An article in today’s edition of the Financial Times reports on a press conference given yesterday by John Rood, Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, where Rood discussed the recently signed Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. (Don’t go looking for a transcript at the State Department’s website; usually only Sean McCormack’s daily press briefing is posted and other special press briefings, such as Rood’s on the treaty, are not.)

Rood had a few interesting things to say. First, he said that the administration hopes to get the treaty through the Senate before the end of this year. This seems optimistic at this point with the August recess nearly upon us. Additionally, it is unclear how functional the Senate will be after the slumber party planned for the next few nights.

Second, Rood said that the State Department and the Department of Defense hoped to have “implementation procedures” in place “within six months” to determine what companies and individuals would be part of the “approved community” that could receive and disclose ITAR-controlled technical data without formal approval by the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC).

Finally, Rood more or less dashed the hopes of other countries — such as Canada and Australia — that might arguably wish to have similar treatment as the U.K. Rood said the treaty was entered into because of the “close relationship” between the U.S. and U.K. Then he said:

If other countries approach us we’d have to ask ‘Do they have the same close relationship?’ I don’t know if we’ll do anything like that or not.

I’m sure that remark was well received in Ottawa and Canberra.

Officer Ozzie Ossifer is patrolling in Vermont near the Canadian border when he witnesses a juvenile engage in an act of malicious criminal cow-tipping. He takes off after the delinquent who crosses the Canadian border. He follows the youth into Canada, his service revolver still firmly stored in his holster. Donuts and desk work have taken their toll on Officer Ossifer and the youth eludes him.

A bad day for the faithful law enforcement official becomes worse when he’s stopped by ICE as he attempts to cross back into the United States. He’s cuffed and taken away for having violated the Arms Export Control Act when he carried his service revolver into Canada without a license from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. The cow-tipper having escaped scot-free returns night after night to Vermont to terrorize the local bovine population while Officer Ossifer is on forced administrative leave.

“Nonsense,” you say. Surely the ITAR must have an exemption for this. Well, the ITAR does have an exemption for temporary exports of firearms in section 123.17, but that exemption would be of no avail to the officer in this case. Officer Ossifer made no declaration of the weapon and there was no customs inspection. Things look grim for our fictional Officer Ossifer.

However, the U.S. and Canada are working on an agreement that may protect future (and real) law enforcement officers that cross the Canadian border with their weapons. An article on the CTV website today revealed that Canada is considering a change in its Export and Import Permits Act to permit exempt imports and exports by law enforcement officers when they cross the U.S.-Canada border in the course of their official duties. Significantly this is said to be part of a reciprocal arrangement with the United States, although the United States has yet to announce that it is considering such a reciprocal arrangement.

The chief motivation appears not to be hot pursuit cases such as the one described above, but the U.S. Air Marshall program and its Canadian equivalent, the Canadian Air Carrier Protective Program. Section 123.17 of the ITAR doesn’t apply to U.S. air marshals, who instead can only export firearms without a license under section 123.18 and then only “if they are assigned abroad for extended duty.” It is, of course, safe to assume that the TSA and its air marshals have simply been ignoring the ITAR. If the CTV report is right, we can expect to see soon a revision of the ITAR to cover temporary exports of service weapons by law enforcement officers in the course of their official duties.

The Canadian Gazette notice of the proposed change in Canadian law can be found here.

Although the text of the Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty signed last week by Bush and Blair has not yet been released to the public, the Society of British Aerospace Companies has published a summary of key points of the treaty. The summary answers some of the preliminary questions that were raised by conflicting press accounts of the treaty that we previously reported here.

Of key interest are what items will be subject to the treaty. Apparently the answer to that is almost everything on the USML. According to the SABC summary:

All USML items, with a small number of exceptions for highly-sensitive technologies that will be agreed between the UK and US, will be included in the coverage of the treaty. Subject to final agreement, the exceptions are likely to relate to low-observable technology and countermeasures, “anti-tamper” technology and communication security technology.

Additionally, dual-use items on the U.S. Commerce Control List will not be subject to the treaty, whereas “dual use” items on the U.K. Strategic Export Control List would be subject to the treaty. The reason for the different treatment of U.S. and U.K. dual use items is not clear and is not explained in the summary.

The SBAC summary also provides some interesting details on the export of technical data. The treatment of technical data in the treaty will be the subject of a separate post.

Credit is due to Jim Bartlett at Northrop Grumman for finding the SBAC summary. When a text of the treaty is made available, we will post it here.

UPDATE: SBAC removed the key points summary of the treaty from its website. We have fixed the link above to point to our archive of the key points document. You can also see that document by clicking here.