Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

own export control system. This effort could be assisted by U.S. passage of its own exportlaw.Since the expiration of the Export Administration Act on September 30, 1990, (except fortwo short periods when the EAA was extended), the Export Administration Regulationshave been continued in force by a series of executive orders under the authority of theInternational Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The lack of an ExportAdministration Act hampers BXA in its compliance and enforcement efforts. Continuing theExport Administration Regulations under IEEPA limits the criminal fines for violations to anamount much less than the penalties of the last EAA, and less still than the enhancedpenalties that any new EAA would surely contain. In some cases, an export control violatorcould view the risk and burden of penalty for a violation as low enough to be merely a “costof doing business,” to be balanced against the revenue received from an illegal transaction.There is also a significant difference in the standard for violations between the EAA andIEEPA.Recommendation 5.18: Congress should enact and the President should sign anew Export Administration Act, reflecting the post-CoCom export control regime,and containing substantially greater penalties than now apply to export controlviolations.Post-shipment VerificationsAn aggressive enforcement effort discourages would-be violators, and post-shipmentverifications are an important tool for monitoring exports from the United States. Manyexport licenses are approved with conditions, such as limiting access to the goods,prohibiting resale or re-export, and prohibiting use in a proliferation end-use. As part ofBXA’s compliance efforts, post-shipment verifications are conducted to ensure that U.S.goods are received by the declared end-user and to ensure the goods are being used inaccordance with any conditions that BXA imposed on the export. When foreign buyersknow that Commerce personnel may visit to verify that the goods are being used incompliance with the conditions of the export, their incentives to ensure full compliance withU.S. export controls are enhanced.The NDAA of 1998 mandated that BXA conduct postshipment verification of all highperformance computers exported to Tier 3 destinations, numbering about 1000 in the firstyear. BXA has had to devote significant resources to conduct these on-site checks,devoting four of its international safeguards teams solely to verifications of highperformancecomputers. Commerce therefore has fewer resources to conduct similarchecks for other technologies which may contribute more directly to the development of anindigenous WMD capability.73