Weapons Bazaar
This Cobra attack helicopter was built from surplus parts. The Pentagon sells millions of them a year. Many fall into the wrong hands.
To the uninitiated, "military surplus" generally conjures up images of old web belts, clanky canteens and threadbare fatigues sold in funky stores at the edge of fading Army bases. But to a sophisticated few, it means something very different: aircraft, weapons and weapons parts worth billions of dollars. Most taxpayers don't know it, but every year the Pentagon declares all kinds of equipment--attack helicopters, rocket launchers, even Stealth fighter parts--"surplus," or unneeded. Then, through a little-known network of sales offices at military bases, the stuff is offered for purchase to the highest bidder.
A three-month investigation by U.S. News in collaboration with CBS's 60 Minutes has documented serious problems with the surplus sales program. Relying on internal Pentagon records, Customs Service documents and interviews with scores of federal agents and officials, the inquiry identified thousands of instances where weapons and parts that should have been rendered militarily harmless before sale were not, where weapons that should have been designated for destruction were not and where key weapons parts that should have been prevented from reaching foreign buyers were not. This system "on its best day is morally embarrassing to the government," says William Portanova, an assistant U.S. attorney in California heading a Justice Department task force investigating the program. "And it never has a best day. It is absolutely a disaster of the highest magnitude."
No Pentagon officials responsible for this program were willing to be interviewed on the record. These are the principal findings of the U.S. News--60 Minutes inquiry:
Foreign buyers are purchasing many of the Pentagon's high-tech surplus military parts and shipping them overseas, hiding them in seagoing containers under tons of metal scrap, seizure records show. Customs officials say Iran and Iraq are active buyers, but by far the biggest customer is China. Among the items seized from Chinese "scrap dealers" were fully operational encryption devices, submarine propulsion parts, radar systems, electron tubes for Patriot guided missiles, even F-117A Stealth fighter parts. Many of these parts, sold as "surplus," were brand new.
So overloaded is the Pentagon's surplus sales system that some offices responsible for disposing of the materiel have suffered significant breakdowns. At an Air Force base in Georgia, the Pentagon's surplus sales office lost track of $39 million in materiel. Today, no one can say where the stuff went.
The sheer volume of surplus materiel generated by the Pentagon's downsizing is one reason for the system overload, but the modern Pentagon's insistence on profitability is another. Last year, the surplus sales system generated $302 million, and it is one of the few Pentagon programs capable of covering its own costs. A Pentagon E-mail message written in April 1994 illustrates clearly the premium placed on profits by senior military officials. Authored by a top-level official and addressed to all surplus sales directors on the East Coast, the memo is blunt: "The work priorities at your sites as I see them are: 1. Profits. 2. Profits. 3. Profits. 4. Profits," the official wrote. Priority No. 6 on his list was "accountability." No. 7 was rendering lethal weaponry harmless.
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