Comments on: Opening Statements Given in Roth Trial

By: Mike Deal

Mike Deal — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:00:10 +0000

I helped educate Ms. Witherspoon and others at UT about export controls at a seminar that I helped arrange through the the Knoxville Chamber and the Tennessee Small Business Center, in conjunction with the OEE Washington Area Field Office and the FBI resident agents at Oak Ridge. In fact, I presented the deemed export portion of the program. At the time that this was alleged to occur, Ms. Witherspoon was very inexperienced, had been in that position for only a short period of time, and had no prior involvement with export controls. She is a very nice, very sincere lady, but I suspect that she wouldn’t have made much of an impression on a highly regarded professor emeritus. It may be common practice, but it is nonetheless a mistake to give the job of export control officer to junior, untrained, inexperienced people. You have to have someone who has the knowledge and the experience to stare down senior engineers and scientists as well as speak as a peer to management.

By: LM

LM — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:12:50 +0000

I can second Mr. Liebman’s comment about shouting matches. As any export compliance officer can tell you we’ve been called some pretty outrageous names – some that aren’t repeatable. If I had a dollar… There definitely is a wide chasm between a developers/engineers culture of openess and the governments of control. What struck me about the story was that Prof. Roth was outraged and his attorney waved a “tome” of the laws and regulations that the professor was expected to understand. He wasn’t expected to understand them but he, as the responsible party, is expected to seek out and heed the advice of a professional. He was warned and did nothing to clarify or alleviate the issue – we’ll see if facts are established otherwise. It reminds me of the Boeing case where they disregarded the advice of their counsel and the manufacturer who determined an item was ITAR.

By: John Liebman

John Liebman — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:19:32 +0000

I’ve heard this repartee many times in similar circumstances, and have refereed shouting matches all too often. Research programs on campus are accidents waiting to happen. There is an enormous culture clash between export control concerns and researchers, especially as U.S. universities and the industries that feed off of them import more and more technical investigators and academics to meet growing demand for brain power. The problem is further exacerbated by DDTC’s tendency to reach for technologies retroactively. Not a pretty picture, I’m afraid.