The Ultimate Export Control
JOHNSON, REUBEN F.
The Ultimate Export Control Why F-14s are being put into a shredder. by Reuben F. Johnson John Walker Jr. of the infamous Walker family spy ring was once asked how he had been able to pass some of...
...You cannot shred or pulverize everything in the United States that is of potential value to a rogue nation—think of nuclear technology, biomedical research, or advanced computer programming...
...In every one of these sales, there are reams of paperwork—including end-user certificates, copies of the company's U.S...
...While the Court noted that the compelling state interest at issue in Grutter was student body diversity specifically in the context of higher education, Roberts's opinion does not foreclose the possibility that a Univer20 / The Weekly Standard July 23, 2007...
...Exactly the opposite has turned out to be the case...
...But in the case of the F-14, the Pentagon has decided not even to try and address the deficiencies in its oversight procedures...
...Two weeks ago, the parents went to court again, filing what could be the first of many challenges to similar court rulings in light of the Supreme Court's recent rejection of race-based student assignment plans in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No...
...of the infamous Walker family spy ring was once asked how he had been able to pass some of the nation's most heavily guarded communications codes to the KGB for so long without being detected—almost 18 years, until he was caught in 1985...
...Moreover, grinding is not a viable long-term solution to slipshod export controls...
...Fast-forward to 2007 and you wonder if that situation has changed much in the last 22 years...
...It is the DLA's job to try to sell used military hardware in pieces or as scrap in order to recoup some of the taxpayer's money...
...Enraged, Comfort and a group of other parents brought a constitutional equal protection claim against the Lynn School Committee, which prohibits "segregative" transfers of students between schools (i.e., transfers that would bring the percentage of "nonwhite" students in each school outside the targeted range of 43 percent to 73 percent...
...Instead, a $3.7 million contract has been given to a St...
...and operating their arsenal of American-made warplanes...
...As long as the F-14 remained in U.S...
...courts over the years, but the Iranians have had far more successes than failures in getting their hands on what they need...
...Chief Justice John Roberts was joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito in holding that the goal of racial balancing in and of itself, even under the warm, fuzzy name of "diversity," can never constitute such a compelling state interest...
...government controls military technology flowing into the United States...
...government oversight suddenly becomes ruthlessly efficient...
...In 2005, a federal appeals court rejected their claim and upheld the school district's racial plan...
...When the monarchy fell in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the ensuing takeover of the U.S...
...Not surprisingly, incidents of spares "disappearing" from storehouses at Subic Base in the Philippines and other Navy installations worldwide became regular occurrences...
...government-issued license that permits it to trade in armaments—all of which must be properly authenticated, notarized, and signed by government officials on both sides...
...Its AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile, also made by Hughes, could shoot down aerial targets at a then-unthinkable range of 80 miles...
...There are some components in the F-14 that would be common with other airframes of the same era and could be sold for that purpose...
...Because the Seattle and Louisville school districts considered by the Court also used rigid percentage systems, it's a safe bet that Parents Involved will indeed bring an end to overtly race-based policies like those in Lynn...
...This all stands in stark contrast to the bureaucratic zeal with which the U.S...
...Some of these fronts have ended up in the U.S...
...On the other hand, some parts are unique to the F-14 and would need to be kept under lock and key and sold only for scrap...
...Even a Kmart security guard could tell you that...
...What's more, the Customs Service evidence tags from the first seizure were still attached to these items—they were literally red-flagged—which makes the act of selling them to a second Iranian agent inexcusable...
...In its day the F-14 was the king of the hill in fighter aircraft technology...
...Unfortunately in the case of the F-14, no one seems to have been paying attention to what parts are being sold, and to whom...
...You do not have to be a math wizard to figure out that if it takes a 12-month paper chase to deliver equipment needed to train the new Afghan army, then this consequently means extending the U.S...
...FMA company representative based in Eastern Europe...
...This scorched-earth, Visigoth process is not only ridiculously expensive, but it raises the question of what the government employees in charge of overseeing the DLA's considerable inventory of weaponry are doing to earn their taxpayer-funded salaries if they cannot keep the "bad guys" from making off with it...
...by Erin Sheley of extending the U.S...
...Iran's aerospace industry and intelligence services then embarked on what has become a nearly three-decade shell game of trying to find ways to covertly or illegally procure parts for the F-14...
...In March 1999, Samantha Comfort of Lynn, Massachusetts, tried to enroll her daughter Elizabeth at the only Lynn public school close enough to her job that she could pick the kindergartner up on time each day...
...Navy inventory to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA...
...The spares were sent back to DLA, which, instead of putting them under guard, promptly sold them to another middleman working on behalf of the Iranians...
...Any use of racial classification by a governmental body is subject to "strict scrutiny" by courts under the Fourteenth Amendment—it must be "narrowly tailored" to serve a "compelling state interest...
...Kmart has better security than the Navy," was his response...
...Numerous middlemen operating from shadowy front companies ordered parts for the Iranian Tomcats...
...forces, while others are used to equip the newly established and coalition-trained security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan...
...Try importing foreign military spare parts and other materiel from foreign nations into the United States, and U.S...
...government that is exerting the pressure in the first place...
...One of the ways to make sure that no one will ever use an F-14 again is to cut them into little 2-by-2-foot bits," said the company's vice president...
...For decades the Navy's most formidable fighter aircraft was the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, immortalized in the 1986 Tony Scott-Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer film Top Gun...
...Some items are used for training U.S...
...The standards could not be further apart—one for those who want to take military hardware out of the United States (sometimes under false pretenses) and another for those who are importing foreign military hardware into the United States legally...
...troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan—a presence Congress is now clamoring to truncate...
...This was intended to keep the ayatollahs from maintaining Reuben F. Johnson is a defense and aerospace technology writer...
...The F-14's TF-30 engine, for that matter, is also used in the F-111, still being flown, though not for much longer by the Royal Australian Air Force...
...During Iran's air show last year—27 years after the embargo was first imposed—several Iranian aerospace enterprises openly displayed overhauled components for the F-14 that they manage to keep acquiring parts for up to this day...
...Its Hughes AN/ AWG-9 radar could track up to 24 targets simultaneously...
...I have seen the approval process here for importing [foreign military] items to the United States lengthen from three to six to twelve to sometimes more than eighteen months," says one U.S...
...Embassy severed all relations with Washington, the United States imposed an embargo on the sale of any spare parts for the F-14s...
...The school refused to take Eliz-abeth—not because it didn't have space for another child, but because it didn't have space for another white child...
...Yet the case cannot be read as mandating the absolute race neutrality sought by Fourteenth Amendment literalists (much less has it, as the NAACP homepage wails mixed-metaphorically, "condemned minority Erin Sheley is a writer and attorney in Washington, D.C...
...Since 9/11, Washington has also put considerable pressure on foreign governments to tighten their regulation of export arms sales—pressure that has had palpable impact on these FMA contractors—even though they are buying for the same U.S...
...Using portable heavy machinery, TRI-Rinse's personnel literally grind the Tomcats into unrecognizable chunks of metal...
...The recent history of F-14 spares sold from DLA's boneyards and excess stockpiles suggests that some real-world incarnation of the lovably incompetent Sergeant "I see nothing" Schultz from TV's Hogan's Heroes has been in charge of verifying the destination of these spare parts...
...Grutter, written by now-retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, turned on the fact that the law school—rather than employing specific racial quotas—evaluated each applicant with an eye to "producing classes both diverse and academically outstanding," taking into account the school's commitment to racial diversity as one of a number of factors affecting each admissions decision...
...The extent to which school districts may racially classify their students going forward depends, first, on the manipulation of loopholes left open by the Court's opinion and, second, on the deciding vote of Justice Kennedy, who stated separately that he believes it "cannot be a universal constitutional principle" that "our Constitution is color-blind...
...When we complain about these never-ending delays, the excuse we always receive from the local officials we deal with is, 'Well, this is the way the American government has told us we now have to work with you.'" This may even have a ripple effect Down but Not Out The Supreme Court doesn't quite kill off racial preferences...
...Last year, the F-14s were retired, and the remaining aircraft and spare parts stockpiles were moved from U.S...
...Navy service, American defense plants would keep churning out spare parts for them—and therefore there would always be a pool of components available for the Iranians to try to get their hands on...
...troop commitment there," says the company rep...
...This technology was considered to be of such strategic importance that only one foreign purchaser was ever allowed to procure the F-14: the Imperial Iranian Air Force that existed during the reign of the shah, which bought 79 of them...
...Louis-based firm, TRI-Rinse, to destroy the F-14s and other military equipment that could be of use to Iran and other hostile nations...
...Yet, critically, Roberts's opinion defined "racial balancing" against the backdrop of the Court's 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bol-linger, which upheld the University of Michigan Law School's use of race as a factor in admissions...
...companies that operate as Foreign Materiel Acquisition (FMA) agents currently purchase millions of dollars' worth of foreign military hardware and spare parts each year...
...The fact that these spare parts were now identified as being on Iran's wish list should have warranted some extra scrutiny when a second buyer came looking for them...
...Smashing our used weaponry and other know-how into bits is no answer to the problem...
...Walker's answer was both revealing and troubling...
...However, once the aircraft was retired and the production lines shut down, conventional wisdom held that this would make it much harder for Iranian agents to get the spares they need...
...1 et al...
...children to a back seat in the race for life's chances...
...In one publicized incident, the paperwork from an Iranian agent for illegally purchased F-14 parts passed under the DLA's nose, but the parts were then seized by Customs agents before they could be shipped to Iran...
Vol. 12 • July 2007 • No. 42
