The US military has sold forbidden equipment at least a half-dozen times to middlemen for countries—including Iran and China—who exploited security flaws in the Defence Department’s surplus auctions. The sales include fighter jet parts and missile components.In one case, federal agents said, the contraband made it to Iran, a country President George W Bush branded part of an “axis of evil.”In that instance, a Pakistani arms broker convicted of exporting US missile parts to Iran resumed business after his release from prison. He purchased Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran from a US company that had bought them in a Pentagon surplus sale. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, speaking on condition of anonymity, say those parts made it to Iran. “Right Item, Right Time, Right Place, Right Price, Every Time. Best Value Solutions for America’s Warfighters,” the Defence Reutilisation and Marketing Service says on its Web site, calling itself “the place to obtain original US Government surplus property.”Federal investigators are anxious that Iran is within easy reach of a top priority on its shopping list: parts for the F-14 “Tomcat” fighter jets the US let Iran buy in the 1970s when it was an ally.In one case, convicted middlemen for Iran bought Tomcat parts from the Defence Department’s surplus division. Customs agents confiscated them and returned them to the Pentagon, which sold them again—customs evidence tags still attached—to another buyer, a suspected broker for Iran.That incident appalled even an expert on weaknesses in Pentagon surplus security controls.“That would be evidence of a significant breakdown, in my view, in processes,” said Greg Kutz, the Government Accountability Office’s head of special investigations. “It shouldn’t happen the first time, let alone again.”A Defence Department official, Fred Baillie, said his agency followed procedures. “The fact that those individuals chose to violate the law and the fact that the customs people caught them really indicates that the process is working,” said Baillie, the Defence Logistics Agency’s executive director of distribution. “Customs is supposed to check all exports to make sure that all the appropriate certifications had been granted.”The Pentagon recently retired its Tomcats and is shipping thousands of spare parts to its surplus office—the Defence Reutilisation and Marketing Service—where they could be sold in public auctions. Iran is the only other country flying F-14s.Sensitive military surplus items are supposed to be demilitarised or “de-milled”— rendered useless for military purposes—or, if auctioned, sold only to buyers who obey US arms embargoes and other laws.Investigators have found the Pentagon’s inventory and sales controls rife with errors. They say the sales are closely watched by friends and foes of the United States.Kutz believes Iran already has Tomcat parts from Pentagon surplus sales: “The key now is, going forward, to shut that down and not let it happen again.”
