WORLD / Middle East
Iran gets army gear in Pentagon sale
(AP)
Updated: 2007-01-17 15:16
Washington - Fighter jet parts and other sensitive US military gear
seized from front companies for Iran have been traced in criminal cases
to a surprising source: the Pentagon.
This photo released by the US Navy shows a pilot and his F-14B Tomcat
silhouetted during a pre-flight inspection on the deck of the USS George
Washington during maneuvers in the Persian Gulf Feb. 2, 1998. The
Pentagon retired the F-14 in Sept. 2006. Federal investigators found that
the US military has sold forbidden equipment at least a half-dozen times
to middlemen for countries, including Iran and China, that exploited
security flaws in the Defense Department's surplus auctions. The sales
included F-14 fighter jet parts and missile components. [AP]
In one case, federal investigators said, contraband purchased in Defense
Department surplus auctions was delivered to Iran, a country President
Bush has branded part of an "axis of evil."
In that instance, a Pakistani arms broker convicted of exporting US
missile parts to Iran resumed business after his release from prison. He
purchased Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran from a US company that
had bought them in a Pentagon surplus sale. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents say those parts did make it to Iran.
Sensitive military surplus items are supposed to be demilitarized or
"de-milled" -- rendered useless for military purposes -- or, if
auctioned, sold only to buyers who promise to obey US arms embargoes,
export controls and other laws.
Yet the surplus sales can operate like a supermarket for arms dealers.
"Right Item, Right Time, Right Place, Right Price, Every Time. Best Value
Solutions for America's Warfighters," the Defense Reutilization and
Marketing Service says on its Web site, calling itself "the place to
obtain original US Government surplus property."
Federal investigators are increasingly anxious that Iran is within easy
reach of a top priority on its shopping list: parts for the precious
fleet of F-14 "Tomcat" fighter jets the United States let Iran buy in the
1970s when it was an ally.
In one case, convicted middlemen for Iran bought Tomcat parts from the
Defense Department's surplus division. Customs agents confiscated them
and returned them to the Pentagon, which sold them again -- customs
evidence tags still attached -- to another buyer, a suspected broker for
Iran.
"That would be evidence of a significant breakdown, in my view, in
controls and processes," said Greg Kutz, the Government Accountability
Office's head of special investigations. "It shouldn't happen the first
time, let alone the second time."
A Defense Department official, Fred Baillie, said his agency followed
procedures.
"The fact that those individuals chose to violate the law and the fact
that the customs people caught them really indicates that the process is
working," said Baillie, the Defense Logistics Agency's executive director
of distribution. "Customs is supposed to check all exports to make sure
that all the appropriate certifications and licenses had been granted."
The Pentagon recently retired its Tomcats and is shipping tens of
thousands of spare parts to its surplus office -- the Defense
Reutilization and Marketing Service -- where they could be sold in public
auctions. Iran is the only other country flying F-14s.
"It stands to reason Iran will be even more aggressive in seeking F-14
parts," said Stephen Bogni, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's
arms export investigations. Iran can produce only about 15 percent of the
parts itself, he said.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found it alarmingly easy to
acquire sensitive surplus. Last year, its agents bought $1.1 million
worth -- including rocket launchers, body armor and surveillance antennas
-- by driving onto a base and posing as defense contractors.
"They helped us load our van," Kutz said. Investigators used a fake
identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor
and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14
fighters.
The undercover buyers received phone calls from the Defense Department
asking why they had no Social Security number or credit history, but they
deflected the questions by presenting a phony utility bill and claiming
to be an identity theft victim.
It's no secret to defense experts that valuable technology can be found
amid surplus scrap.
On a visit to a Defense Department surplus site about five years ago,
defense consultant Randall Sweeney literally stumbled upon some that
shouldn't have been up for sale.
"I was walking through a pile of supposedly de-milled electrical items
and found a heat-seeking missile warhead intact," Sweeney said, declining
to identify the surplus location for security reasons. "I carried it over
and showed them. I said, 'This shouldn't be in here.'"
Sweeney, president of Defense and Aerospace International in West Palm
Beach, Fla., sees human error as a big problem. Surplus items are
numbered, and an error of a single digit can make sensitive technology
available, he said. Knowledgeable buyers could easily spot a valuable
item, he added: "I'm not the only sophisticated eye in the world."
Baillie said the Pentagon is working to tighten security. Steps include
setting up property centers to better identify surplus parts and
employing people skilled at spotting sensitive items. If there is
uncertainty about an item, he said, it is destroyed.
Of the 76,000 parts for the F-14, 60 percent are "general hardware" such
as nuts and bolts and can be sold to the public without restriction,
Baillie said. About 10,000 are unique to Tomcats and will be destroyed.
An additional 23,000 parts are valuable for military and commercial use
and are being studied to see whether they can be sold, Baillie said.
Asked why the Pentagon would sell any F-14 parts, given their value to
Iran, Baillie said: "Our first priority truly is national security, and
we take that very seriously. However, we have to balance that with our
other requirement to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money."
Kutz, the government investigator, said surplus F-14 parts shouldn't be
sold. He believes Iran already has Tomcat parts from Pentagon surplus
sales: "The key now is, going forward, to shut that down and not let it
happen again."
The Pentagon's public surplus sales took in $57 million in fiscal 2005.
The agency also moves extra supplies around within the government and
gives surplus military gear such as weapons, armored personnel carriers
and aircraft to state and local law enforcement.
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