Bill Root: The Engineer of Order in Export Control

Across eight decades in public service, Bill Root helped build the intellectual scaffolding of the modern export-control system, insisting that coherence, not coercion, was the true measure of policy strength. He celebrated his 102nd birthday in September, still corresponding with colleagues about harmonizing global control regimes.

Born in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1923, Root grew up during the Depression “in a family that measured wealth by the number of books in the house.” During the summer of 1941, between his freshman and sophomore years at Colorado College, he shipped out as an ordinary seaman aboard an oil tanker running between New England and Texas. “Four hours at a time, I stood lookout from the prow,” he recalled. Only later did he learn that German submarines were sinking American ships in those same waters in retaliation for U.S. Lend-Lease shipments to Britain. “We lucked out—no torpedoes, just exhaustion.”

From 1942 to 1946, Root served in the U.S. Navy, training in radar maintenance at Northwestern, Harvard, MIT, and a U.S. Navy facility in Hawaii before deployment on six destroyer escorts in the Pacific Fleet. During a typhoon that rocked his ship forty-five degrees each way—just short of capsizing—he repaired the inoperative surface search radar “holding onto anything solid just to stand up.” Two of his squadron’s six ships were later struck by Kamikazes; his, he said, was “spared by luck and wiring.”

Following the war, Root attended the Russian Institute at Columbia University (1946–1948). Like many veterans, he expressed gratitude for the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany: “Without Russia’s stand on the eastern front, many of us would not have survived.”

The Birth of Export Controls

In 1946, Britain’s export of Rolls Royce aero gas-turbine engine technology to the Soviet Union—justified as “commercial”—demonstrated to Root the enduring risk of dual-use transfers. “Technology transfer,” he said, “is forever.” The episode led to the 1951 creation of COCOM, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls, which aligned NATO and Japan in restricting militarily significant exports to Communist countries.

Seventy years later, in October 2023, Root tried unsuccessfully to block a U.S. initiative at Wassenaar (COCOM’s successor) that would have loosened controls on aero-engine production technology. “Such controls remain in the MTCR lists,” he noted, “but the logic that justified them has been forgotten.”

From the Bureau of the Budget to “Mr. COCOM”

Root began his government career in 1948 at the Bureau of the Budget, where “the phone rang and you answered, ‘Executive Office of the President.’” Feeling unqualified to audit diplomats without field experience, he transferred to the State Department, serving in Germany (1952–1955) with the U.S. High Commission, tasked with demobilizing the occupation bureaucracy—“by the sixth review I declared my own job redundant,” he said.

In Copenhagen (1959–1963) he supervised end-use checks on controlled exports, calling it “the practical education of a lifetime.”  

By 1964, Root was chief of U.S. delegations to COCOM, mastering the balance of political control and technical precision. “Defense wanted to hold everything; Commerce wanted to sell everything. State tried to keep the allies together,” he observed.   He became known in Paris as “Mr. COCOM,” the American who “could quote every comma.” “You don’t need to know how a gas turbine works,” he said. “You need to know what difference it makes if the other side gets it.”

Pipeline Sanctions and Principle

In 1980, Root negotiated with European allies to resolve export disputes that threatened NATO unity, paving the way for President Reagan’s repeal of pipeline sanctions on Soviet gas equipment. When mid-level officials attempted to re-impose the sanctions in 1983, Root resigned rather than comply. “Sometimes,” he wrote, “the only way to be heard is to leave.” Within forty-eight hours, the re-imposition was canceled.

Visionary of Multilateral Reform

Root’s influence extended to the creation of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 1987, where he secured consistency with COCOM’s prior list. He later exposed a gap in U.S. implementation of “missile production technology,” pointing out that it was not formally added until 2021—a delay that, he warned, “invited retaliation, which came three years later.”

Magnum Opus: Single File Multilateral Regimes

Root’s final intellectual legacy—his magnum opus—is his ongoing draft paper, Single File Multilateral Regimes. Drawing inspiration from the Obama–Gates “Four Singles” export control reform (a 2010 initiative proposing a single licensing agency, IT system, enforcement structure, and control list), Root advances the unfulfilled fourth objective: a single global control list.  “The multiple U.S. agencies could not agree on a single agency to do this,” Root wrote. “However, despite that failure, it should be possible to agree on a single control list.”

He proposed integrating the Wassenaar Munitions List, Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Parts I and II, the Australia Group (AG), and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) into one harmonized structure using a common vocabulary.   “A single multilateral list must include an order of review,” he explained, “ranking each regime under those above and those below—similar to the present U.S. Munitions List review, making the CCL unnecessary.”

Root’s proposed scheme reflects his insistence on coherence:

• All regimes alphabetized by concise, one-line entries.
• Items numbered sequentially, with duplicate numbering permitted when topics overlap.
• Unnumbered lists, such as the 90 chemicals in AG, assigned numerical order (AG 1–90).
• Subcategories limited to a single line.
• Only two hierarchical levels (I and II), avoiding a third “which would complicate order of review.”

He added dryly, “The above requires so many deviations from regime texts that it would be desirable to have many reviewers. If you could find even one, that would be a great improvement.”  

RPTAC Icon

Root’s zeal for textual precision extended to his decades involvement with the Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee (RPTAC). There, he dissected the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) line by line, often reading corrections aloud. When officials invoked “policy flexibility,” Root replied, “Flexibility is not a substitute for grammar.”

He continued to attend RPTAC public sessions into his second century, where his methodical questioning became legendary. In one 2019 meeting, he challenged the definition of “emerging technologies” under §772.1:   “If you define them by what they aren’t,” he warned, “you’ll regulate the dictionary.”

“Over the years, Bill Root has paid an unparalleled amount of meticulous attention to the Export Administration Regulations and its amendments, assessed them, and communicated his assessments to BIS, “ said Hillary Hess, former Chief of the Regulatory Policy Division, Office of Exporter Services.  “At this point, his efforts will remain unparalleled - no one can catch up to him now!”

These exchanges ended this year when the BIS, under Deputy Assistant Secretary Jeffrey Kessler, ended public participation in RPTAC meetings, closing a long-standing tradition of openness that Root had personified.