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for other programs, broadly available from other places in the world while on the other hand, we are trying very hard to maintaining an adequate military industrial base. Whichever way we make that decision, we are putting at some risk our national security, are we not, and how do we decide what is the right balance there? If we cannot maintain an adequate and military industrial base, are we not putting our national security at some risk?

Dr. MILHOLLIN. You are correct. It is a decision and you are correct that but, I would say that there is an assumption which I would question and that is that export controls have a negative— have a significant negative impact on our military industrial base. I don't think the case for that can be made. The items that are controlled are only those items that can be that if diverted can be specifically useful in making weapons of mass destruction. That slice of our economy is very tiny.

Mr. BARTLETT. You think that is such a small percentage of what we export that we are not putting our industrial base at risk by denying those exports?

Dr. MILHOLLIN. No question. I mean, the numbers prove it. Right now, first of all, we are approving over 90 percent of everything that even goes through the licensing process. So, the number of things that are actually denied is only a tiny fraction of that which goes through the process. And, that which goes through the process is only a tiny fraction of our economy. It is something like a fraction of, a small fraction of 1 percent. You-there is no sense or sensitive enough to measure any kind of economic and employment impact on the United States from export controls. Because they have such a slight impact.

So for me, I think that prevention is much cheaper than cure. That is, Iraq gives you the case where you are going to have to cure a problem created by loose export controls and the cure is expensive. It is expensive in lives. It is expensive in money and expensive in just in the time it takes our government to figure out what to do about this. I think that far outweighs the small cost to our industry, to the small number of companies that actually make things that are controlled.

Mr. BARTLETT. There is an old adage that says that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We somehow forget that today when we have broken our ties with the common sense past, haven't we? Let me ask you a question about weaponizing these biological agents. I think that everybody recognizes that it is very much easier to produce these biological weapons than it is to weaponize them. And, until you are able to weaponize them, even though you may have very large quantities of these, you may be very ineffective in using these. How robust is the Iraqi program at weaponizing these agents?

Dr. MILHOLLIN. My expertise is primarily in nuclear and missile technology, and so I would like to use this as a preface to the answer I give. I think that from reports we have heard, that there is an estimation that Iraq did make progress in weaponizing anthrax. But, whether that progress is sufficient so that it could today launch a successful anthrax attack, I am not so sure I know the answer to. But, it is an excellent question. Of course, the absence of inspections makes it all the more difficult to answer with

any kind of confidence since it has been four years since we have really done any inspections in Iraq.

Mr. BARTLETT. Let me ask a question about weaponizing smallpox. It's my understanding the best way to weaponize smallpox is to find a dozen or so people that are willing to be infected with smallpox and die as a result of that infection, and then to travel broadly in this country going to ball games and circulating through airports. You don't even have to go through the security perimeter in the airport to interface with a large number of people. You are familiar, I am sure, with the dark winter where the agent was releasing only three places and in that exercise, it took a great while to contain and it spread, I think, to 35 states and 15 foreign countries before we contained it. Isn't this the best way to weaponize smallpox.

Dr. MILHOLLIN. Could very well be. That is, I guess, a possibility that someone has imagined. I have quite a bit of natural human imagination. I suspect that if we all sat around for a while, we might be able to come up with something better or worse, I guess, depending on how you define it.

Mr. BARTLETT. That is worse enough, isn't it?

Dr. MILHOLLIN. Yeah. It is bad enough as it is. I think from what I know about smallpox and now with the kind of travel we do, it would be a very serious threat, even if a few people had it. Sobut again, I must say honestly that I am not going to try to pronounce a subject for which I am perhaps not your best witness. Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HUNTER. Is the gentleman concluded?

Mr. BARTLETT. Yes, sir, which is why I thanked you, sir.

Mr. HUNTER. Okay. I thank the gentleman. And Mr. Taylor. And incidentally folks, we are going to have three votes here. I think, you know we are going to get broken up during the day as we get into the noon hour. I am inclined to keep going here, and maybe Mr. Saxton, if you could maybe go vote and come back and I could make at least that first vote. I think we need to keep going and get this hearing done. So, Mr. Taylor.

Mr. TAYLOR. I thank both of you gentlemen for being here. And, I am very much alarmed by what you tell me. I guess I have been here long enough to hear the critics say that the Clintons were weak on defense, so therefore they were asleep at the switch and the Republicans were pro business, and so therefore they were asleep at the switch. If somebody had a buck to be made, then they are going to cooperate with them. In an ideal world, how would you put better controls on American technology leaving our shores and getting into the hands of people who would potentially harm us. You outlined the problem well enough to get my attention. How would you solve the problem?

Dr. MILHOLLIN. That question is to me, sir?

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, sir, please. Or, both of you.

Dr. MILHOLLIN. Shall I go first? I think at a minimum we need to understand that export controls have been greatly reduced since the Cold War, but that we are in a new war and we need new kinds of export controls for that war. And that war is just as serious as the Cold War. And, yet we are facing it with a weaker system. I would go back and review decontrol decisions that we have

made over the last decade under the understanding that the world had changed, threats were gone essentially because the Cold War was over and that we didn't need to worry about the spread of technology that could help terrorists.

I would look at things we decontrolled. I would also look at what terrorist nations, terrorist supporting nations and terrorist groups need most to make the kind of weaponry that we think is most likely to be made, and then I would try to identify the technologies necessary for that and draft a new set of export controls that are designed for the post September 11 world. I think we need to put our best experts to work on that and we need to do it.

In the case of the pending bill, it was conceived and debated before September 11. So I think the first thing we need to do is treat that bill as a piece of ancient history and agree among ourselves that we need to start over and we need to think through a new set of export controls specifically aimed at things that threaten us the most, which is international-one of which is international terrorism. So that is what I would do.

Mr. TAYLOR. Dr. Hamza.

Dr. HAMZA. I am not very familiar with the exact rules so I will restrict myself to the following; that is

Mr. TAYLOR. What troubles me, Dr. Hamza, is we make good rules and then we give either the Secretary of Defense or the sitting President the availability to waive them. Let's face it. How do you get to be President? You accept campaign_contributions. Do those campaign contributors sometimes call the President, and say "Gee, I would like this rule waived." It is not going to hurt American security. It's my opinion they probably do. So, in addition to just taking that loophole out, what else would you do?

Dr. HAMZA. Let me give another, the other side of the view here. Dr. Milhollin is very well versed in what is going on here. Let me just present the problems we have there and what would exports do for us. We had the electromagnetic enrichment of uranium. The electromagnetic is all unclassified. That is why it was chosen initially. This is the largest program we had. The centrifuge was a minor program. Now, it is our main program because of technology exports. The program was hampered for simple things like vacuum parts, things that pump the air out of the equipment, high voltage sources, sparking, things like machining to a certain tolerance.

So now, if you want to put exports, such that we will not do what we can do, then all these equipment has to be under some kind of restriction to a country like Iraq. This is very broad. This covers huge sectors, high voltage; I mean, how can you stop a country from importing high voltage equipment. Vacuum pumps. They are used everywhere in making liquid nitrogen and making oxygen and making all kinds of-so-but these things stopped us. For ten years we could not get over them to a degree that we will have a production system. We stayed in the pilot plant stage with the few units trying to get resolve the problems of these units because we couldn't resolve the basic simple technologies involved.

So if you are looking at a country like Iraq and want to stop it through technology controls, through export controls, I think it will be a very hard and very broad. I mean, after all, I mean 90 percent what have goes into a nuclear weapon is regular technologies, ma

chining, casting, furnaces, equipment like this, fuses, some simple electronics and some complicated also, electronics. But, so, I don't know. I cannot help in this because what I look at is what we built is 90 percent of regular import. Some ten percent are the sensitive ones and these are probably the ones one should keep an eye on. Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, I see the red light, but apparently we are all willing to miss this very important procedural vote.

Mr. SAXTON. Actually Mr. Taylor, Ms. Davis is sitting anxiously waiting for her chance.

Mr. TAYLOR. Okay. If I could, for the record, I would like both of you to tell me how many years do you think it will be, if it has not already occurred, before either a terrorist state or a terrorist organization purchases a working weapon of mass destruction from the former Soviet Union. Because, I am still dumbfounded why anyone tries to go to all the trouble of building a bomb when apparently there is so much material and so many weapons available in the former Soviet Union in apparently a nation that is in chaos. Mr. SAXTON. If you could

Mr. TAYLOR. For the record. I understand Ms. Davis wants to get to her questions.

Mr. SAXTON. Yeah, we are going to let you answer that perhaps in writing.

Mr. TAYLOR. Unless you can say it in a word or two, I am sure she could forgive me that.

Mr. SAXTON. Do you want to take 30 seconds? But, we really need to move on to Ms. Davis because of the situation we find ourself in with votes.

Dr. MILHOLLIN. Do you want us to answer in 30 seconds or do you want us to just

Mr. SAXTON. I guess we prefer that you submit your answer to us in writing at this point. Is that all right, Mr. Taylor?

Mr. TAYLOR. Sure.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 283.]

Mr. SAXTON. Ms. Davis. Here's what-we are in a series of three votes. Mr. Hunter left to catch the first vote. He is going to come back so I can catch the second two votes and so we will try to accommodate your time by continuing to move forward. Ms. Davis. Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. I'd prefer not to miss the first vote, Mr. Chairman, but

Mr. SAXTON. You and I are going to run over there together.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. I will do this as quickly as I can. Dr. Hamza, you made a statement earlier. You said in quotes that even if the, you know, the inspectors go over and they were to remove, you know, whatever Saddam has over there, that it wouldn't make any difference because in your words, the will is there and a strong determination. Where is that will coming from? Is it just Saddam Hussein? If Saddam Hussein were to be removed, are you saying that that wouldn't matter either, that there is still the will and the strong determination by whom?

Dr. HAMZA. It is not just Saddam. It is also the Bath Party, which came on the basic idea of revival of Iraq's power or our power and also as implemented by Saddam, this meant to him that is more weaponry and more militarization of the whole country.

They understood, they call it a struggle for survival. To be a struggle through military and armament and as such, their basic aim is to have a fighting force, which is basically impregnable and basically the strongest in the region and do their own through their own will build that fighting force using Iraq's huge oil resources as a basis.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. So the entire party would have to be removed from the government?

Dr. HAMZA. The whole party system has to be removed which is ingrained. It has its own literature, its own law, its own history. It is huge. It is like the Communist Party.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. If Saddam Hussein or the party had a nuclear weapon completed, ready to be used, and this is an opinion from you, what do you think he would do with it?

Dr. HAMZA. It depends. If he is in a corner, he will use it. That was made clear during the Gulf War when he ordered us to make one crash nuclear weapon and it is called the crash nuclear weapon, which is declared by Iraq in 1996 and is officially admitted by the Iraqi government to turn the French fuel we had into one nuclear weapon.

Now that makes no sense unless you intend to use it as a last resort. What would you do with one nuclear weapon? If you test, you lose it. So that terrified us at the time and our chemists saved us by dragging their feet and claiming they cannot get 18 kilograms we need to make one nuclear weapon out of the French fuel, which is 31 kilogram. So there is the intent. Then, they made two other crash programs, which are chemical and biological weapons, which were put on the way of the U.S. forces in case they came to Baghdad. We don't know what they intended to do with them. Our guess, and the word was they would be blown up on the face of whatever incoming force there is and claiming that the Air Force destroyed them.

So this is one angle also to watch out for, is that the depots he can use. So, it is just the total belief that weaponry, especially weapons of mass destruction, because Iraq cannot make any other kind of weaponry, it cannot make conventional weapon. The weapons of mass destruction is all it can make is the base for the survival of the regime and its power base.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Well, it interests me that you said, I believe the program in 1987, if I am correct what you said, was to develop six a year. I find that a little more than just, if I am backed into a corner.

Dr. HAMZA. That is the orders we got. We had to reduce that order actually gradually and make it into something like we could live with, like two a year, but we always got back orders that once we are through this stage one, we have to think ahead of time and to jump in to a larger production facility.

Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentlelady, and you have got about a minute left on this vote, but I think that they will hold it open for a while as they usually do on the first one, so I thank her for her line of questions.

Gentlemen, let me take you back to Mr. Spratt's questions, and this is kind of a complex thing and let's kind of walk through what

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