Military gear for Iran and China traced to Pentagon

The US military has sold forbidden equipment at least a half-dozen times to middlemen for countries – including Iran and China – who exploited security flaws in the Defence Department’s surplus auctions.

In one case, federal investigators said, contraband made it to Iran, a country US president George Bush branded part of an “axis of evil.".

In that instance, a Pakistani arms broker convicted of exporting US missile parts to Iran resumed business after his release from prison.

He purchased Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran from a US company that had bought them in a Pentagon surplus sale.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, speaking on condition of anonymity, say those parts made it to Iran.

Federal investigators fear Iran is within easy reach of a top priority on its shopping list: parts for the precious fleet of F-14 Tomcat fighter jets the United States let Iran buy in the 1970s when it was an ally.

A Defence Department official, Fred Baillie, said his agency followed procedures.

“The fact that those individuals chose to violate the law and the fact that the customs people caught them really indicates that the process is working,” said Baillie, the Defence Logistics Agency’s executive director of distribution.