Foreign Relations

Foreign defense contractors that want to work with the Pentagon while employing people with more than one passport have had no shortage of headaches when trying to comply with the U.S. government's export control policies, as a State Department notice in this morning's Federal Register states:

The current requirement for the provision of additional information within a license to cover dual national and third-country national foreign employees has created a tremendous administrative burden on approved end-users and has evolved into a human rights issue, which has become a focus of contention between the U.S. and allies and friends without a commensurate gain in national security.

Consequently, the State Department has changed the rule:

Based on available intelligence and law enforcement information, and given the current licensing requirements regarding access by dual or third country national employees, most diversions of U.S. Munitions List (USML) items appears to occur outside the scope of approved licenses, not within foreign companies or organizations providing access to properly screened dual national or third country national employees. This amendment will place the affirmative responsibility upon the foreign company, government, or international organization, with the understanding that by accepting the USML defense article, they must comply with the provisions of U.S. laws and regulations to prevent the possible diversion of U.S. defense articles and technology. This change, by no means, reduces the due diligence requirements of the applicant to ensure, to the best of their ability, that the end-use and end-user are consistent with the approved authorization. The Department views due diligence as a requirement for security clearances or other effective screening procedures as a condition for access to ITAR-controlled defense articles and technology.

As National Security Adviser James Jones said in June:

We should be striving for a system that prevents harmful exports while facilitating useful ones. Our current system is not meeting that objective. In fact, our system itself poses a potential national security risk based on the fact that its structure is overly complicated, contains too many redundancies, and tries to protect too much. In short, we are hard to work with. As Secretary Gates has often said, we need to have a "higher fence around a smaller yard."