From Russia with technology

Monday, May 10, 1999

Caspar Weinberger, the respected secretary of defense in the Reagan administration who can claim a large measure of credit for defeating the Soviet Union, believes the Clinton policy toward Russia in the 1990s went "extraordinarily wrong" because the president and his advisers failed to treat Russia as the defeated power it was.

While Strobe Talbott was counseling patience with Russia, Russia was ill egally doling out missile technology to the radical Muslim regime in Iran 2E As CIA Director George Tenet testified in February 1998, Russian assi stance was a major boost to the Iranian missile program. "When I testif ied a year ago," Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee, "I sai d that Iran, which had received extensive missile assistance from North K orea, would probably have medium-range missiles capable of hitting Saudi Arabia and Israel in less than ten years. Since I testified, Iran's suc cess in gaining technology and material from Russian companies, combined with recent indigenous Iranian advances, means that it could have a mediu m-range missile much sooner than I assessed last year." In February 199 9 Tenet told the Senate that the flow of missile technology from Russia t o Iran had not stopped, that it was continuing "as we speak." Tenet t estified, "Especially during the last six months, expertise and materia l from Russia have continued to assist the Iranian missile effort in area s ranging from training to testing to components." The missile assistan ce, he said, "will play a crucial role in Iran's ability to develop m ore sophisticated and longer-range missiles."

After years of ignoring the problem, Congress finally became energized and in 1998 passed legislation requiring sanctions to be imposed on Russia for the missile trade. But President Clinton vetoed the bill in June of that year. "This bill will make it more difficult to continue our work with the Russian government in this area," Clinton said in a statement.

A month later, after months and months of denials and dissembling, the Russian government announced it had identified nine companies involved in technology export violations, and the Clinton administration finally imposed economic sanctions on the supposedly "private" Russian research institutes and companies. But the list did not include the major Russian entities involved in the missile technology transfer to Iran, including the government's state trading company, known as Rosvooruzheniye [pronounced "Roz-vor-oo-zhen-ye"], and the Russian Space Agency. Two other culprits that made a major contribution to Iran's missile program were also left out: The Bauman Institute and the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute. Both were identified in classified U.S. intelligence reports as vital to Iran's program.

Besides, by the time the sanctions were imposed, it was too late. On July 22, 1998, Iran stunned the world by conducting the first test flight of a new medium-range missile called the Shahab-3. The missile is nuclear-capable and could be fitted with deadly poison gas or biological weapons. The mobile missile directly threatens American troops deployed throughout the region, including in the Persian Gulf and Turkey. "Obviously, if they were to develop an intermediate-range missile, it could change the regional stability dynamics in the Middle East," Clinton said in response, "We're very, very concerned about it, but not surprised by it," he said.

The story of Iran's Shahab missile is a tale of the development of a dangerous weapon that could have been prevented. It was a major national security failure on the part of the Clinton administration, which simply ignored the growing military danger in favor of its policy of supporting Boris Yeltsin.

Bill Gertz is national security correspondent for The Washington Times and the author of a new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton administration undermined American security from which the above is excerpted.