New Republic

While investigating US aid to Pakistan, Senator Edward Kennedy (D, Mass.) turned up some valuable facts about our weapons supply system. In the process he got a first-hand lesson in protocol and the bureaucratic prose he calls "boilerplate language."
It began when the State Department sent Kennedy a letter on April 20 stating that the US has not supplied any "lethal end-items" to Pakistan since October 1970: "Nothing has been delivered following this decision nor is anything in the pipeline under this decision." That letter came as a response to news reports that Pakistani soldiers were relying chiefly on American weapons to repress the Bengali independence movement. The department further declared that a "modest program of cash and credit sales" had been curtailed and that delivery had been stopped for other "nonlethal military end-items" (including such trivials as airplane parts and ammunition). "We have been informed by the Department of Defense that none of these items has been provided to the Pakistan government or its agents since the outbreak of fighting in East Pakistan March 25-26, and nothing is presently scheduled for such delivery."
Then on July 22 The New York Times said two Pakistani ships, the Padma and the Sunderbans, were on their way home with fresh military supplies from the US; the Sunderbans sailed from New York May 8 laden with parts for armored trucks, and the Padma was due to sail that week with aircraft, parachutes and spare parts for military equipment. When the smoke cleared, the State Department had readjusted its phrasing to agree with fact, and there resulted a "clarification" of policy. When they had spoken of "nothing in the pipeline," officiaL said, they were referring only to lethal weapons (which had been banned since 1970). Licenses for "nonlethal end-items," if issued before March 25, would still be honored. The goods on the Padma and Sunderbans had been licensed before the cut-off and were therefore fully consistent with policy. Among the nonlethal supplies aboard the Padma were 2000 rounds of .22 caliber ammunition. Later the government explained that arms-shipping licenses are good for one year, and that outstanding licenses would allow about $2.3 million in arms to flow to Pakistan until March 25, 1972—the day the last one would expire.
The official decision was not to invoke a "formal military embargo"; this was why State could not revoke the outstanding licenses for military parts; to do so• would destroy the "productive political relationship with the Government of Pakistan" and drive it to other suppliers. John Sipes, director of the office of Munitions Control at State, suggested in Kennedy's June 28 hearing that in the-phrase "nothing is presently scheduled for delivery" the Defense Department must have been using a slightly different, more technical definition of the word "delivery" than the ordinary one. Kennedy thought the phrasing was misleading; Sipes agreed that it could be.
The latest twist in events occurred at Kennedy's October 4 hearing, when the senator produced two photostat contracts signed by officers in the US Navy and 'Air Force and countersigned by Pakistani embassy officials. The Air Force document, dated April 12 at the top and June 1 at the bottom, agrees to sell Pakistan $9 million worth of airplane parts. The Navy agreement, signed by the head of the military sales branch on June 15, promises to supply $1000 worth of explosive-minesweeper cartridges. A validation stamp rates it "approved for implementation,. July 20, 1971."
Kennedy charged, and the State Department later acknowledged, that these were two of ten contracts solicited by the Defense Department and signed by Pakistani officials since March 25. It is standard procedure for branches of the military to offer to procure military goods for other governments from our own defense stocks or from commercial suppliers. These agreements, written in contractual prose as "letters of offer," are binding except "under unusual and compelling circumstances" when the US decides it must cancel. In these ten cases, the State Department says, the contracts cannot be fulfilled until the Pakistan arms freeze is lifted: they were written with that understanding. Meanwhile, the State Department has told the Pentagon (orally on July 2 and in writing August 12) to stop issuing the offers.
When newsmen questioned State Department spokesman Charles Bray III about the letters of offer, he said he was "at a loss" to explain the military's behavior. No doubt it was nothing more than a case of bureaucratic momentum. Perhaps the supply machinery has at last ground to a halt and the flow of arms to Pakistan has truly been limited to the licenses issued before March 25. But Kennedy's probing has brought to light a worrisome aspect of the military assistance program. Not only is the US a global weapons procurer, but once it has found a customer, it finds it almost impossible to give him up. Far from giving the US leverage, the policy leads to a kind of indentured servitude.