79-10-A3
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Soviet Trade[edit]
Transcript[edit]Some years back the Russians built a gigantic truck factory know as the Kama River TrUck plant. I say they built it - they couldn't have done more than dig a hole for the foundation without help from the U.S. We gave them a package that included everything from the money they needed to the machinery and technology they didn't have. Of course this was done with the hope that if they began to have the things free enterprise has provided for us they might become a friend and neighbor. We were careful to point out that a truck plant wasn't like selling them something they could use against us in event of hostilities. Now we've learned that motors made in the Kama plant are winding up in armored personnel carriers and assault vehicles. Several weeks ago a Commerce Department official whose job is to monitor the sale of advanced technology to the Soviet Union so as to guard against giving them something that could be used militarily, blew the whistle on his own department. He said our system of export controls is a "total shambles." In testimony to a closed meeting of the House Armed Services subcommittee on research and development, Lawrence Brady, director of the Office of Export administration, revealed that the Commerce department had not been candid with Congress. He said the system for approving sales to Moscow is in bad shape. This was in direct contradiction to the testimony of his immediate superior, Stanley Marcus, Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Industry and Trade. Mr. Marcus had told the committee our precautions "are sufficient to insure our national security." A controversy is taking place in the administration brought on by a debate in Congress over moves to make it easier to sell advanced American products to the Soviets. Senior administration aides including the Secretary of State favor increased trade. Understandably, aides in the Defense department and the National Security Council are opposed. Maybe we should remember World War II when a former trading partner returned tons of our scrap iron in the form of shrapnel that killed our young men. What we are talking about today isn't scrap iron. Mr. Brady says that last year only a few hundred of the 7,000 requests to sell our products to the Soviet-bloc nations were turned down. We are supposed to insure that nothing we sell can be diverted to military use but that is virtually impossible to do. Truck motors turning up in assault vehicles is proof of that. SALT II will concern itself with Russia's SS-18 missiles which carry 10 separate nuclear warheads each. Ours carry three. We didn't think they were within years of learning how to equal us in that department. Then we sold them technology for making infinitely small and precisely engineered ball bearings -- just the kind needed for multiple warheads on nuclear missiles. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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