PRESENT POINT POWER

Who would have the scope to find out the Malaysian Company involved in this shady deal? It can’t be Scomni – once bitten twice shy?. The image of Malaysia as a “model Islamic country” helps in the ferrying of the parts to bypass the 30 year embargo on the sale of any spare parts for the F 14s.

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Who IS Jilani Humayun and What Did He Do?

Friday, July 20, 2007 5:59 AM

ABC News says that he is "a New York man". The PR Newswire-US Newswire says that he is "a Long Island man" with at least two aliases. The Herald Tribune describes him as "a New York man" in its headline and as "a U.S. man" in the body of the story. Townhall.com has labeled him as "a Pakistani national." The AP quotes his lawyer's description as "a true New Yorker...who lives with his wife and son and has to contend with illnesses including a heart condition, diabetes, and hypertension." Deep into its story, The AP does quote the U.S. Attorney as saying that Humayun "is a citizen of Pakistan with contacts abroad and money" who should be held without bail. U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis declared that Humayun is not a flight risk upon releasing him to return to his home in Lynbrook. And I'd wager that it's a really nice home that he and his family are packing up as quickly as possible in order to get him to a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S. Maybe he'll go to the country where he 'allegedly' sent the jet parts: Iran.
With Townhall and The AP finally giving him some specific demographic identity and with his name, I'd say that it's a safe bet to say that he's just another jihadist muslim, hellbent on and driven to the destruction of the United States, western civilization, and all things and peoples not islamic. And since we now know that he's not a U.S. citizen, despite the fact that he's been living here since 1981, and that ICE has been one of the investigating agencies, can we assume that he's also an illegal alien on top of it all?
Humayun is charged with eleven counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act as well as conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering, punishable by up to 150 years in prison upon conviction. Let's get back to basics and keep it simple. Even if he receives maximum sentencing, at age 59 and in poor poor pitiable health, he wouldn't be in prison long. But I don't want to us (US) to pay for one day of upkeep on this man. Depending on his citizenship and immigration statuses, he is guilty of treason and/or espionage and should be executed in the public square on worldwide television, especially Al Jazeera. And since he has admitted to investigators what he did, I see no real reason to continue with the "allegedly" charade. I'm sure that Joyce London, his pinheaded attorney would vehemently disagree, saying that he's just a pitiably sick, good American family man who has only gone to Pakistan once since coming here. So, Joyce, how many times has he gone to Malaysia, Iran, or other enemy states? And how many emails, telephone calls, telexes, text messages, letters have carried communications between this avaricious a**hole and unknown people in places unknown? You are the lunatic lunkheaded lawyer. I hope that you enjoy the blood money he's paying your sorry shyster self.
Again, let's get back to basics and keep it simple. And this is assuming, of course, that his admissions to investigators and prosecutors are proof of his guilt. He is not guilty of criminal activities. He is guilty of acts of war. And I hate to keep reminding you people, that despite the fact that life here in America goes on pretty much normally, we are at war with a dangerous and deadly enemy who wants us all in burkhas or graves.

= = = =the slack control and "one-eye closed" syndrome

For decades the US Navy's most formidable fighter aircraft was the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, immortalized in the 1986 Tony Scott-Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer film Top Gun.United States imposed an embargo on the sale of any spare parts for the F 14s when the Ayatollahs overthrown the Shah.

The Ultimate Export Control

Why F-14s are being put into a shredder.
by Reuben F. Johnson07/23/2007, Volume 012, Issue 42
John Walker Jr. of the infamous Walker family spy ring was once asked how he had been able to pass some of the nation's most heavily guarded communications codes to the KGB for so long without being detected--almost 18 years, until he was caught in 1985. Walker's answer was both revealing and troubling.

"Kmart has better security than the Navy," was his response.
Fast-forward to 2007 and you wonder if that situation has changed much in the last 22 years. For decades the Navy's most formidable fighter aircraft was the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, immortalized in the 1986 Tony Scott-Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer film Top Gun. In its day the F-14 was the king of the hill in fighter aircraft technology. Its Hughes AN/AWG-9 radar could track up to 24 targets simultaneously. Its AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile, also made by Hughes, could shoot down aerial targets at a then-unthinkable range of 80 miles. This technology was considered to be of such strategic importance that only one foreign purchaser was ever allowed to procure the F-14: the Imperial Iranian Air Force that existed during the reign of the shah, which bought 79 of them.

When the monarchy fell in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the ensuing takeover of the U.S. Embassy severed all relations with Washington, the United States imposed an embargo on the sale of any spare parts for the F 14s. This was intended to keep the ayatollahs from maintaining and operating their arsenal of American-made warplanes.

Iran's aerospace industry and intelligence services then embarked on what has become a nearly three-decade shell game of trying to find ways to covertly or illegally procure parts for the F-14. Not surprisingly, incidents of spares "disappearing" from storehouses at Subic Base in the Philippines and other Navy installations worldwide became regular occurrences.

Numerous middlemen operating from shadowy front companies ordered parts for the Iranian Tomcats. Some of these fronts have ended up in the U.S. courts over the years, but the Iranians have had far more successes than failures in getting their hands on what they need. During Iran's air show last year--27 years after the embargo was first imposed--several Iranian aerospace enterprises openly displayed overhauled components for the F-14 that they manage to keep acquiring parts for up to this day.

As long as the F-14 remained in U.S. Navy service, American defense plants would keep churning out spare parts for them--and therefore there would always be a pool of components available for the Iranians to try to get their hands on. However, once the aircraft was retired and the production lines shut down, conventional wisdom held that this would make it much harder for Iranian agents to get the spares they need. Exactly the opposite has turned out to be the case.

Last year, the F-14s were retired, and the remaining aircraft and spare parts stockpiles were moved from U.S. Navy inventory to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). It is the DLA's job to try to sell used military hardware in pieces or as scrap in order to recoup some of the taxpayer's money. There are some components in the F 14 that would be common with other airframes of the same era and could be sold for that purpose. (The F-14's TF-30 engine, for that matter, is also used in the F-111, still being flown, though not for much longer by the Royal Australian Air Force.) On the other hand, some parts are unique to the F-14 and would need to be kept under lock and key and sold only for scrap. Unfortunately in the case of the F-14, no one seems to have been paying attention to what parts are being sold, and to whom.

The recent history of F-14 spares sold from DLA's boneyards and excess stockpiles suggests that some real-world incarnation of the lovably incompetent Sergeant "I see nothing" Schultz from TV's Hogan's Heroes has been in charge of verifying the destination of these spare parts.

In one publicized incident, the paperwork from an Iranian agent for illegally purchased F-14 parts passed under the DLA's nose, but the parts were then seized by Customs agents before they could be shipped to Iran. The spares were sent back to DLA, which, instead of putting them under guard, promptly sold them to another middleman working on behalf of the Iranians. The fact that these spare parts were now identified as being on Iran's wish list should have warranted some extra scrutiny when a second buyer came looking for them. What's more, the Customs Service evidence tags from the first seizure were still attached to these items--they were literally red-flagged--which makes the act of selling them to a second Iranian agent inexcusable.

This all stands in stark contrast to the bureaucratic zeal with which the U.S. government controls military technology flowing into the United States. Try importing foreign military spare parts and other materiel from foreign nations into the United States, and U.S. government oversight suddenly becomes ruthlessly efficient.

U.S. companies that operate as Foreign Materiel Acquisition (FMA) agents currently purchase millions of dollars' worth of foreign military hardware and spare parts each year. Some items are used for training U.S. forces, while others are used to equip the newly established and coalition-trained security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In every one of these sales, there are reams of paperwork--including end-user certificates, copies of the company's U.S. government-issued license that permits it to trade in armaments--all of which must be properly authenticated, notarized, and signed by government officials on both sides.

Since 9/11, Washington has also put considerable pressure on foreign governments to tighten their regulation of export arms sales--pressure that has had palpable impact on these FMA contractors--even though they are buying for the same U.S. government that is exerting the pressure in the first place.

"I have seen the approval process here for importing [foreign military] items to the United States lengthen from three to six to twelve to sometimes more than eighteen months," says one U.S. FMA company representative based in Eastern Europe. "When we complain about these never-ending delays, the excuse we always receive from the local officials we deal with is, 'Well, this is the way the American government has told us we now have to work with you.'"

This may even have a ripple effect of extending the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan--a presence Congress is now clamoring to truncate. "You do not have to be a math wizard to figure out that if it takes a 12-month paper chase to deliver equipment needed to train the new Afghan army, then this consequently means extending the U.S. troop commitment there," says the company rep.

The standards could not be further apart--one for those who want to take military hardware out of the United States (sometimes under false pretenses) and another for those who are importing foreign military hardware into the United States legally. But in the case of the F-14, the Pentagon has decided not even to try and address the deficiencies in its oversight procedures.

Instead, a $3.7 million contract has been given to a St. Louis-based firm, TRI-Rinse, to destroy the F 14s and other military equipment that could be of use to Iran and other hostile nations. Using portable heavy machinery, TRI-Rinse's personnel literally grind the Tomcats into unrecognizable chunks of metal. "One of the ways to make sure that no one will ever use an F-14 again is to cut them into little 2-by-2-foot bits," said the company's vice president.

This scorched-earth, Visigoth process is not only ridiculously expensive, but it raises the question of what the government employees in charge of overseeing the DLA's considerable inventory of weaponry are doing to earn their taxpayer-funded salaries if they cannot keep the "bad guys" from making off with it.

Moreover, grinding is not a viable long-term solution to slipshod export controls. You cannot shred or pulverize everything in the United States that is of potential value to a rogue nation--think of nuclear technology, biomedical research, or advanced computer programming. Smashing our used weaponry and other know-how into bits is no answer to the problem. Even a Kmart security guard could tell you that.

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Jul 19, 9:20 PM EDT

Weapons Export Arrest Made in New York

By LARRY NEUMEISTER; Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- A Pakistani national was arrested Thursday on allegations he illegally shipped weapons to Malaysia, including fighter jet parts likely to end up in Iran

Jilani Humayun, 59, was charged with 11 counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act, one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The charges carry up to 150 years in prison upon conviction.

In court papers, federal authorities said Humayun formed a company, Vash International Inc., in January 2004 to export defense equipment including tanks, guided missiles and rocket launchers. They said that he used Vash 11 times between January 2004 and May 2006 to export to an unidentified company in Malaysia F-5 and F-14 fighter jet parts and Chinook helicopter parts.

Prosecutors said Humayun admitted to federal agents that he did not know who the end users were for the items that were shipped. They said he also admitted that he undervalued the shipments on his export paperwork so the company could avoid paying Malaysian customs duties. U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia said it is well documented in public reports that the sole customer of F-14 parts is the Iranian Air Force.

"The details of the crime with which Jilani Humayun is charged are particularly disturbing, as he is alleged to have knowingly shipped technology as dangerous as F-5 and F-14 parts to Malaysia without any regard for the ultimate destination," Garcia said.

The director of the criminal investigative service in the U.S. Department of Defense, Charles W. Beardall, called the illegal export of U.S. military technology and weapons "one of the most significant and growing threats to our national security."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis denied a request by a prosecutor Thursday to order Humayun held without bail. He set bond at $500,000 and ordered him detained at his home in Lynbrook after Humayun's lawyer, Joyce London, described her client as a "true New Yorker" who rarely traveled and had visited Pakistan only once since coming to the United States in 1981.

The defense lawyer said Humayun lived with his wife and son and had to contend with illnesses including a heart condition, diabetes and high blood pressure.