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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (810)	2/19/2001 2:37:18 PM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 23908

Bill’s Holdovers Grab DOD Agency -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Kenneth R. Timmerman timmerman@insightmag.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clinton Democrats tried to shut down the Pentagon’s export-control agency, but as Bush comes in they have turned it into a Disney World of fat salaries for their own. Clinton holdovers rapidly are expanding a Pentagon agency they twice tried to eliminate and are rewarding their friends with a taxpayer-paid trip to Walt Disney World. On the agenda: cozying up to U.S. exporters seeking Department of Defense (DOD) favors, and photo-ops with Mickey and his pals. The Pentagon’s Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) was created by President Reagan to thwart Soviet attempts to acquire Western military technology. DTSA was widely criticized by U.S. industry groups for impeding the sale of American high-tech products to governments hostile to the United States. President Clinton did his best to get rid of DTSA, and twice it was brought back from the dead by congressional supporters led by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa. Now called the Technology Security Directorate (TSD), it has been rolled into a larger Pentagon entity known as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). So why did technology-security chief Dave Tarbell, a Clinton appointee, go on a hiring spree just as a new administration was coming to town? And why is he sending more than a dozen new export-licensing officers on a government-paid junket to Walt Disney World to cozy up to representatives of the very export industries DTRA regulates? Insight spoke with a number of the 35 new DTRA hires, most of whom were Clinton appointees from Commerce, State or DOD weapons labs. All acknowledged that they were being sent down to Orlando to learn about export licensing — from industry representatives, not DTRA professionals. Organized by SIA, the Society for International Affairs (www.siaed.org), the Feb. 15-16 Orlando meeting was billed as a basics conference. This time, according to DTRA spokesman David Rigby, DTRA would send its trainees to learn from industry and to become acquainted with members of the exporting community with whom they would deal daily. Conveniently, most of the DTRA people would arrive a day early and stay a day late, according to hotel records obtained by Insight. SIA members include satellite makers and operators such as Orbital Sciences and INTELSAT, as well as the nation’s largest defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin Corp., TRW Inc. and ITT Defense. “SIA is a private association of all the big exporters who license into DTRA,” a senior DTRA official told Insight. “They want to make sure that the new people get the industry gospel, so they’re taking them down to get indoctrinated.” The U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill for hotel and per-diem costs, conference-registration fees and round-trip travel (at government rates, which mandate high-cost, refundable tickets) in addition to salaries. Most of the engineers attending the conference have reached the highest General Service rank, GS-15, and are paid $84,648 to $110,028 annually. (cont) insightmag.com