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DoD News Briefing

Mr. Bacon: Good afternoon.

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Q: Could you give us an update on the investigation into the handling of the laser incident on the West Coast?

A: Yeah. Basically that is, I believe, nearing completion. I don't know how much longer it will take.

One of the things that we've done or that the Navy has done in order to complete this investigation is to test a series of lasers, to compare their signatures, their impact, their performance characteristics, etc. They have either completed those tests or they're in the final stages of completing those tests, and then they'll analyze their findings. At some point, we'll make a report.

Q: In terms of the medical aspects, have the doctors determined, apparently they were treated in San Antonio, whether the Navy lieutenant was in fact injured, suffered eye injuries as the result of a laser?

A: There are contradictory reports on the cause of the eye injury and that's one of the issues that will be resolved in the final report, if it can be resolved. There may be issues here that cannot be resolved, but we are attempting to pull everything together and finish it all at once.

Q: The Navy has said that they're not going to release the photograph showing a beam of light coming from the bridge of the ship, which is contrary to what Secretary Cohen said would happen. Has he changed his mind on that, or has he been overruled by the Office of Naval Intelligence?

A: I don't believe the Secretary is aware that the Navy has said something different about his plans.

Q: Can I clarify the word contradictory? You said contradictory reports from medical people about whether there was exposure? Or contradictory eye witnesses? You said contradictory reports.

A: The medical conclusion is inconclusive. How's that? In other words, the doctors have reached different conclusions about what happened. One of the things they'll attempt to do is reconcile these different diagnoses. It may be easy to do, I don't know. But they're at various stages, and this... I don't think there's anything particularly nefarious about this, in fact there's nothing nefarious about it. They were examined at different times in different places by doctors with different levels of expertise. Therefore, there were several different descriptions of what happened to them and they are not all on the same track. So one of the issues will be to try to sort this out.

Q: Some doctors think they did sustain some injury due to a laser...

A: It's a possibility. But as I say, the medical diagnosis on this is not conclusive.

.................

Q: The New York Times reported today that 46 super computers have been exported from the United States to China. Is the Pentagon concerned that those computers are assisting China's nuclear and other weapons development programs?

A: First of all let me explain what the law is. Starting in 1995, we liberalized our policy for exporting computers to China and Russia. Previously, licenses had been required for most, if not all, exports. We determined that certain really low performance, so-called super computers or high performance computers, could be exported without specific licenses under a general export license. If they went to commercial or academic uses. All computers exported for military use require an export license. But if an exporter has a credible belief that the computer is going for non-military purposes, it can be exported without a specific license.

What we're talking about here are computers up to a speed of, get ready for this, 7,000 MTOPS, which stands for millions of theoretical operations per second. I want to put this into perspective. A pentium computer does about 400 MTOPS, runs at about 400 MTOPS, so the one you might have on your desk is 400 MTOPS. The cutoff here between requiring a license for commercial purposes and not requiring a license is 7,000 MTOPS. The most sophisticated, high powered computers in operation in the United States today are well over 100,000 MTOPS, so that sort of frames the range of computers we're talking about here.

Under this policy, computers are being exported to China and to Russia, as a matter of fact, without specific export licenses. We do not have, that I'm aware of, information that these are being misused for military purposes.

Q: Both China and Russia?

A: You asked me about China. I believe that we do not have... The story said that some officials are suspicious that some of these may be misused but they don't have direct evidence. We do not have evidence that they've been misused. We've been following these fairly closely. But we will investigate all charges of misuse of these computers because we do take the new policy seriously.

Q: If you don't require them to get an export license, how can you track...

A: They have to maintain a paper trail of to whom they export these, and they have to be able to support their contention that they have a credible belief that the computers are being used for commercial or academic purposes, not for military purposes.

There are several things that can happen here. The first is that if they have any questions about who is buying these computers and how they're going to be used, they can come to us and talk to people in the government who may have knowledge about the purchaser. Second, because they have to maintain a paper trail of these transactions if questions arise, government people from the Commerce Department and elsewhere can go to them and ask them to show how they reach their conclusion. They can then check on the facts that they've reviewed.