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.
Some dealers said they wouldn't sell weapons or parts to people who seemed shady. Others admitted that the system had almost no controls. "I could sell this to you," one weapons dealer explained, "and you could sell it to someone else, and he could sell it to someone else." Another dealer wrote that he had the parts we ordered, such as a pilot's targeting screen, known as a heads-up display, for an F-16 fighter, and had bought them from a DRMO but wanted more information about our company before selling to us. Another offered to ship us a similar part, with no questions asked.
One company, Aviarms Support Corp. in Westbury, N.Y., had a different story. A manager there said the items the company advertises on ILS are held by Israeli, German and Dutch companies for whom it acts as a broker. Many of the U.S. weapons parts came from the surplus stocks of the Israeli and German militaries, he said. Had they been demilitarized? No, he said, they were all in good working order.
One part that Aviarms was selling was listed as an "F-117A fire control memory." Asked how Israel could have obtained surplus parts for the U.S. F-117 Stealth fighter, the manager checked his computer. Aviarms was brokering it for an Israeli company, which got it from a German company, he said. He could trace it no further.
Barrington was outraged by what he found on ILS. His last year at work was consumed with tracking DRMO sales of sensitive weapons parts and trying to get his superiors at the Defense Logistics Agency to take action. He sent E-mail after E-mail message up and down the command chain. "Below are a few examples of obviously Demil-required property offered" at DRMO sales, he wrote in August 1995: "Payload section, nuclear missile. Warhead components: DRMO San Antonio ... Multipurpose display, F-117A Stealth Fighter: DRMO McClellan Air Force Base, California ... F-111 Navigation and attack computer: McClellan Air Force Base DRMO ... Heads-up display, F-111B fighter-bomber: DRMO Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona."
Barrington had the support of his co-investigators, and even some higher officials at the logistics agency, but little was done. There were no seizures, no attempts to recover the items. On June 5, Barrington sent a final E-mail to his bosses. "Nearing the end of the trail here. I know all of you are very concerned about the OBVIOUS total lack of control of our vital defense technology and hardware, but I can't help but wonder after nearly two years of almost DAILY findings such as those above, why the government has not seen fit to attempt to recover ANY of the thousands of sensitive or classified items discovered via ILS." Barrington then quit to become a Baptist minister.
While no senior Defense Department official was willing to meet with U.S. News and 60 Minutes to discuss these problems on the record, a group of knowledgeable middle-level Pentagon and Defense Logistics Agency managers met reporters and confirmed many of their findings. The officials quibbled with some assertions. For instance, they acknowledged that there has been pressure in the past to cut corners to sell surplus materiel, as evidenced by the "profits, profits, profits, profits" memo. But they also insisted that the new management at the Defense Logistics Agency is not profits driven. The officials blamed the four military services, which control most of the demilitarization codes, for writing the codes too leniently and for failing to change them when errors are pointed out. They said the DRMOs are no longer accepting items with demilitarization codes that had been phased out two years ago.
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