set it off, we probably could not stop it. That is, we couldn’t stop it unless we found out about it in advance.

This last point suggests that we should be spending our defense dollars differently. We need, for example, better intelligence gathering. Our intelligence on Iraq was dangerously thin before the Gulf War, and our intelligence now on North Korea is plainly inadequate. It is not acceptable to be told that North Korea is a closed society and therefore our government has no idea how close that country may be to making an atomic bomb. If we are going to protect ourselves, we will have to do better intelligence gathering.

We also need a strategy for dealing with the Russians. World safety requires that nuclear smuggling top the list of what President Clinton talks about with Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin. We also need to beef up U.S. customs capability to detect nuclear materials at our borders and to mount sting operations against smugglers.

The German cases are a warning. We know how many shipments the Germans caught. How many did they miss? Did 150 kilograms really go through Greece to Switzerland? All we know is that a stream of nuclear material is coming out of the former Soviet Union. We don’t know how wide or deep that stream is, or in which direction it is really flowing. Our security depends on finding out.

Emerging Nuclear Threats
Nuclear
Weapons
Status
Able to reach United States
With ICBMs
Able to reach United States
With Low-tech delivery
Now
In five years
Now
In five years
Capable
India
No
Unlikely
Yes
Yes
Israel
No
Possible
Yes
Yes
Pakistan
No
No
Yes
Yes
North Korea
No
No
Possible
Yes
Potential
Algeria
No
No
No
Possible
Argentina
No
No
No
No
Brazil
No
Unlikely
No
Possible
Iraq
No
No
No
Possible
Iran
No
No
No
Unlikely
Libya
No
No
No
Unlikely
South Korea
No
No
No
Possible
Taiwan
No
No
No
Possible

Arsenals Abroad: Proliferation In Disguise

By Gary Milhollin and Gerard White

The New York Times
July 18, 1994, p. A15

This week the House takes up a bill that would make it easier for terrorist nations to build nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The fateful debate will focus on the sale of strategic technology — items like the high-tech furnaces, presses and machine tools that almost gave Saddam Hussein an atomic bomb.

The bill, whose chief sponsor is Representative Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut, would leave U.S. controls no stronger than those of Germany, Switzerland and Italy, the main suppliers of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and missile plants. The stated goal is to protect American exporters from unfair competition; instead, the bill would end American leadership in export control.

Since World War II, U.S. strategy has been to adopt strong controls first and then persuade other countries to follow. Mr. Gejdenson’s bill would allow such unilateral controls only for six months — too short a time for diplomacy to work. The controls could be extended but only if the President determined, among other things, that “no other means” could stop proliferation.

The Pentagon and other national security agencies would be squeezed out of export regulation; power would shift to the Commerce Department, whose main job is to promote exports, not regulate them. Mr. Gejdenson also wants to shorten the time allowed to decide on export license applications from 120 days to 30 days — a step the Administration has said “would preclude meaningful review.”

The sponsors boast that the bill would be the strongest prohibition ever enacted against exports to countries like Iraq and North Korea. But U.S. regulations have barred sales to these countries for years. The problem is that by loosening controls on exports to everyone else, the bill makes it easier for terrorist nations to buy U.S. goods abroad.

To garner support, exporters and their Congressional allies are peddling a set of myths. The cold war is over, they say, so export controls are becoming obsolete. But regional tensions are growing and so are appetites for weapons of mass destruction. As James Woolsey, the Director of Central Intelligence, said at his confirmation hearings last year, “We have slain a large dragon, but we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes.”

Another myth is that dropping export controls would create jobs. Only $10 billion worth of high-technology products — less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the U.S. economy — even go through export licensing. And the total value of exports denied under the existing controls is about $700 million a year — less than half the price of a B-2 bomber. Gutting export controls would stimulate bomb making, not the U.S. economy.

Supporters say that too many exports are subject to controls. In fact, the Commerce Department has been steadily cutting back on the number of items it screens for export licenses; only a tenth as many items are controlled now as in 1989, and the department is cutting its staff. Export controls are but a shadow of what they were before the cold war; now the exporters want to get rid of the shadow.

Mr. Gejdenson’s measure would encourage the Commerce Department to drop items from the list of controlled products as soon as they were superseded by an improved version. But “obsolete” technology can still be deadly. After the Persian Gulf war, U.N. inspectors discovered that Iraq had nearly made an atomic bomb using calutrons, a primitive technology that the U.S. abandoned in the 1940’s. It is no consolation to be killed by a bomb made with obsolete equipment.

In April, the General Accounting Office reported that the Government had approved more than 1,500 nuclear-related exports from 1985 to 1992 to countries “involved or suspected of being involved in nuclear proliferation activities.” A military buyer in Pakistan got two high-tech grinding machines “capable of manufacturing critical nuclear weapon components,” even though the U.S. Government knew the buyer was involved in “the design, manufacture, or testing of nuclear weapons.”

Instead of fighting export controls, U.S. manufacturers should welcome them; they protect companies’ reputations by keeping dangerous goods out of the wrong hands. Which U.S. company would like to have seen its logo on the Russian- and German-supplied Scud missiles that hit Tel Aviv?

Officials at the United Nations have told us that they expect the embargo on Iraqi oil to be lifted next spring. The petrodollars will revive Mr. Hussein’s procurement network. If Representative Gejdenson’s bill passes, the companies whose products showed up in Iraqi bomb factories last time could see them there again. Mr. Gejdenson and his backers can then share the blame.

Testimony: Renewing the Export Administration Act

By Gary Milhollin

Testimony of Gary Milhollin

Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School and
Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

Before the House Committee on Armed Services

June 15, 1994

I thank the committee for giving me this opportunity to testify on the renewal of the Export Administration Act. First, I would like to describe the background against which this bill has come up. Then, I would like to suggest ways the bill could be improved. I would also like to submit for the record a report by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, titled “25 Myths about Export Control,” as well as an article on export control that appeared in the Washington Post in February and a graphic published in the New York Times showing which countries supplied Saddam Hussein’s mass destruction war machine.

Export Controls Are Worth the Price

The most important thing to recognize about export controls is that they work. They buy the time needed to turn a country off the nuclear weapon path. Argentina and Brazil agreed to give up nuclear weapons mainly because of the costs that export controls imposed upon them. And in Iraq, secret documents showed that export controls on dual-use equipment seriously hampered the Iraqi nuclear weapon design team. The Iraqis spent time and money making crucial items that they could not import. The same controls also stopped Iraq’s drive to make a medium-range missile. In addition, these controls are now hampering India’s effort to build an ICBM.

But how much do export controls cost? Are they a drag on the U.S. economy? How many jobs are at stake? The total American economy was about six trillion dollars in 1992. Of that, only four tenths of one percent($23.7 billion) even went through Commerce Department licensing. And only $790 million in applications were denied–which is one hundredth of one percent of the U.S. economy and less than half the cost of one B-2 bomber. If the American economy were equivalent to a dollar, only four tenths of a penny’s worth would go through export control and only one hundredth of a penny’s worth would be denied a license. Export control is not a jobs issue. It has only a microscopic effect on employment. Gutting export controls will not stimulate the U.S. economy; it will only stimulate the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

And what about the end of the Cold War? Does that mean that export controls are less important? If anything, they are more important. With bipolar stability gone, regional tensions are growing. These tensions stimulate the appetite for weapons of mass destruction. The nuclear and missile arms race is still on between India and Pakistan, and still on in the Middle East. As CIA director Woolsey said during his confirmation hearings in 1993, “We have slain a large dragon, but we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes.” It is illogical to say that because the Cold War is over, proliferation is the main international threat, and then to say that export controls, which are one of the best ways of containing that threat, should be reduced.

In fact, the lesson of Iraq was that export controls need to be stronger instead of weaker. But today’s export controls are only a shadow of what they were before the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein was buying the means to make his mass destruction war machine. Since 1988 applications to the Commerce Department have dropped by 75%. Cases have fallen from nearly 100,000 in 1989 to about 25,000 in 1993. The value of goods individually licensed has dropped from over $100 billion a few years ago to just over $20 billion last year, and is expected to fall to only $10 billion in 1994. The reason is simple: fewer items are controlled, and so fewer applications are required.

Thus, the export control system today is only a shadow of its former self. The trouble with the House bill–the bill reported out of the Foreign Affairs Committee–is that it would get rid of the shadow.

Preserving Multilateral and Unilateral Controls

First, the bill makes it virtually impossible to continue multilateral controls–that is, controls that are the same as, or similar to, those of other countries. The bill virtually defines multilateral controls out of existence. Under the House bill, a control is multilateral only if it is adopted by an export control regime. The regime, in turn, must name the countries at which its controls are aimed. No current regime fits that definition. In effect, the bill would make all existing controls “unilateral.” These unilateral controls would expire after six months unless extended by the President under criteria that are almost impossible to satisfy. Thus, the bill’s definition of multilateral controls is only a thinly veiled attempt to abolish all export controls.

The House bill also erects prohibitively high barriers to the extension of unilateral controls. These barriers must be lowered in order to preserve U.S. leadership in export control. The United States must be able to adopt strong controls first, and then persuade other countries to follow its example. This is the method by which every export control agreement since World War II has been created. By denying the ability to sustain unilateral controls, the House bill makes it impossible for the United States to continue its leadership on export control, which will be a giant step backward for world peace.

At best, the bill would allow the United States to control exports about the same way that Germany controlled them in the 1980s. The graphic I submitted for the record shows that German firms were the main suppliers of Iraq’s chemical weapon, nuclear weapon and long-range missile programs. Germany supplied as much as all the other countries in the world combined. What most people don’t know is that German firms bought U.S. computers and combined them with German machine tools so that they could send the whole package to Iraq. Today, because we have decontrolled computers, we have lost the ability to track this kind of export behavior. This is bad enough, but the House bill would push all U.S. controls down to the level of Germany, or Switzerland, or other countries that prefer to make a profit at the expense of world security.

Strengthening Inter-Agency Review

The House bill also enables the Secretary of Commerce alone to decide which items to control and whether to consult other agencies on license applications. But to decide strategic questions, such as whether to export sensitive equipment, one must rely on strategic experts. They alone know what exports can do and what they will really be used for. In the United States, these experts are in the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the intelligence services. They are not at the Commerce Department. In order to bring the maximum amount of government expertise to bear upon decisions, the Departments of State, Energy, Defense and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency should have the power to concur in the decision to add or subtract items from the control list. They should also have the power to concur in licensing decisions on individual exports.

The House bill does not now require the Secretary of Commerce to share licensing information with the national security agencies. In fact, these agencies do not have ready access to such information. These agencies should be given on-line computer access to all licensing information in the hands of the Commerce Department.

Preserving Adequate Time Limits

As written, the House bill now imposes a 30-day limit for processing licensing applications. This, says the Clinton Administration quite correctly, is so short as to preclude meaningful review. Moreover, there is no reason to shorten existing time periods. At present, the average time for granting a license application is only nine days, unless the application is referred to other agencies, and the Commerce Department is now meeting its licensing deadlines in 97% of its applications. The Department of Energy, to which Commerce refers nuclear cases, already turns them out so fast that Energy spends an average of less than 40 minutes on each. The House bill should be amended to restore the 90-day period requested in the Administration bill.

Transparency and Accountability

After the Gulf War, U.N. teams inspecting Iraq found factories full of Western equipment–machines that almost gave Saddam Hussein an atomic bomb. Saddam was able to buy this equipment without revealing his true intent because the licensing process for dual-use equipment is secret. Neither Congress nor the public is permitted to examine Commerce Department licensing in the open. This means that only the exporters know what is being sold, and only the exporters’ voices are heard by the licensing officers when decisions are made. The effect is to freeze the public and Congress out of the process and to open the door to the worst forms of private lobbying. This is true despite the fact that dual-use licenses are supposed to be for civilian items restricted to peaceful use.

The best American model of export licensing is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All of the Commission’s export licenses are granted on the public record and in the light of day. This is the main reason why there were no horror stories about U.S. nuclear exports to Iraq. Neither exporters nor regulators wanted to defend such transactions in public, so they did not happen.

To justify the present system, the Commerce Department argues that secrecy is necessary to protect proprietary interests. But the U.S. nuclear industry competes well on the international market, despite the openness of NRC licensing. That fact alone proves that secrecy is not necessary to be competitive. Indeed, there seems to be no evidence that any company would be disadvantaged if licensing data were made public. Companies know their markets well. They know who is selling to whom because their survival depends on it. Anything they might learn from licensing data would be only a small addition to what they already know. But even if there were a small disadvantage to a few companies from having licensing data published, this cost would be amply justified by the clear national security interest in having an effective, publicly-accountable licensing process.

To prevent another Iraq, the Export Administration Act should require the Commerce Department to publish semi-annual summaries of all dual-use licensing actions. The information would include the date of the application, the applicant, the date of the licensing decision, the name and country of the ultimate end-user, a description of the item sold, and a description of the end-use. This information already exists in a database. It could be printed by pushing a button. The summary would only cover licensing actions that have been completed. Pending sales would not be revealed in order to protect negotiations.

The summary would also include the name of the exporter. If a company is ashamed of having sold one of its products to a sensitive country, the company should not have made the sale in the first place. Reputable companies do not object to telling the truth about their business. If the sales are legitimate, and satisfy export laws, there is no reason to keep them hidden. The decision to license them is an official government act paid for with tax dollars. Pushing export licensing into the light of day would encourage the exporters to be honest, encourage the government to be careful, and allow the public to find out whether American exports are undermining U.S. national security.

Keeping U.S. Technology away from Rogue Nations

The bill as now written would allow sensitive U.S. exports to go without a license to any country that joins an export control regime, a step that is self-defeating. Spain and Italy, for example, adhere to the Missile Technology Control Regime and want to buy large space rockets. But Spain is reported to be developing a multi-stage missile that will reach North Africa and neither Spain nor Italy can adequately control its own exports. Thus, U.S. rocket technology sold to these countries could be reexported to Iran, Iraq or Libya, the very countries against which the control regimes are targeted. If an item that only the United States makes is freely sold to the other 25 members of the missile control regime, there would then be 25 potential suppliers instead of only one. The bill should be amended to delete the authority to create license-free zones and instead should allow the Secretary of Commerce to adjust U.S. export controls in favor of countries that have sound export controls.

“Indexing”

The bill as reported also contains a provision entitled “indexing.” The idea behind this is that as soon as more sophisticated technology is developed, controls on less sophisticated technology should be dropped. But the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are “obsolete” by modern standards. Should they be exported? Should the means to make them be exported? The first U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles are also obsolete and after the Gulf War, U.N. inspectors discovered that Iraq nearly made an atomic bomb with the inefficient “calutrons” that the United States abandoned in the 1940s. It is no consolation to be killed by a bomb made with obsolete equipment.

To sum up, we are better off with the current Export Administration Act than with the House bill as proposed. Export controls are an essential tool in our effort to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And it is much cheaper to prevent the spread of the bomb with export controls than it is to build giant systems to defend against the spread once it has happened.

Nuclear Sleuth

By David J. Tenenbaum

Purdue Alumnus,
Summer 1994.

Some people chase power. Some chase the dollar. Some chase celebrity. Gary Milhollin chases the Bomb.

From a small office just northwest of the White House, Milhollin (ME61) heads the non-profit Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, which tracks the spread of weapons of mass destruction. His specialty is the nuclear wannabe’s-countries like Iraq and North Korea-which are dead-set on joining the “nuclear club.”

The once-exclusive “nuclear club” now has at least 11 members (see inset), and Milhollin considers this expansion to be pure evil. “If everybody has the bomb, that means the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) have the bomb. And the folks who blew up the New York World Trade Center would have the bomb.”

Plenty of people despise nuclear weapons-but few of them do so with Milhollin’s energy and tenacity. He has been digging nuclear dirt and telling tales of proliferation since he took a leave of absence from a law professorship at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986.

When Milhollin speaks, broadcast networks listen. “I have called him for information as often as three times a week,” says CBS Pentagon correspondent Jim Stewart. “He’s reliable and accurate. I believe him and have checked him out.”

“I probably don’t know anyone in Washington-outside the U.S. government-who is more knowledgeable on nuclear issues than he is,” says Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s White House correspondent and its former Pentagon correspondent. “He speaks with credibility.”

A dapper and fine-featured man whose brown hair has no trace of gray, the 55-year-old Milhollin also has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post and articles in the New Yorker. In 1993, on the op-ed page of The New York Times, he fingered the governments and companies which had supplied Iraq’s vast nuclear program.

Can shining a few rays of light on the murky corners of the nuclear trade make much difference? Yes. After his exposes, governments have banned sales of raw material and equipment to bombmakers and corporations have forsworn future contracts for fear their names would be linked to the spread of nuclear weapons.

MEDIA MARVEL Milhollin accomplishes all this with a tiny operation. Only recently did his budget reach $500,000, allowing him the luxury of four assistants. How can he be so effective on a shoestring? Because he’s a grandmaster at television’s ultimate weapon-the sound bite. In early December, when North Korea was refusing to honor its agreement to allow nuclear inspections, he produced these thoughtful, 15-second morsels for NBC news:

Question: “Is it worth risking war to force North Korea’s hand?”

Answer: “The international system of inspection is on the line, and we’re supposed to go to the (U.N.) Security Council, and we should. We’re coming to the end of the line. The North Koreans are not moving, and we have reached the end of the road diplomatically.”

Q: “What is at stake?”

A: “If North Korea gets the bomb, South Korea will get the bomb. Then Japan will get the bomb, and suddenly you have millions of people threatened with nuclear weapons who aren’t threatened today.”

Indeed, North Korea allowed the inspections in March, and Milhollin found his hard-line stance was vindicated. “It was very clear that unless North Korea relented, it was going to face international sanctions,” says Milhollin. “When it came down to the wire, they caved.”

HOOSIER ROOTS Purdue has played a key role Milhollin’s long journey from rural Indiana to the corridors of power. He was born in 1938 and raised in Albany, Ind., a farm town “so small that you knew all the dogs by name.” He remembers a “typical ’50s childhood-black Keds sneakers and a crewcut.”

Nuclear weapons were not much of a presence in Albany, which didn’t even have an air-raid siren. As a child, he says, “It never entered my mind that I’d wind up chasing nuclear weapons.

Perhaps because his father was an engineer, Milhollin entered Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering, where he immediately was struck by the intellectual climate. “I grew up in a town where your manhood was on the line if you were a good student,” says Milhollin. “I was exhilarated when I first got to Purdue, to be in a place where being a good student was positive.”

When an absent-minded student threw the wrong switch and sparked a gigantic electric arc in an engineering lab, Milhollin got an indelible lesson in gaining people’s attention. The student in question-Milhollin insists he was standing innocently to the side-was left white-faced, shaken and with vastly greater respect for the instructor’s wisdom. “It was an effective educational technique,” Milhollin says with a characteristic wry laugh.

After graduation, Milhollin entered Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, and used his engineering degree to get a night job as a patent examiner. He earned a law degree, worked for the federal poverty program for a year and began teaching law at Catholic University in 1971.

In 1975, feeling frustrated with academia and wanting a practical outlet, he asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) whether it could use a lawyer-engineer. He was hired as a part-time administrative judge for the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

It was here, while questioning witnesses about the safety of nuclear reactors, that Milhollin first applied his hybrid background. “Purdue was an excellent engineering school, and it gave me a solid foundation in science which has been indispensable to my work at the NRC and today,” he says.

In 1976, he joined the law faculty at Wisconsin and continued to hone his teaching skills, which would soon prove quite handy. “Teaching,” he says, “is good experience for working in front of the media, because you have to present a difficult, complicated subject in a clear way.”

DIFFERENT PATH But for a 1985 NRC assignment to study India’s supply of heavy water, which is used in reactors that make bomb fuel, Milhollin might still be teaching contract law. Milhollin realized the statistics did not add up, meaning that India’s nuclear program had something to hide. He found the press interested in somebody who could discuss nuclear proliferation on camera, and within a year, he moved his family to Washington to begin full-time work as what he calls a “nuclear-policy wonk.”

Milhollin and his wife, Monique, who directs the French language program at Johns Hopkins University, now live in Bethesda, Md. Their son, Elliott, 23, plans to enter law school this fall; Jessica, 19, is a sophomore at Harvard College.

In Washington, where his schedule is set by the headlines and the demands of the media, Milhollin’s engineering degree has again proven useful. “The best thing about a science degree is that you’re not intimidated by scientists,” he says.

Nor is Milhollin intimidated by governments. In nine years of nuclear sleuthing, he’s taken on Norway (for selling heavy water), Israel and India (for their secret and apparently successful nuclear weapons programs), Iraq and North Korea (for their dogged attempts to make nukes) and Germany (for exporting chemical and nuclear technology to Iraq and Libya).

He’s also confronted the United States government. For example, in a February op-ed in The Washington Post, he scourged the administration’s plan to loosen controls on “dual-use” technologies. This category of equipment-useful for peaceful or military purposes-includes supercomputers, vacuum furnaces and sophisticated scientific analysis equipment.

The administration justified the liberalization by saying that many dual-use items were already available on the world market, but Milhollin disagrees. “With a rare exception, it’s simply not true,” he says. “There are very few countries in the world that make the high-performance equipment on the U.S. control list.” And since the makers are all in friendly countries, Milhollin suggests “getting everybody to agree not to export this stuff to the bad guys.”

MAKE THEM SMILE Almost as important as the ability to coin sound bites is a sense of humor. To explain why he left a brief stint as a corporate lawyer on Wall Street he says dryly, “It was hard to become emotionally involved with clients like IBM.” To stress that nuclear weapons are hard to make but easy to hide, he adapted an adage “In the world of non-proliferation a gram of prevention is worth a megaton of cure.”

When asked the difference between working in a university and in the public spotlight, Milhollin recalls talking with staffers at a foreign embassy. “Everybody had read all my articles, including the footnotes!” With a gust of laughter at such a bizarre thought he admits, “That was a new experience for me as a scholar!” (Although he is on a leave of absence from Wisconsin, he’s still a tenured professor. His project is funded entirely through his foundation grants.)

SERIOUS BUSINESS Milhollin understands the gravity of the issues on the table. In 1995 the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the back-bone of international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons, is due to expire. Events in the coming year will influence how many countries are willing to sign a renewal and continue to concede their “right” to possess these weapons, Milhollin says.

Even more pressing is the fate of 30,000 to 40,000 nuclear weapons left over by the collapse of the Soviet Union. “It’s probably the scariest problem in the world right now, but our group doesn’t have the capability to deal with it,” he says. “We’re small and we’re already the experts on Iraq, the most prominent critic of International Atomic Energy Agency (the U.N. ‘s nuclear inspectors), probably the most prominent critic of China; I’ve been very busy on North Korea. That’s enough – you have to have some private life.”

Although Milhollin may not win all of these struggles, he thinks slowing the nuclear throttle is valuable in its own right because it gives diplomacy time to work.

And despite the proliferation there have been some positive nuclear developments. Brazil and Argentina have vastly reduced their dangerous rivalry, South Africa renounced its bomb program during the abolition of apartheid and the United States and Russia have agreed to destroy large portions of their huge arsenals.

The U.S. reductions give him credibility when he gets on his nuclear soapbox, Milhollin says. “We’re slowly getting rid of these weapons, and that improves our moral position.”

Years of staring at Armageddon have accustomed Milhollin to thinking the unthinkable. Gazing out his window at the Washington Monument he muses, “If you had to predict where a third-world bombmaker would put a bomb, if he wanted to hurt the United States, I can probably see that place from my window.”

And forget ICBM’s: “We’re talking about a Ryder truck. It’s more accurate than an ICBM. And nobody can trace it,” he adds.

Yet even then, Milhollin showed a practical streak that reflects his training as an engineer and a lawyer. He’s used to facing the facts, and proceeding from there. “You have to do the best you can,” he says, “even though there’s no guarantee of success. Because the alternative is to do nothing and be sure to fail, and failure is not really acceptable. I look at my work as a lawyer would. I’m arguing to the public, and I want to win.”

Inset Text:
The “NUCLEAR CLUB”

United States
Russia
Britain
France
China
Kazakhstan
Belarus
Ukraine

READY-TO-ASSEMBLE NUKES IN:

Israel
India
Pakistan

25 Myths About Export Control

In 1941, it took an entire Japanese carrier task force with some 300 planes to inflict 3,000 deaths at Pearl Harbor. Less than four years later, a single American plane dropped a single bomb that killed 100,000 at Hiroshima. A few days after that, a second bomb killed more than 75,000 at Nagasaki, although it missed its target by more than two miles. Since the days when this awesome power was first unleashed, the United States has tried to limit its spread.

It has been axiomatic that the United States would not sell atomic bombs to other countries. And as a corollary, it would not sell the means to make such weapons. Since the 1940s, these two principles have been central to American foreign policy.

First through Cocom, an agreement that successfully denied Western technology to the Warsaw Pact, and then through other agreements not to sell nuclear, chemical and missile technology, the United States and its allies have limited the spread of this technology around the globe. Although controlling exports has never been the sole means of limiting the spread of the bomb, it has been an indispensable part of the effort.

But export control laws are now under siege. The end of the Cold War has triggered pressure from industry to dismantle Cocom, and there is mounting pressure to scale back other export controls as well. But is the world safer after the Cold War? Should less be done to combat nuclear proliferation?

The Export Administration Act is now before Congress and a group of American exporters has mounted an unprecedented campaign to weaken this vital law. If they succeed, developing countries will find it easier to build atomic bombs and long-range missiles under the Clinton administration than they did under either presidents Bush or Reagan.

These exporters hope that Congress and the public have already forgotten the Gulf War. U.N. teams inspecting Iraq found factories full of Western equipment–machines that U.S. pilots died trying to bomb, and that almost gave Saddam Hussein a nuclear weapon. The inspectors wrote in their reports that to stop Saddam from reviving his bomb program, there must be “strict maintenance of export controls by the industrial nations.” And by 1992, the Bush administration had concluded that Iran was following the same purchasing strategy as Iraq–buying Western “dual-use” equipment to make nuclear weapons.

The lesson is therefore clear: the export of American high technology must not come at the expense of American security. Yet, if the claims now being made by some exporters are believed, that is precisely what will happen. Congress and the administration are being bombarded with so much misinformation that exporters’ claims have risen to the level of myths. The purpose of this report is to reintroduce some balance into the debate, by pairing some of the myths with statements of reality.

THE TWENTY-FIVE MYTHS

Myth #1: Export controls do not work. They will never stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Reality: Export controls do work. They buy the time needed to turn a country off the nuclear weapon path. Argentina and Brazil agreed to give up nuclear weapons mainly because of the costs that export controls imposed upon them. And in Iraq, secret documents showed that export controls on dual-use equipment seriously hampered the Iraqi nuclear weapon design team. The Iraqis spent time and money making crucial items that they could not import. The same controls also stopped Iraq’s drive to make a medium-range missile–one that would have been invulnerable to U.S. Patriot defenses. In addition, these controls are now hampering India’s effort to build an ICBM.

Myth #2: Dropping export controls will create jobs, the Clinton administration’s main priority.

Reality: Export controls have only a microscopic effect on employment. The total American economy was about six trillion dollars in 1992. Of that, only four tenths of one percent ($23.7 billion) even went through Commerce Department licensing. And only $790 million in applications were denied–which is one hundredth of one percent of the U.S. economy and less than half the cost of one B-2 bomber. If the American economy were equivalent to a dollar, only four tenths of a penny’s worth would go through export control and only one hundredth of a penny’s worth would be denied a license. Gutting export controls stimulates proliferation, not the U.S. economy.

Myth #3: Export controls are less important after the Cold War.

Reality: In fact, they are more important. With bipolar stability gone, regional tensions are growing. These tensions stimulate the appetite for weapons of mass destruction. The nuclear and missile arms race is still on between India and Pakistan, and still on in the Middle East. As CIA director Woolsey said in his confirmation hearings, “we have slain a large dragon, but we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes.” It is illogical to say that because the Cold War is over, proliferation is the main international threat, and then to say that export controls, which are one of the best ways of containing that threat, should be reduced.

Myth #4: The end of the Cold War has made East-West controls irrelevant.

Reality: These controls are still important. Cocom, the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls, was built up after World War II to keep Western technology away from the Warsaw Pact. But Cocom is due to end on March 31 with nothing effective to replace it. Western goods will flow into the former East Bloc before those countries can control their own exports. Thus, Western goods run the risk of being reexported through the former East Bloc to Iran, Iraq, Libya or Syria. The East Bloc is now part of the proliferation problem.

Myth #5: Export controls are still locked into the Cold War mode; they must be reduced to reflect new conditions.

Reality: Export controls have already been cut drastically since the Cold War. Since 1988 applications to the Commerce Department have dropped by 75%. Cases have fallen from nearly 100,000 in 1989 to about 25,000 in 1993. The value of goods individually licensed has dropped from over $100 billion a few years ago to just over $20 billion last year, and is expected to fall to only $10 billion in 1994. The reason is simple: fewer items are controlled, and so fewer applications are required. Further cuts will only help nuclear and missile aspirants like Iran and Libya, whom former CIA director Gates accused in 1992 of trying to procure high-technology items for rocket motors.

Myth #6: Export controls put U.S. business at a competitive disadvantage.

Reality: Licensing has little impact on sales. Over 98% of export applications are approved. Over the past four years, the Commerce Department has denied an average of only 323 cases annually, an insignificant number of transactions. Moreover, virtually all advanced countries now control their exports in the same way the United States does. Thus, in over 98% of the cases covered by export controls–which in turn are only a tiny fraction of overall American exports–business suffers no greater burden than filling out a form. U.S. foreign military sales have grown steadily despite control by the State Department’s munitions list. And American firms have already regained the market share they lost in the early 1980s, making the United States again the world’s leading exporter.

Myth #7: U.S. exporters lose sales because approvals take too long.

Reality: The Commerce Department is now meeting its licensing deadlines in 97% of its applications. The average time for approval is only nine days–unless the Commerce Department refers the case for interagency review. The Department of Energy, to which Commerce refers nuclear cases, turns them out so rapidly that Energy spends an average of less than 40 minutes on each.

Myth #8: Export controls cost U.S. businesses over $20 billion per year in lost sales.

Reality: This claim is purely speculative, and it defies common sense. The amount claimed to be lost is nearly equal to the total value of goods licensed yearly by the Commerce Department. Yet over 98% of applications are approved. But even if $20 billion were lost, it would amount to only three tenths of one percent of the American economy. This amount is insignificant compared to the cost of fighting a nuclear Desert Storm, or to the cost of fighting a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.

Myth #9: Export controls must be multilateral to work.

Reality: Unilateral controls are also essential. Since World War II, multilateral controls have been set up by U.S. example–America adopted unilateral controls first and then asked other countries to follow suit. U.S. diplomats are using this strategy today to help create export controls in the former East Bloc. International leadership is always unilateral. If the United States had waited for Europe, Japan and the Arab countries to agree on what to do when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Iraq might still possess Kuwait today. Instead, America acted unilaterally and asked others to join–using the same strategy it has adopted for export control. Unilateral controls also reflect moral values. The United States did not sell poison gas plants to Libya and Iraq because Germany did, or agree to sell nuclear reactors to Iran and Pakistan because China did, or sell large rockets to India because Russia did. Would a U.S. firm enjoy seeing its logo on the Russian and German-supplied Scuds that hit Tel Aviv?

Myth #10: There should be a short time limit on all unilateral controls.

Reality: It can take years for the United States to convince its allies to adopt multilateral controls. In 1992 the Nuclear Suppliers Group agreed to control more than 60 items that the United States had controlled unilaterally for nonproliferation reasons for over a decade. Premature decontrol of these items by the United States would have prevented this important victory.

Myth #11: U.S. export controls limit the sale of items that are readily available abroad.

Reality: Such items are rarely available. Only a few companies can supply the items now left on export control lists. These lists have been cut drastically in the 1990s, so that only the highest-technology items remain. Almost all of the makers of such items are in advanced countries–countries that use controls similar to those of the United States.

Myth #12: If a foreign competitor is willing to sell an item, showing “foreign availability,” American firms should be able to do the same.

Reality: This pushes export control down to the level of the worst abuser. Germany sold Iraq more pieces of dangerous equipment before the Gulf War than all other countries combined. If American policy had been as lax as Germany’s, Saddam’s bomb program would have advanced much faster. And for exports to Iran, U.S. policy would now have to be relaxed because of sales by Germany, Japan and Switzerland. Moreover, U.S. officials acknowledge that estimates of foreign availability are too imprecise to dictate export policy. Instead of indexing U.S. law to foreign availability, which only benefits proliferators, the United States should pressure new supplier nations to join multilateral control efforts.

Myth #13: Export controls should be dropped when an item is superseded by advances in technology.

Reality: The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are “obsolete” by modern standards. Should they be exported? Should the means to make them be exported? The first U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles are also obsolete and after the Gulf War, U.N. inspectors discovered that Iraq nearly made an atomic bomb with the inefficient “calutrons” that the United States abandoned in the 1940s. It is no consolation to be killed by a bomb made with obsolete equipment.

Myth #14: The biggest emerging markets for American goods are in “sensitive” countries.

Reality: This is not true of items controlled for export. Only the highest-performing equipment is now left on control lists. In most of the sensitive countries, only the military is advanced enough to make use of such equipment, or has the money to buy it. The main civilian markets for these items are, and will be, in the developed world. If an exporter cannot survive by selling to its main market, it will not survive through risky sales to a marginal market.

Myth #15: License applications only create a mountain of paperwork, costing U.S. exporters time and money.

Reality: The benefit of licensing outweighs its burden. In addition to preventing dangerous sales, licensing provides an essential tracking function. It allows U.S. and foreign officials to identify buying patterns that can unmask a country’s true intentions. Most exporting firms are accustomed to licensing and go through it with ease. Rather than eliminate this valuable process, it should be made more efficient.

Myth #16: U.S. exports are controlled by a maze of regulations, agencies and special committees that impede rather than help exporters.

Reality: The present system brings the maximum expertise to bear in the shortest possible time. To judge an export application, one must understand how the item could be used to make a weapon of mass destruction, whether the importer is reliable, and whether the claimed use is technically credible. No single government agency has the expertise to do this. The present system relies on experts from the Departments of Defense, Energy and State, and from the CIA and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. An interagency process is therefore indispensable. Leading U.S. allies have adopted a similar interagency process. The reason is simple: without referrals there is no expertise, and without expertise one cannot make a competent export decision.

Myth #17: The way to “streamline” licensing is to reduce interagency review and give more power to the Commerce Department.

Reality: The Commerce Department has no substantive competence in strategic technology. Its current function is to manage the flow of cases, referring them to the proper experts in other agencies. It would be a mistake to give Commerce a substantive role for which it is not equipped. Commerce also has a conflict of interests–it must promote exports as well as regulate them. This promotion function is the dominant one; it causes Commerce invariably to champion the exporter’s cause. In 1991, Commerce officials even altered export records on Iraq before submitting them to Congress, doing so in order to conceal embarrassing approvals. In light of its record in Iraq, the role of Commerce in export licensing should be reduced and the roles of the national security agencies should be increased.

Myth #18: We need “higher fences around fewer goods.” Only “chokepoint” technologies should be controlled–items specially designed to make weapons of mass destruction.

Reality: This ignores the lesson of Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s scientists were masters at upgrading medium-tech items to “chokepoint” level. The Iraqis imported equipment that was “dual-use”–capable of making nuclear weapons or long-range missiles but also having civilian applications. The Iraqis bought dual-use isostatic presses to shape A-bomb parts, dual-use mass spectrometers to sample A-bomb fuel, and dual-use electron beam welders to increase the range of Scud missiles. One of those increased-range Scuds killed U.S. troops sleeping in Saudi Arabia. Iran is now following the same purchasing strategy as Iraq. There is no hope of stopping proliferation without controlling dual-use equipment; current U.S. export laws reflect that fact. If “higher fences around fewer goods” is carried to its conclusion, there will be a very high fence around assembled hydrogen bombs, and no controls on the means to make them.

Myth #19: The United States should agree to a license-free zone with other nations that join nonproliferation control regimes.

Reality: This step would destroy the regimes. Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria all joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but it would be folly to sell them nuclear technology. The United States is not about to do so. Nor is it ready to sell them dual-use technology. Likewise, Spain and Italy adhere to the missile technology control regime and want to buy large space rockets. But Spain is reported to be developing a multi-stage missile that will reach North Africa and neither Spain nor Italy can adequately control its own exports. Thus, U.S. rocket technology sold to these countries could be reexported to the very countries against which the regimes are targeted. If an item that only the United States makes is freely sold to the other 25 members of the missile control regime, there would then be 25 potential suppliers to proliferators instead of only one.

Myth #20: Export controls should be based on destination, not on the item sold, which would isolate rogue countries without hurting sales to other markets.

Reality: This would simplify the process by gutting it. Unscrupulous buyers would set up front companies in non-prohibited countries with weak controls and then transship the item to prohibited countries. The Iraqis were masters at this. End-use or end-user checks only catch a small number of violations, because the checking process is costly and because front companies can disappear overnight. An export system based on destination alone leaves honest U.S. exporters more vulnerable to having their equipment turn up in the next Iraq. Moreover, it is diplomatically difficult to name a risky buyer like Syria, which is participating in the Mideast peace process, as a rogue nation. Germany, for example, will not even agree that Iran is a rogue nation.

Myth #21: Export controls are easily defeated by smuggling.

Reality: After the Cold War, Cocom officials toured the former East Bloc to measure the impact of Cocom controls. East Bloc officials said that smuggling was sometimes successful, but spare parts and service were difficult or impossible to obtain. Thus, smuggled equipment often became inoperable, making it risky to build manufacturing operations around it. The way to deal with smuggling, like street crime, is not to abolish laws, but to improve enforcement.

Myth #22: It is unfair to require a license for low-tech goods simply because the exporter “knows” the goods will be used to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Reality: This rule does not bar exports; it only requires a license; and 98% of license applications are approved. Germany and the United Kingdom also have this rule. U.S. exporters have lived for years with the rule for nuclear goods; during the Bush administration it was merely expanded to cover missile and chemical weapon development. The rule encourages the exporter to know his customer and it allows the government to track dangerous programs and slow them down.

Myth #23: High-speed computers are not important for nuclear weapon or missile development.

Reality: The U.S. National Laboratories invented high-speed computers expressly to design nuclear weapons. They are also used to design missile components. They drastically cut the time and money needed for weapon development and they reduce or eliminate the need for tests. The absence of tests can mask a program from detection. In many developing countries, the only institutions that can absorb supercomputer-level technology are run by the military. Decontrolling these computers will allow many Third World countries to build more powerful bombs and missiles, and to build them faster.

Myth #24: High-speed computers are widely available on the world market.

Reality: Only a few countries manufacture such computers, and these countries coordinate their exports with the United States. Moreover, this claim is refuted by publicly-available Commerce Department data. In December 1993, Commerce found that computers were available from foreign sellers only at a speed of 67 Mtops (millions of theoretical operations per second). Only a few years ago, a level of 100 was deemed a supercomputer, powerful enough to deny to proliferant countries. Under industry pressure, however, U.S. computers are now being decontrolled up to a level of 500 Mtops, a dangerous and unnecessary action that will undermine U.S. security.

Myth #25: The 1993 report to Congress by the administration’s Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee (TPCC) is a reliable guide to export policy.

Reality: The TPCC was created to promote exports. It had no mandate to balance trade against security. Its report relied on the advice of more than 2,000 representatives of export interests, and presents the exporters’ point of view. It advocates the most radical reduction in U.S. export controls ever made. Because export control has only a microscopic effect on jobs, the report promotes proliferation but not the U.S. economy.

Selling Self-Destruction: The Perils of Perry & Co.

By Gary Milhollin

The Washington Post
February 6, 1994, p. C3

Are They Soft on Nuclear Proliferation for the Sake of the Arms Industry?

“Sensible and safe.” That was the verdict of the New York Times and almost everyone else when President Clinton nominated William Perry last month to be Secretary of Defense. In fact, for all the impression of blandness he conveyed as he sailed through last week’s Senate confirmation hearings, some of Perry’s views are deeply troubling – especially those on the spread of nuclear arms.

Perry makes no secret of his hostility to export controls. When he was being confirmed a year ago as Les Aspin’s deputy, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it was a “hopeless task” to control technology that is “dual-use” – capable of making nuclear weapons or long-range missiles, bit also having civilian applications. Perry said “it only interferes with a company’s ability to succeed internationally.”

But dual-use technology is precisely what Saddam Hussein imported from the West during the 1980s to build his nuclear, chemical and missile programs. This puts Perry’s views in opposition to those of, for example, U.N. inspectors in Iraq. Without “strict maintenance of export controls by the industrialized nations,” the inspectors have warned in their reports, Saddam will revive his war machine.

The Iraqis, for example, claimed that they needed high-performance vacuum furnaces to cast artificial limbs for soldiers injured in the war with Iran. But U.N. inspectors found that the Iraqis used these furnaces to cast nuclear bomb components.

Almost everything needed to make a nuclear weapon is dual-use and current export laws reflect that fact. The Iraqis bought dual-use isostatic presses to shape nuclear bomb parts, dual-use mass spectrometers to sample bomb fuel, and dual-use electron beam welders to increase the range of Scud missiles. There is no hope of stopping development of an Iraqi bomb without controlling such exports.

Curiously, Perry and his line-up of ex-academics make the Pentagon weaker now on the proliferation issue than it was under Presidents Reagan or Bush. During the tenure of Defense Secretary Richard Cheney, the Pentagon listened carefully to industry–a natural thing for Republicans–but never agreed to junk export controls. It even dug in its heels and blocked deals that State and Commerce wanted to approve.

Now, under Perry, there appears to be no institutional counterweight to the pro-export pressure of industry and its allies in the Commerce and State departments. A Pentagon expert on clandestine trade complains that “under Perry, the Pentagon is de-controlling things faster than we can track the ships carrying them.”

“We are trying to figure out how to bomb the things the United States is now exporting,” says one long-time Pentagon arms control specialist. A key congressional aide asserts that Perry, a former electronics executive, “wants to protect the defense industry, so he is trying to cushion the blow from the current budget cuts. Unfortunately, that translates into lowering the gates for exports.”

Perry’s office last week was called repeatedly for a response, but declined to comment.

None of the several Pentagon staff members interviewed for this article agreed to be named, but they did agree, in the words of one, that “we now have four layers of bosses who don’t believe in export controls.” The reference is to the Perry team: Frank Wisner, an undersecretary; Ashton Carter, an assistant secretary, and Mitchell Wallerstein, Carter’s deputy.

For the past year, Wisner has been scaling back the export controls on missile technology–controls laboriously built up under Reagan and Bush. The new policy is to sell large rocket technology immediately to Australia, Italy and Spain, and eventually to Argentina, South Korea and Taiwan.

The rockets are meant to be used as satellite launchers, and their sale is supposed to entice more countries to join the Missile Technology Control Regime, a pact among the major industrial countries to curb missile exports. But Pentagon rocket experts ridicule the idea; they call it “missiles for peace.”

The Pentagon fought the idea under Bush, for good reason. Selling other countries rockets in exchange for a promise not to sell missiles is like giving people donuts to join the health club. Space rockets can perform the same missions as ICBMs.

Nor do countries without missile industries need to acquire launchers: It is much cheaper to hire another country’s launcher to put up satellites than to build one’s own. This point is beyond dispute–it was amply supported in a Pentagon-sponsored RAND study in mid-1993. Finally, there is the risk that U.S. rocket technology could wind up in Iran, Iraq or Libya because buyers like Spain and Italy cannot control their own exports.

In August, the Senate’s five leading experts on arms control protested Wisner’s plan in a letter to the White House. In the letter, Sens. Jeff Bingaman, John Glenn, Jesse Helms, John McCain and Claiborne Pell warned that space launchers “are essentially indistinguishable” from missiles and predicted that Wisner’s plan would “eviscerate the Missile Technology Control Regime.”

The senators have picked up support recently from the CIA. In a secret study declassified last November, the CIA found that a space launcher “could be converted relatively quickly by technologically advanced countries (in about one or two years) to a surface-to-surface missile.” This bit of caution applies precisely in the case of Spain, which, according to Defense News and Jane’s Defence Weekly, is developing a three-stage missile capable of reaching Morocco or Algeria.

Ashton Carter, a former Harvard professor, has been named assistant secretary for nuclear security and counter-proliferation. “Counter” rather than “non” proliferation is the new Pentagon credo. It emphasizes high-tech military solutions to cure proliferation after it happens, rather than diplomacy and export controls to prevent it in the first place.

In a September briefing, Carter tried to explain this idea to congressional aides who specialize in defense issues. After saying in effect that he was not interested in export controls, one of these aides recalls, he shocked his listeners by proposing that the United States give nuclear weapon safety devices (the electronic “locks” that make warheads safe to handle) to nuclear weapon aspirants like Pakistan.

Carter, asked last week to comment on the reported conversation, declined to do so. Carter, according to one of his staff, apparently did not know that such aid to Pakistan would violate the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars the United States from helping other countries build the bomb.

According to members of his staff, this mistake was typical of Carter, whom they term naive. In a recent discussion of India’s two reactors at Tarapur, Carter proposed that the United States start selling them nuclear fuel. The reactors are in jeopardy of shutting down this year because France, which is now fueling them, is cutting off supplies to countries like India that reject the Nonproliferation Treaty. Carter apparently did not know that the United States itself fueled the reactors until 1982, when further U.S. supply became illegal under the U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Act.

Counter-proliferation also means targeting new countries with U.S. missiles and bombs – not a promising idea. U.S. planes did not destroy a single operational Scud missile during the Gulf War, despite around-the-clock trying. Nor did U.S. Patriot missiles knock down many Scuds in the air. Nor did U.S. planes destroy Saddam’s nuclear weapon program–the Pentagon did not know where it was. And if war should erupt on the Korean peninsula, our pilots will have no greater chance of hitting Pyongyang’s stock of nuclear fuel. Instead of an effective strategy, counter-proliferation appears to be mostly a ploy for rescuing the Pentagon’s Cold War budget.

Carter was not a hit at the Capitol Hill briefing; the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations committees refused to find his counter-proliferation project. A member of Carter’s own staff used a colorful phrase to describe the policy: “the Clinton people believe the cure for proliferation is an enema delivered by a B-52.”

Carter’s deputy is Mitchell Wallerstein, formerly at MIT, whose new job is to figure out how to target U.S. nuclear warheads on third world bomb makers. But Wallerstein has no background in nuclear weapons or strategy. His only relevant experience was at the National Academy of Sciences, where he led industry-dominated studies decrying export controls.

In the opinion of a senior Pentagon analyst, the new policy contains a “logical disconnect.” Outgoing Secretary Les Aspin warned in October that if rogue nations get the bomb, they “may not be deterrable” by U.S. nuclear weapons. But, says the analyst, “if these nations are ‘undeterrable,’ we should be willing to pay a high price to stop them from getting the bomb. Yet we are not willing to pay the price of export controls, which is one of the best ways to stop them.”

Industry appears to have convinced the Clinton administration that dropping export controls will create jobs, but export controls have only a microscopic effect on employment. The total American economy was about $6 trillion in 1992. Of that, only 7.5 per cent ($448 billion) was exported as goods. And of the exports, less than $24 billion, four tenths of one percent of the economy, even went through export licensing. Finally, only $790 million worth of export applications were denied–that is about one hundredth of one percent of the U.S. economy and less than half the cost of a B-2 bomber.

The real impact of export controls is strategic. They can buy the time needed to turn a country off the nuclear weapon path. Argentina and Brazil agreed to give up nuclear weapons mainly because of the costs that export controls imposed upon them. And in Iraq, secret documents found by the U.N. showed that export controls on dual-use equipment seriously hampered the Iraqi nuclear weapon design team. Dual-use controls are now hampering India’s effort to build an ICBM.

At last week’s brief confirmation hearing, Perry should have been asked why he is abandoning export controls, as well as these questions: If regulating dual-use exports is as “hopeless” as he says, why is the U.N. monitoring such exports in Iraq? Why did the Bush administration decide to deny such exports to Iran? Why has Perry ignored the objections of the five Senators who want to stop the spread of missile technology?

We are now passing the third anniversary of the Gulf War. Have we already forgotten its lesson? U.S. pilots died to bomb equipment that Western companies sold Saddam. As one Pentagon official puts it: “When you talk about export controls, you’re not talking about politics, you’re talking about body bags.”

Spreading the Word Against Spreading the Bomb

By David J. Tenenbaum

The Milwaukee Journal
January 23, 1994

Three blocks northwest of the White House, a bronze statue of Union Adm. David Farragut stands vigil against Confederate artillery. Half a block farther north, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor stands vigil against a more modern and sinister threat: the spread of nuclear weapons.

From a humble start in 1986, Gary Milhollin – director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control – has become one of the world’s influential experts on the proliferation of the archetypal weapon of the 20th century.

To read the complete article, click here:  Spreading the Word Against Spreading the Bomb

Who Armed Iraq? Answers the West Didn’t Want to Hear

By Douglas Jehl

The New York Times
Week in Review
July 18, 1993

The terms of the punishment forced on Iraq since the Persian Gulf War may be most valuable for what they have taught. Rarely has a country defeated in battle been so laid bare to outside scrutiny. To the victors, the answer to how Iraq gained its power is now dispiritingly clear: it was us – the West, and German companies in particular.

To read the complete article, click here:  Who Armed Iraq? Answers the West Didn’t Want to Hear

Testimony: Weaknesses in the International Atomic Energy Agency

By Gary Milhollin

Testimony of Gary Milhollin

Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School and
Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East
Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Trade and the Environment,
and Subcommittee on International Security, International Organizations and Human Rights

June 29, 1993

Good morning. I am pleased to have this opportunity to address these three distinguished Subcommittees of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Subcommittees have asked me to address the question of the inspections in Iraq and the effectiveness of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In roughly one month, we will pass the third anniversary of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. If Iraq had notinvaded Kuwait, it is very likely that Saddam Hussein would be passing a different milestone about now: he would be assembling his first atomic bomb. Two former U.N. inspectors, David Kay and Jay Davis, have estimated that at the time of the invasion, Iraq was 18 to 30 months away from producing its first critical mass of nuclear weapon material. We have now passed the 30-month mark.

One of the most frightening things about this possibility is that the International Atomic Energy Agency did not, and never would have, detected it. The Agency’s inspections were not set up to do so. Before the invasion, the Agency consistently rated Iraq’s compliance with its inspections as “exemplary.” In fact, Iraq’s cooperation was exemplary at the locations the Agency was inspecting. The problem was that the Agency was not inspecting the locations where Iraq was making the bomb. The Agency only inspects locations declared by the country being inspected, and so far, no country has made a bomb at a declared site. All A-bomb programs have been carried on at secret, undeclared sites.

Iraq is a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which means that Iraq promised not to make nuclear weapons and also promised to declare all of its work with plutonium and enriched uranium to the Agency. (Plutonium fueled the Nagasaki bomb; enriched uranium the Hiroshima bomb). But Iraq secretly broke both of these promises at the very time that the Agency was rating its Treaty compliance as exemplary.

To make matters worse, Iraq broke its promise by diverting equipment that the Agency’s current chief inspector in Iraq had helped sell–over U.S. objections–to the Iraqis in the late 1970s. Thus, the very equipment that the chief inspector helped supply was used to break the promise he is now supposed to be enforcing. Worse still, the Agency was later told about the violation by an Iraqi official who was himself a former Agency inspector. The former inspector had used his experience at the Agency to help outwit the current inspectors.

It is now clear what Iraq’s strategy was. Iraq joined the Nonproliferation Treaty, enjoyed the diplomatic and trade benefits that come from membership, but still tried to make the bomb by outwitting the inspectors. If Saddam had not been foolish enough to invade Kuwait, the strategy would have worked. Iran is now following this same strategy, and so are Libya and North Korea. These countries cannot be expected to invade their neighbors on the eve of nuclear capability.

It is unfair, however, to criticize the Agency for not doing a job that it was not set up to do. The Agency’s primary duty is to promote the spread of nuclear energy, especially to developing countries. It does a good job of that by running training programs, by sending out exports of its own, and–most of all–by agreeing to inspect exports made by the more advanced nuclear countries to the less advanced ones.

When a nuclear supplier wants to sell a reactor to a country like Pakistan or India, the Agency provides a “guarantee” that the reactor’s plutonium won’t be used to make atomic bombs. Without such a guarantee to make the export palatable, such transfers would be politically impossible. The result has been to encourage the proliferation of nuclear technology around the world. India and Pakistan both got reactors under Agency guarantees, and both have since made atomic bombs.

The Agency’s conflict of interest is obvious. If the Agency catches somebody making bombs, it means that the nuclear exports were too dangerous to have been sold in the first place and should not have been promoted. Thus, the institutional incentive is always to find that nothing is wrong.

In the United States, the old Atomic Energy Commission had the job of both promoting and regulating nuclear energy until 1974, when Congress wisely split the functions. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission now regulates; the Department of Energy promotes. The U.S. regulatory process gained great credibility from this separation.

The situation in Iran illustrates the Agency’s dilemma. The Chinese are now planning to sell Iran at least one 300MW power reactor. The reactor will make enough plutonium for at least ten atomic bombs per year. The world will be relying only on a piece of paper, signed by Iran, promising that the plutonium will never be diverted.

The United States opposes the deal because it will be a giant nuclear technology transfer, moving Iran a long way down the road toward a bomb. James Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence, told Congress in February that Iran intends to make nuclear weapons. The IAEA, however, stands ready to facilitate this export by promising to inspect it–providing the necessary political cover. I hope the Subcommittees will ask the IAEA witnesses here this morning why the IAEA is willing to cooperate with this deal.

The Subcommittees have asked specifically about Iraq–about the progress in destroying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction since the Gulf War. According to the U.N. Special Commission in New York, which is in charge of the chemical and missile inspections, there has been good progress in destroying chemical agents, munitions and precursors. More than one thousand tons of chemical weapon precursors have been destroyed so far, but a large amount remains. The Commission expects to have destroyed all of the identified nerve gas, mustard gas and precursors by the end of this year.

With respect to missiles, the U.N. inspectors report that they have narrowed the uncertainty as to how many Soviet-supplied Scud missiles remain in Iraq. The uncertainty is in the number launched from 1980 to 1982. The Iraqis have not provided the documents necessary to verify their claims.

Both the missile and chemical inspectors are now being defied, however. The U.N. Security Council has just condemned Iraq for refusing to move chemical equipment to a site for destruction, and for refusing to allow surveillance cameras to be installed at rocket test sites. The Special Commission believes that these refusals threaten the core of its inspection effort, so the question is what action to take if Iraq does not back down. The matter is now under consideration.

With respect to the nuclear program, there is less progress and more uncertainty. I have described the nuclear inspections in an article that I wrote for the New Yorker in February. Also, in April the New York Times published a list of the main nuclear-related items that still appear to be missing in Iraq. The list is an estimate, compiled by the Wisconsin Project from Agency reports and other sources. It gives a general picture of what the Agency is still looking for. I would like to submit both articles for inclusion in the record.

The Subcommittees have asked me to comment on the adequacy of the Agency’s inspection effort in Iraq. The Agency is in charge of the nuclear inspections. I think that the inspectors themselves deserve our deepest gratitude and admiration. They have carried out a difficult, dangerous job that is both physically and mentally exhausting. The inspectors are entitled to the greatest possible support from the Agency’s management, but they have not always received it.

One of the main problems has been the chief inspector’s statements to the press. As early as February 1992, he said that “practically the largest part of Iraq’s nuclear program has now been identified–probably what is missing is just details.” And in September, he told Reuters that Iraq’s nuclear program “is at zero now,” and “they [the Iraqis] have stated many times to us that they have decided at the higher political level to stop these activities.” He even made the improbable statement that “this we have verified.”

The U.N. Special Commission flatly rejects these statements. The Commission believes that Iraq has not given up on any of its mass-destruction weapon programs, including the nuclear one. Because of his press statements, the chief inspector has undermined the other inspectors’ credibility. How can they plausibly search for things that their leader says don’t exist?

The Special Commission still wants to find the following:

  • parts of the giant machines the Iraqis used to purify uranium to nuclear weapon grade, to find out how much of this uranium the Iraqis made
  • a suspected experimental array of centrifuges, also used to purify uranium to weapon grade
  • a suspected underground reactor that could secretly make plutonium for bombs
  • the identities of Iraqi nuclear personnel, to find out what these persons are doing
  • records of explosive tests, to find out whether the Iraqi bomb design succeeded
  • other records of the nuclear weapon program, to find out whether all of its components have been discovered
  • Iraq’s foreign sources of technical advice, to cut them off
  • Iraq’s network of foreign equipment suppliers, to make sure that it does not revive as soon as the embargo is lifted.

Finally, the Subcommittees ask how the Agency can be strengthened. I believe that the United Nations should follow the lead of the Congress and separate the Agency’s promotion function from its inspection function. This would increase its credibility by removing its conflict of interest. The inspections in Iraq, for example, would be carried out better by the Special Commission, which has no promotion function and acts directly under the United Nations Security Council.

In other countries, the Agency could continue to inspect declared locations, but inspections of undeclared locations should be done by a new entity whose sole job would be verification; no promotion function would interfere. This new entity could concentrate its resources on inspecting countries where the threat of proliferation is greatest, rather than dissipate its inspection resources as the Agency presently does. The Agency currently spends most of its scarce inspection funds looking at Germany, Japan and Canada, hardly the most acute proliferation risks today. This leaves fewer resources for countries like Iran.

This new entity should report to the U.N. Security Council, rather than to the Agency’s Board of Governors. The Board typically includes countries like Algeria, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Syria. This amounts to letting a committee of arsonists decide where to send the fire truck.

This new entity should also be able to receive, use and protect intelligence information. The Agency has never had that ability, which is why it has never been able to do anything more than inspect declared locations. Even in the case of Iraq, where the Agency has been provided intelligence information, the Agency’s secrecy rules have kept the providers from finding out what their intelligence produced. U.S. intelligence officials say that the Agency has been a one-way street: information goes in, but nothing comes out.

I would like to end with an important reminder, which is that the Agency’s inspections play only a minor role in the effort to stop the spread of the bomb. In countries like Israel, India, Pakistan and South Africa–countries that have successfully proliferated–the Agency’s inspections have been virtually irrelevant. These countries made the bomb at places where the Agency never had any right to look. To stop the bomb from spreading further, more powerful tools are needed. They include tougher diplomacy, trade sanctions, aid cut-offs, and denials of technology through export controls. It is important to make the Agency’s inspections as strong as possible, and it is certainly possible to improve them, but it would be a mistake to think that by tinkering with them we are going to seriously affect proliferation.