Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Ms. Manners I am the product of a very large, venerable family of attorneys, including my grandfather, father, uncles, brother, and cousins. One of my uncles was a judge advocate at...
...As the article points out, the Bush administration decontrolled our high-technology mostly due to pressure from "friendlier" Soviet leadership...
...Having studied the 317 weapons turned in (continued on page 79) The American Spectator August 1994 11 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 11) at the 34th Precinct during the famous "Toys for Guns" buyback program back in November 1993, I can report that the categories listed in all the print media reports were inaccurate and misleading...
...Sculley lobbied to 10 The American Spectator August 1994 repeal export regulations in order to improve his business...
...Of course Mr...
...And access to a high-power computer—even with software—does not a high-tech weapon make...
...As for Peter Huber's "seminal work" on liability costs, it has been excoriated by scholars as flawed in analysis and so factually distorted as to border on intellectual fraud...
...The authors repeatedly justify the export controls on computers by calling them "deadly technologies...
...James J. McDonnell Killeen, Texas The American Spectator August 1994 79...
...This interview—at the GAO's request—took place in the office of the commercial attaché at the American consulate in Frankfurt, Germany...
...the lone Uzi carbine was an older version, but was still a closed bolt semiautomatic...
...Alas, since the election of President Clinton, your journal has become clinically obsessed with him and his wife...
...The next president, even if he is more to your liking, will be crippled and stained as a result of your unbridled attacks...
...Had export controls failed, the preponderance of numbers on the Soviet side would surely have given it a decisive advantage in the balance of military power...
...As such, he wielded considerable influence and was regarded by many as the de facto borough president...
...For example, Judge Roger Miner of the 2d U.S Circuit Court of Appeals has stated that Huber's "$300 billion figure has been demonstrated to be a product of casual speculation and not derived in any sense from investigative or statistical analysis...
...It is certainly not necessary to engage in innuendo, character assassination, and questionable allegations, which only demean your journal and the positions you espouse...
...If John Sculley is influential in Washington, it is because government has (and often uses) the power to either crush a business or grant it riches...
...As a child, if someone threw a rock at me at recess, my mother made me write a thank-you note...
...technology, which was the stated goal...
...The author of the book did not bother to check the facts with me...
...The efficacy of the export controls is quite easily proved...
...Yost's observations paralleled those of the officers present that day...
...Working for a German company, Mr...
...In practice, IBM could get an export license for a mainframe computer, while hobby equipment such as the Commodore Amega was prohibited...
...While I'm certainly no friend of the Clinton administration, I must say that the assertion in "Decontrol Freaks" that export controls were an effective tool against the East Bloc countries during the Cold War is patently false...
...Keith Weiner, President Diamond Ware Software Developers New City, New York During the last years of the Communist bloc I was engaged in exporting computer equipment to East European countries, mostly Czechoslovakia, and I am intimately familiar with what was happening with U.S...
...Smuggling of newer, more desirable high technology equipment was rampant, and we lost most of our sales to these law breakers...
...The mail arrived at noon—there was Hillary on the cover of June's American Spectator...
...This in turn contributed mightily to the failure of will that brought an end to the Soviet Empire...
...I was the only toddler who attended the St...
...Lynn has taken the information from the book itself...
...I was not allowed to sell Girl Scout cookies because my parents thought that it was commercially crass...
...My aunt Helen, an elegant spinster who ran with the lower echelons of European royalty, spent most of her middle years rapping my knuckles with a ruler because I could not master Beethoven to her satisfaction...
...Your articles are more informative and less biased than those elsewhere...
...Isaac Green Washington, D.C...
...I know that this sounds incredible, but I can easily document that this was exactly the case...
...Clinton, in his campaign, recognized Bush's mistake, but has continued the decontrol policy to fill the pockets of Apple's John Sculley...
...The Soviets were never able to progress much beyond medium-scale integration of their semiconductors, which is roughly a mid-1970s technology...
...The Japanese (Hitachi) supplied the four-axis computer controlled milling equipment and Norway (Konsberg) supplied the computers...
...Garbage In, Guns Out I would like to respond to Mark Yost's article ("Gun Racket," TAS, June 1994...
...Massachusetts Selling the Rope First the bouquets...
...They were trying to find out how the Eastern Europeans were so easily circumventing the embargo...
...Linda Bloodworth-Thomason Mozark Productions Include Me Out I have subscribed to The American Spectator for a number of years, but I can no longer do so...
...The column takes aim at other civil justice issues, but likewise misses the mark...
...Finally, I find it offensive and intolerable that in your pathological attacks on our president, you diminish the office of the president with unhealthy consequences...
...The most innovative was IBM...
...Thank you...
...With typical military development schedules, the weapons in use then had (at best) mid-eighties technology in them...
...We watched "The Clintons at Normandy Show" on TV this morning...
...Priceless...
...In the absence of new regulations and new taxes, we will continue to lead as we have...
...I remarked to my husband that all Hillary needed was a pointed hat for that outfit she was wearing...
...In short, all my life I have worked very hard to create an impression of style, grace, and dignity...
...Vincent should have known this...
...The Russian navy obtained the critical know-how and equipment to manufacture nearly silent submarine propellers during this period...
...Forrest A. Nabors Portland, Oregon Michael Ledeen and Stephen Bryen reply: Mr...
...I was frequently chagrined to find embargoed U.S...
...By the late 1980s, the Soviet semiconductor gap with the United States had reached nearly ten years, with little hope of recovery...
...However, after reading "DecontrolFreaks" by Michael Ledeen and Stephen Bryen (TAS, June 1994), I am dusting off my brickbat...
...The DOC knew that the export controls were totally ineffective and admitted it to me on numerous occasions in private...
...They don't have the expert scientists, engineers, industrial plant, or much else...
...You deserve praise for your coverage of what really happened in Whitewatergate...
...The people were taking advantage of the program by turning in garbage and walking out with $100 gift certificates...
...Most of the officers present stated in hushed tones that the weapons turned in were not the ones out on the street doing the carnage and that the only time a "gun with a body on it" would be turned in is when the shooter disposes of the weapon...
...The author states that allowing motorists to waive the right to recover noneconomic damages and look to first-party insurance would "make the roads safer,.by eliminating perverse incentives...
...In the past, I looked forward to and enjoyed your strongly partisan but rational and intellectually based articles and positions...
...Ron Vincent Carthage, Mississippi The problem with "Decontrol Freaks" was comparing the high-tech giveaway policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations without emphasizing this critical distinction: Bush was imprudent...
...And now you come along and in one thoughtless magazine article ("The Travelgate Cover-Up," by David Brock, TAS, June 1994), call me "garish" and "tacky"—and all I can say is thank you...
...This number, as calculated by the DOC formula, so favored the IBM computer architecture as to give IBM a better than 10 to 1 advantage...
...Louis Municipal Opera wearing white gloves...
...I had to check the cover to see if TAS hadn't been renamed "Xenophobia" or "Techno-illiteracy...
...Weiner's sort of policy, has now made it possible for Third World killers to get even bigger and better weapons...
...Of the four weapons designated by police officials as machine pistols, both TEC-9s and the M11 were in fact semiautomatic pistols...
...The negligent driver, even if grossly negligent or reckless, also looks to his or her own insurer...
...My business was to assist publications such as yours with weapons technical information...
...But computing power doubles every two years...
...The actual president, Stanley Simon, not untouched by corruption himself, was also the recipient of a prison sentence...
...Your articles on them have sunk to the level of gutter journalism...
...The per capita number of lawyers in Japan, England, Wales, and the United States actually is very similar, according to Ray August, a business law professor who has researched the issue...
...Consider the following: • In Eastern Europe, during the Cold War, there was never a debate over the question of "guns or butter...
...Thank you...
...The assertion that America has 70 percent of the world's lawyers is simply a discredited relic of the 1992 presidential campaign...
...Give the artist a bonus...
...This PDR figure could not be found in computer literature anywhere, but it existed in the export control regulations...
...Third World nations are incapable of building them anyway...
...Commerce was not the dominant force—Defense fixed the technical limits—and all decisions on things like computers were made internationally in COCOM...
...A computer can only do what it's programmed to do...
...Nearly all major manufacturers found ways around the embargo...
...Your actions hurt our country and poison the political processes which have sustained us so well for so long...
...Weiner advocates: sell them whatever they want, and be happy...
...One of my uncles was a judge advocate at Nuremberg who wrote a book on courtroom manners...
...In complying with the law, we frequently found that we could not compete in the market...
...It is quite true that computers will only do what their programmers tell them to do, and that is why we should keep high-powered computers out of the hands of programmers who are likely to tell them to do bad things...
...That's because the safe driver who has the misfortune of crossing paths with a negligent driver can only seek compensation from his or her own insurer...
...Vincent is quite wrong about how the American government worked when serious export controls still existed...
...This view is false for two reasons...
...IBM controlled the export regulations by dominating the U.S...
...Barry J. Nace, President Trial Lawyers of America Washington, D.C...
...Of course, Mr...
...Clinton is a traitor...
...William Phillips Editor, Partisan Review Boston...
...The authors make many baseless assertions but I can distill the article down to its'essential premises: computers are tantamount to munitions, technology changes slowly, decontrol will lead to loss of American market share, and Silicon Valley is in bed with Washington...
...guns won every time...
...Helen S. Robins Santa Rosa, California The picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover was, well, nothing short of extraordinary, a true work of insidious genius...
...It was reported that none of the surrendered firearms were ballistics-tested to see if they were ever used in a crime before they were destroyed (dumped at sea), which made the "Toys For Guns" a perfect place to dispose of a weapon and not get caught...
...This figure was derived by comparing the number of lawyers engaged exclusively in conducting trials in Japan, England, and Wales with general practice attorneys in the United States...
...This was especially frustrating for me as the German company I was working for at the time carefully complied with both the spirit and letter of the export control laws...
...This requires one to accept either that computers aren't changing rapidly or that there is a significant market for obsolete equipment...
...Unless we export our weapons-design software, our enemies will not be able to design weapons...
...The authors are arrogant indeed to claim superior understanding of an industry to one of its captains...
...The controls were very effective at stifling legal U.S...
...In reality, motorists have a strong incentive to obey the rules of the road and proceed with care when they are legally accountable to others for their behavior behind the wheel...
...I'll take these points in this order...
...Therefore unlike most other people their opinions must be carefully considered...
...I am saddened and disappointed at the course your journal has taken, do not count me a subscriber any more...
...computer exports there...
...Take Cover...
...Sculley and others have billions invested in the industry...
...exports to both Eastern and Western Europe, but didn't deny the Communists access to U.S...
...President Clinton, who is a big fan of Mr...
...Having identified thousands of firearms, I am qualified to state that no Title 2, Class 3 firearms ("submachine guns") were included in the surrendered group...
...George W. Steffen Valparaiso, Indiana No Party to the Party The statement in Kenneth S. Lynn's review of A Rebel in Defense of Tradition by Michael Wreszin, that Partisan Review when it first began ". . . had been financed by the [Communist] Party" (page 57, TAS, June 1994), is false and probably libelous...
...They stalled because the needed manufacturing equipment was controlled...
...Surely there exist enough differences grounded on facts and intellectually based points of view with which to take issue with the present administration...
...During most of the Cold War, the DOC measured computer performance by "processing data rate" (PDR...
...Weiner lives in a world different from the one we live in, because we see numerous Third World nations building weapons of mass destruction (and accompanying delivery systems), thanks to First World scientists and engineers who are handsomely paid for their time and knowledge, and thanks to First World countries that adopt the sort of policy Mr...
...Congress also knew that the export controls didn't work, as I was once interviewed by a committee from the General Accounting Office...
...How on earth does such an arrangement promote safe driving...
...Yet, in those states that have adopted first-party insurance, no such incentive exists...
...By comparison, the Rand Institute for Civil Justice estimated total liability costs at $29 billion to $36 billion in 1985...
...Drew Parmerton, Director Special Weapons and Tactics Information Group New York, New York Trial Lawyer for the Trial Lawyers A recent column in your magazine ("A Winning Drive," by Grover G. Norquist, TAS, March 1994) turns common sense on its head...
...If your sales are bigger than usual this month, it is probably because I have bought up so many copies to send to all my friends...
...Apparently Mr...
...and Western manufactured computer equipment in most if not all of the industrial computer sites that I visited in Czechoslovakia...
...When embargoed computer equipment could be found in the civilian sector, one could be sure that the military had all that they wanted...
...One must also pretend that Japan won't have access to export-controlled technology anyway...
...Vincent says that IBM got a 10-to-1 advantage over its competitors, but in fact in the 1980s IBM sold very little in the Soviet bloc because most of its products exceeded the COCOM limits...
...Nothing to my mind stands out more about President Clinton than his willingness to dole out benefactions at the expense of the national interest, solely to aggrandize his own political position...
...The computer industry doesn't want or need a patronizing Uncle for protection...
...Ledeen and Bryen seem surprised that we have decontrolled microprocessors "more advanced than those deployed by American forces in the Gulf War...
...Stanley Friedman wasn't Bronx borough president but Democratic borough chairman...
...The collection did include several semiautomatic pistols, including a few of the designated weapons that are presently on New York Governor Mario Cuomo's list of firearms to be banned from private possession in New York State...
...Instead, thanks in large part to the success of export controls, it fell hopelessly behind in several crucial areas of military power...
...Department of Commerce policy advisory committees...
...The Two Stanleys An otherwise fine example of investigative reporting by James Ring Adams, "Ferraro and Whitewater" (TAS, June 1994), was marred by his misidentification of a key player in the Democratic Party machine in the Bronx in the mid-1980s...
...The authors claim that decontrolling technology exports will hand the market to Japan, Inc...
...Weiner says there's nothing to worry about from Third World nations because they "don't have the scientists, engineers, industrial plant or much else...
...Thanks again for making my week...
...And one must have faith that if we don't sell certain technologies, Japan won't either...
...That war occurred during the early nineties...
Vol. 27 • August 1994 • No. 8
