News > Politics > US Military Holds Ongoing Garage Sale For Our Enemies

news
TUESDAY JANUARY 16 2007 8:30 PM

US Military Holds Ongoing Garage Sale For Our Enemies

Tags: GAO, US military, Iran, China

The military has found a great way to get rid of surplus equipment; sell it to Iran and China! According to MSNBC, sensitive military surplus items are supposed to be rendered useless or sold to buyers who promise to obey U.S. arms embargoes, export controls and other laws. But the Government Accounting Office, Iran and China have discovered it is easy to buy sensitive surplus.

Last year the GAO bought $1.1 million worth of rocket launchers, body armor, surveillance antennas and other surplus by posing as defense contractors. When questioned about their lack of Social Security numbers and a lack of credit history the investigators presented a fake utility bill and said they were victims of identity theft.

They helped us load our van, Kutz said. Investigators used a fake identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14 fighters.

In one example of how we are selling sensitive equipment to our enemies, a Pakistani arms broker purchased Chinook helicopter engine parts and sent them to Iran. He did this AFTER he was released from prison, where he had served time for exporting US missile parts to Iran.

Some instances where our military technology was sold to people our president calls, Bad guys.

* Items seized in December 2000 at a Bakersfield, Calif., warehouse that belonged to Multicore, described by U.S. prosecutors as a front company for Iran. Among the weaponry it acquired were fighter jet and missile components, including F-14 parts from Pentagon surplus sales, customs agents said. The surplus purchases were returned after two Multicore officers were sentenced to prison for weapons export violations.
In 2005, customs agents came upon the same surplus F-14 parts with the evidence labels still attached while investigating a different company suspected of serving as an Iranian front. They seized the items again. They declined to provide details because the investigation is ongoing.

* Arif Ali Durrani, a Pakistani, was convicted last year in California in the illegal export of weapons components to the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Belgium in 2004 and 2005 and sentenced to just over 12 years in prison. Customs investigators say the items included Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran that he bought from a U.S. company that acquired them from a Pentagon surplus sale, and that those parts made it to Iran via Malaysia.

* State Metal Industries, a Camden, N.J., company convicted in June of violating export laws over a shipment of AIM-7 Sparrow missile guidance parts it bought from Pentagon surplus in 2003 and sold to an entity partly owned by the Chinese government. Customs and Border Protection inspectors seized the parts nearly 200 pieces of the guidance system for the Sparrow missile system while inspecting cargo at a New Jersey port.

* In October, Ronald Wiseman, a longtime Pentagon surplus employee in the Middle East, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing surplus military Humvees and selling them to a customer in Saudi Arabia from 1999 to 2002. The Humvees were equipped for combat zones and some werent recovered, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Ingersoll said.

* A California company, All Ports, shipped hundreds of containers of U.S. military technology to China between 1994 and 1999, much of it acquired in Pentagon surplus sales, court documents show. Customs agents discovered the sales in May 1999 when All Ports tried to ship to China components for guided missiles, bombs, the B-1 bomber and underwater mines.

Im going to take a stand here and call this a bad thing.

PAGE:

1 | 2

Comments

herbancowboy

Houston, TX

June 2004

JAN 16, 2007 08:46 PM

That's just capitalism at work. What's the problem?

MschfMayhemSoap

Phoenix, AZ

April 2006

JAN 16, 2007 08:47 PM

Welcome to CRAZY Bushies Discount Weapons. No Credit? No Social Security Card? NO PROBLEM!! and if you buy 5 tomahawk missles, we'll throw in a fist-sized chunk of uranium FREE!!

PaulNikon

Palm Bay, FL

February 2003

JAN 16, 2007 08:58 PM

Which dialect of Chinese should I learn?

zarth

Seattle, WA

December 2004

JAN 16, 2007 09:03 PM

PaulNikon said:
Which dialect of Chinese should I learn?

Hanyu, which you roundeyes call "Mandarin." Although some Gongdongwa would probably be useful, as well, of course.

None of the others are necessary for the kind of work you'll be doing in the New Order, though.

thefreak

NEWSWIRE

Gardner, MA

JAN 16, 2007 09:09 PM

Ah, the clusterfuck continues...

-TM

lilcrass

Phoenix, AZ

January 2007

JAN 16, 2007 09:12 PM

I know no one is going to like me for saying this but I say lets just give all those f-14 parts to Iran. I like that plane to much to see it fall apart and they can't reverse engineer everything on it anyway. If we ever do fight them we can use those expensive F-22s to fight against them and see if it's worth the 80+ million price tag for each one. As you can tell I don't like the F-22 very much

wheezy_e

Boulder City, NV

April 2004

JAN 16, 2007 09:36 PM

It's true. A search of local surplus stores last weekend revealed they are now full of crappy imitation M-65 field jackets, can't find the genuine article to save my (freezing) ass. I hope everyone in the rest of the world is nice and toasty in OUR jackets playing pong on computers built from our guidance systems.
Dear Mr. My Congressman: Don't come knocking on my door for a ride when the neighborhood kids pull your beemer's tranny because their chinook needs a modulating thrust servo and the corner store is fresh out. or something.

VitalRequiem

Wheat Ridge, CO

May 2005

JAN 16, 2007 09:37 PM

Listen, I hate the war. I'm violently aposed to president bush.

This is one way the US has been winning wars and taking over countries for decades.

We sell the outdated stuff we have because we know EXACTLY how to defend against it and how to beat it. The US has always done it that way.

Nothing new.

Adroitbeing

I'm lost

September 2003

JAN 16, 2007 10:09 PM

I love the smell of a free market in the morning.

RickyHell

Tucson, AZ

October 2006

JAN 16, 2007 10:23 PM

Does anyone know how we went from not having enough body armor to equip/protect even half of our GI's on the front line, to now having a surplus? Weren't our men and women having to purchase this shit on their own dollar because there just wasn't enough to go around?

On the other hand, I do see some humor in selling outdated, thus possibly ineffective components and war-toys to the rest of the world. Imagine the cake on the face when some bat-shit crazy terrorist drops his "F-14" fuel tank instead of a bomb, due to a faulty (insert: whatever they make planes out of) purchased from U.S. surplus. Alright, it's not that funny, but still.