Frank Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan in 1987 to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and is now Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy.

The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), has been brought forward again to seek ratification after being rejected by President Reagan in 1982. If enacted, this will be one of the most critical agreements of this century. It would give control to an organization, currently under several investigations for corruption, the power to regulate seven-tenths of the world's surface area and the power to levy international taxes. This is a treaty you should really know about:

Gabrielle Reilly: Frank, has much changed in the Law of the Sea Treaty since President Ronald Reagan refused to ratify it in 1982?

Frank Gaffney: The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (commonly known as the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST) that Ronald Reagan refused to sign is exactly the same treaty as the one the Senate is being asked to approve today. It has not been amended or otherwise formally altered since 1982. To be sure, President Clinton reached an accord called "The Agreement" in 1994 that purports to address some of President Reagan's concerns. Since the Agreement does not actually replace or modify the relevant sections of LOST, however, the Treaty is still fatally flawed and objectionable on national security, sovereignty and legal grounds.

Gabrielle Reilly: If ratified, will LOST interfere with President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative which allows for the intercepting of ships engaging in terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction?

Frank Gaffney: One of the most important post-9/11 efforts made to counter terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction is President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Dozens of nations have agreed to join in monitoring and, if necessary, intercepting and boarding ships on the high seas in the event they are suspected of engaging in one or both of these threatening activities.

Unfortunately, LOST does not provide for these as reasons which one can under the Treaty engage in such interceptions. To the contrary, LOST establishes that the transport of arms is a perfectly legitimate activity.

Moreover, several nations - among them China and India - have already said they consider PSI to be illegal under LOST. And it is a safe bet that, if the United States becomes subject to this treaty, PSI will be taken up by the Law of the Sea Tribunal and almost certainly will be found to violate the Treaty. Such an outcome would, of course, be completely contrary to our national security interests and unacceptable.


Gabrielle Reilly: Would this Law of the SEA Treaty remove American citizens' right to vote on decisions that are made on national security, economical, and environmental issues around our coast lines, and hand them to other countries?

Frank Gaffney: The Law of the Sea Treaty created a supranational organization to regulate what is done with and under the international seabeds. This organization, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), has a judiciary - the Law of the Sea Tribunal - with the ability to issue edicts concerning not only the seabeds, but the waters and even the airspace above them. In fact, it has even asserted its jurisdiction over decisions made by member states about activities on their own sovereign soil.

Decisions in most of LOST's agencies - and especially its Tribunal - will be made on the basis of majority rule. Each country will have one vote. Should the United States become a member, its vote would count no more than those of, say, Fiji or Benin. And even that American vote would only count if the U.S. were one of the countries represented at the time - by no means a certainty, since many LOST entities, including the Tribunal, have rotating memberships.

In any event, given the nature of this and other UN organizations, the U.S. is sure to be outvoted on most matters in which it has strong interests. It was precisely for this reason that the Treaty became so unsatisfactory to President Reagan; our concerns were disregarded, dismissed or simply voted down.


Gabrielle Reilly: Will the LOST require us to give away some of our nation's sensitive national intelligence information, perhaps making us more vulnerable to attack?

Frank Gaffney: LOST requires member states to provide information about the seabeds that could have considerable import for our national security. For instance, if an American company wishes to do mining or oil or gas exploration, it would have to submit detailed data about the area in which the activity would occur. If the area were on or near the U.S. continental shelf, such data could well provide an enemy with strategically invaluable insights into undersea access routes that could be used to attack some of the millions of Americans who live on or near our coasts.


Gabrielle Reilly: Do you see any promising aspects to the Law of the Sea Treaty?

Frank Gaffney: The most desirable aspects of the Law of the Sea Treaty pertain to navigational rights. Those provisions, however, are already enshrined in existing international law and customary practice. In fact, the United States enjoys the benefits of being party to these arrangements without being subject to either the Law of the Sea Tribunal or LOST's compulsory UN dispute resolution provisions - something that has been specifically rejected in the past.

Gabrielle Reilly: Is it true that the Law of the Sea Treaty would permit an international organization for the first time to levy taxes on U.S. citizens?

Frank Gaffney: The International Seabed Authority would be able to oblige the U.S. government - read, the taxpayer - to pay fees and assessments in exchange for the ISA granting its companies the right to exploit seabed resources.

The United Nations has long sought the ability to raise revenues in this manner as a means of reducing its reliance on American and other member nations' dues to sustain the UN's operations. In the absence of such independent means of generating revenues, these dues represent a real check - if a singular one - on this and other so-called world bodies' corruption, overreach and interference with U.S. sovereignty.

Against the backdrop of the burgeoning Iraq Oil-for-Food Program scandal, it is hard to imagine a more ill-advised idea than to establish the precedent of certainly undisciplined, and probably unaccountable, revenue streams for the UN and its institutional offspring. This is especially so given that it is not clear how the government would obtain reimbursement from the companies whose activities would give rise to these taxes.

End Of Interview

Thanks very much for the interview Frank. For more on Frank Gaffney please visit the Center for Security Policy.