Corporate & Foreign Interests Behind W.H. Push to Transfer U.S. Nuclear Tech to

On February 19, 2019, the Committee on Oversight and Reform issued an interim staff report prepared for Chairman Elijah E. Cummings after multiple whistleblowers came forward to warn about efforts inside the White House to rush the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

As explained in the first interim staff report, under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, the United States may not transfer nuclear technology to a foreign country without the approval of Congress in order to ensure that the agreement meets nine nonproliferation requirements to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. These agreements, commonly known as “123 Agreements,” are typically negotiated with career experts at the National Security Council (NSC) and the Departments of State, Defense, and Energy.

The “Gold Standard” for 123 Agreements is a commitment by the foreign country not to enrich or re-process nuclear fuel and not to engage in activities linked to the risk of nuclear proliferation. During the Obama Administration, Saudi Arabia refused to agree to the Gold Standard. During the Trump Administration, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) went further, proclaiming: “Without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

There is strong bipartisan opposition to abandoning the “Gold Standard” for Saudi Arabia in any future 123 Agreement. For example, in a letter to President Trump, Republican Senators Marco Rubio, Todd Young, Cory Gardner, Rand Paul, and Dean Heller wrote:
Given your Administration’s ongoing efforts to press the Iranian regime—in the words of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—to “stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing,” we have long believed that it is therefore critical and necessary for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to accept and uphold this “Gold Standard” for responsible nuclear behavior.

The Committee’s first interim staff report explained that whistleblowers inside the White House expressed alarm about corporate interests attempting to use their influence with the Trump Administration to bypass these concerns in order to serve their own financial interests in building nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia. The Committee received documents bolstering the whistleblowers’ accounts and showing frequent communications between these corporate interests and Trump Administration officials.

This report—the Committee’s second interim staff report on this issue—is based on more than 60,000 pages of new documents obtained by the Committee since it issued its first interim staff report in February. These documents have been produced in response to requests that Chairman Cummings made to a host of outside companies about their involvement with these efforts.

Overall, the new documents obtained by the Committee reveal that, with regard to Saudi Arabia, the Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policymaking from corporate and foreign interests. The documents show the Administration’s willingness to let private parties with close ties to the President wield outsized influence over U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia. These new documents raise serious questions about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the President’s friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

New documents obtained by the Committee reveal that contacts between private commercial interests and high-level Trump Administration officials were more frequent, wide-ranging, and influential than previously known—and continue to the present day.

Missing from this second interim staff report are documents from the Trump Administration itself. The White House has completely refused to cooperate with the Committee’s investigation and has not produced a single document in response to the Committee’s requests. Unfortunately, for the most part, the federal agencies involved have followed suit.

Although the White House has refused to produce any documents in this investigation, the Committee has obtained some communications to and from White House officials from outside sources. Based on these communications, it appears that multiple White House officials used their personal email and text accounts rather than their official government accounts. These actions not only potentially violate White House policy and the Presidential Records Act, but they raise serious questions about whether records of the Trump Administration’s actions are being properly retained for use by investigators and others.