Les,
Here is more on Clinton/Gore selling out our National
Security...not to mention, trying to import a Russian
"Satan" ICBM to the Long Beach Naval Station
in California..is there anything you can't get for a
campaign contribution to Clinton/Gore or the Democratic
National (now international) Committee???:(:
Aug 11 - 17, 1998
by Kenneth R. Timmerman
On July 13, a Norwegian-built cargo ship, the Sea Launch Commander, steamed into the former U.S. Naval Station at Long Beach, California, carrying Russian and Ukrainian-built missiles.
Sound like some cockeyed real-life version of a James Bond movie? Not if you talk to Boeing Space Systems, the U.S. partner in an international joint venture to launch satellites from a floating platform in the South Pacific, using Cold War rocket technology from the former Soviet Union. "This is one of the great ploughshares projects in the world," said Tim Dolan, a Boeing spokesman at nearby Seal Beach, California. "There were lots of defense conversion programs talked about in the early 1990's. This is one of the first major ones to come on line. It's a positive development for the space industry, for the former Soviet Union, and for international cooperation."
Boeing engineers are now working with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts to assemble the three-stage rocket loaded into the ship's hold in St. Petersburg. Later this year, they will mate it to a satellite built by Hughes Space and Communications, based in neighboring El Segundo, California. In September, they will be joined by a second ship, the Odyssey, a self-propelled oil-drilling platform that has been converted by the Norwegian shipbuilder Kvaerner into a submersible launch platform. If all goes according to plan, the two ships will set sail early next year from Long Beach to the Christmas Islands, which lie on the Equator in the South Pacific, to make their first commercial satellite launch.
That is, unless federal prosecutors scuttle the entire deal. TAS has learned from law enforcement sources in Long Beach, Seattle, and Washington that Boeing has admitted to more than 350 violations of U.S. export laws in connection with the Sea Launch venture. "What you have is a U.S. company bringing Russian ICBMs into a U.S. port without a license," one official said. "This is totally unprecedented."
The Zenit booster--which forms the first two stages of the Sea Launch rocket--is a larger, commercial version of Russia's ten-warhead SS-18 "Satan" ICBM, the huge city-buster that still threatens the American mainland. Until now, it has been primarily used by Russia to send military spy satellites into space.
Boeing's Tim Dolan says satellite makers Hughes and Loral Space Systems are solidly behind the project, since it is cheaper and easier for them to mate their satellites to the launch vehicle in California, where they are both based, instead of mounting a traveling road show to China or Kazakhstan for launches there. Hughes has booked thirteen launches, and Loral five, at prices ranging from $70 million to $100 million each. Dolan also acknowledged the active support of Vice President Al Gore, who traveled to Ukraine on July 22 for high-profile talks with President Kuchma.
Just three weeks before the trip, however, Gore's aides were panicking at the thought that they would have to cancel the visit at the last minute--or even worse, see it transformed into a mutual finger-pointing session.
On June 30, Boeing lawyers met with inspectors from the U.S. Customs Service in Los Angeles, where they were read the riot act about the impending arrival of the Sea Launch Commander and the rockets it was carrying in its hold. "Basically, we told them we would impound the ship," an official present at the meeting told TAS. "These were munitions items, and required licenses. Boeing claimed that because they were making only a temporary import into the United States, Sea Launch fell through the cracks of the law and didn't need any license. We really chewed them out."
As it turned out, lawyers from Boeing had applied for a temporary import license two weeks earlier, but didn't tell the Los Angeles Customs team, perhaps in the belief that a seizure of their ship would make Customs extremely unpopular. "If that's what they thought," the official said, "they ought to get their heads examined. So they think anybody can bring missiles into the United States--just like that?"
Behind the scenes, the Boeing team went to work the way that all big U.S. companies do in the Clinton era when they have a problem with national security licensing: they sent their lawyers to the White House. The next day, July 1, Boeing lawyers met with aides to Vice President Al Gore, urging the Veep to use his political clout to get Customs off their back. "This project is Al Gore's baby," a knowledgeable Washington official tells TAS. "It has been since Day One."
But that didn't stop the Customs officials monitoring the case in Long Beach. They called for backup to the Pentagon's Defense Technology Security Administration, which has the technical expertise to determine whether shipments require licenses or not. They also turned to the State Department's Office of Defense Trade Control (ODTC). Both agencies backed up the Los Angeles Customs agents, prompting Special Agent in Charge John Hensley to send a letter to Boeing and Sea Launch shortly afterwards, informing them that the vessel would be seized if it came within three miles of Long Beach harbor.
Meanwhile, the White House put pressure on Customs to back off, and nearly convinced Acting Customs Commissioner Sam Banks to call off his agents. But in an unusual closed door meeting in Washington on July 9, Banks was confronted by his chief counsel, who informed him that for Boeing to import the Russian and Ukrainian missiles without proper authorization would set a precedent that would encourage other companies to break the law. "It's very simple," said one official present at the meeting. "It's illegal. Period." When he was told the only way to authorize the license would be for him to personally sign off on it, Banks finally backed down.
Al Gore's White House staff was furious. Gore's official visit to Ukraine was less than two weeks away, and it now looked as if it would end in a train wreck.... spectator.org |
