From: cdpert01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: **** ANOTHER COVER-UP - Please read this... ****
Date: 5 Oct 92 02:21:03 GMT
Organization: University of Louisville

In article <1992Oct2.221641.16071@news.columbia.edu>, egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy) writes:
> In article <1992Oct2.135129.1@ulkyvx.louisville.edu> cdpert01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu writes:
>>In article <1992Oct2.153309.5990@news.columbia.edu>, egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy) writes:
>>> 
>>> We did not actively support the Soviet regime, at least in the
>>> pre-Yeltsin days.  This wasn't quite the same with Iraq.
>>> 
>>     You may change your opinion on our (the U.S.) relationship with
>>previous Soviet regimes after reading the three volumes of
>>_Western_Technology_and_Soviet_Economic_Development_ by
>>Antony C. Sutton.  Sutton claims that Western governments and 
>>firms have been responsible for the bulk of the technical "progress"
>>made in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1970 (the books were written
>>in 1973) -- including the transfer of military technology against
>>the wishes of the Department of Defense.
> 
> Please clarify.  Do you have any details?
> 
     I wish I had more details than I am going to give -- the books
were not on the library shelf today.  I do have a photocopy of the
conclusions chapter, from which I will quote selectively.

     ...  The result is that we have created and continue to maintain
     what appears to be a first-order threat to the survival of
     Western civilization....
          This conclusion is supported by the observations that in 
     both the 1930s and the 1960s the U.S. State Department pressed
     for the outright transfer of military technology to the U.S.S.R.
     over the protests of the War Department (in the thirties) and
     the Department of Defense (in the sixties).  When in the 1930s
     the War Department pointed out that the proposed Dupont nitric
     acid plant had military potential, it was the State Department
     that allowed the Dupont contract to go ahead.  A Hercules Powder 
     proposal to build a nitrocellulose plant was approved when the
     State Department accepted the argument that the explosives
     produced were intended for peacetime use.
          In the 1960s we have the extraordinary "ball bearing case"
     of 1961, which revealed that the U.S.S.R. was to receive 45
     machines used to produce miniature ball bearings (in the United 
     States almost all miniature ball bearings are used in missiles).
     That proposal was called a "tragic mistake" by the Department
     of Defense but supported by the State Department.  In 1968 came
     the so-called "Fiat deal" under which the United States supplied
     three-quarters of the equipment for the Volgograd plant, the
     largest automobile plant in the U.S.S.R.  This agreement ignored 
     an earlier interagency committee finding that 330 military
     items can be produced by any civilian automobile industry and 
     that the automobile industry is a key factor for war.  It also
     ignores an argument particularly stressed here -- that any 
     automobile plant can produce military vehicles.  The supply
     of U.S. equipment for the Volgograd plant was diametrically 
     opposed to any policy of denial of exports of strategic goods
     to the Soviet Union, for under any definition of "strategic"
     the Volgograd plant has clear and significant military
     weapons capability.  Yet the State Department was strongly in
     favor of the shipment of the plant equipment.  The developing
     story of the Kama plant suggests history is repeating itself....
     There is probably no simple, logical explanation for
     the fact that we have constructed and maintain [sic] a 
     first-order threat to Western society.  [sounds similar to Iraq?]

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the information given in the books.
I would suggest to anyone who is jumping on the Iraq-gate bandwagon
to first skim through these books.  From my memory, these books
are well-documented and cogent.  After reading them, you may feel
as I that Iraq-gate is "par for the course" (not that I agree
with the policies, but I do believe we are relatively ignorant
to both the goals and extent of U.S. foreign policy).

     C. Perttunen
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