U.S. Arms May Have Been Wrongly Sold

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Surplus American weapons that were supposed to be scrapped could instead have been sold to foreign countries, including China, a U.S. defense official conceded.

"Certainly that is possible, but I have no knowledge of it," the official told reporters Tuesday, speaking on the condition that he not be identified.

He made the comment after U.S. News & World Report magazine and CBS News said they would report this weekend that such weapons are routinely sold.

"Millions (of dollars) in surplus Pentagon weapons found their way into the hands of foreign buyers, particularly in China," the two news organizations said in a statement about their coming report.

"It is nothing less than a national scandal -- the U.S. military is selling surplus aircraft, weapons and parts to foreign agents and regular citizens," they said.

The defense official said an investigation in 1993 found that thousands of weapon parts that were supposed to be scrapped were misidentified by defense employees and so might have been released for sale intact.

He said there also had been criminal cases in which procedures for scrapping or for "demilitarizing" weapons or parts before their sale were deliberately violated.

The official said he doubted many obvious U.S. weapons such as tanks had been sold intact. But he said it was quite possible a tank transmission, for example, could be sold because a defense employee did not recognize it and so did not order it to be destroyed and sold only for scrap.

The official said about $300 million worth of surplus U.S. military equipment was sold last year. Besides material that was destroyed, this included items such as trucks that could be made suitable only for civilian use, he said.