Rep. Cox Demands List of Iraq’s U.S. Suppliers

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) called on the Commerce Department on Thursday to make public any sales by U.S. companies to Iraq and other “lethal enemies” in the last five years.

During a hearing convened by the House Government Operations subcommittee on commerce, consumer and monetary affairs to look into such sales, Cox asked Commerce Department officials to justify why the identities of sellers are kept private.

“There’s no one complaining when everything is going swimmingly,” Cox said in a phone interview after the hearing. “But when it came up in our hearing that (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein was able to purchase sensitive technology, people begin to ask, ‘How did this happen?’ ”

Witnesses at the hearing, including two former Defense Department officials, testified that they felt that the current export system allowed potentially aggressive nations to obtain nuclear, biological or chemical warfare technology and materials from American companies.

The subcommittee “will very likely” ask Secretary of Commerce Robert A. Mosbacher to supply a list of past sales to Iraq, Cox said.

A significant legal hurdle to Cox’s request is a section of the Export Administration Act stating that any information involving exports is confidential unless the company selling the material or service permits disclosure, or the secretary of commerce deems that withholding the information is contrary to the national interest.

The subcommittee could receive, on a confidential basis, the list of previous sales to Iraq if a request was made by the panel’s chairman or ranking Republican member. The information could not be publicized unless the entire subcommittee agreed that failure to disclose was contrary to the nation’s policies, security or other interests.

Cox said it appears that the provision is a “shield against disclosing information to the Pentagon regarding the particulars of potentially sensitive technology exports.”

The Commerce Department wants to “sell, sell, sell to whomever they can,” Cox said, adding that in some cases the Pentagon is not given access to export information it requests.

He said his call for disclosure would help balance what is now a system skewed in favor of profits and against close public scrutiny.

“There is an enormous and powerful lobby . . . promoting the sale of potentially sensitive technologies to our potential enemies,” Cox said. “There isn’t a lobby for the good of the American national security because there isn’t any money in that.”

Publishing the identities of U.S. exporters and the goods they deliver would “make up for that obvious bias in lobbying here in the Capitol,” Cox said. Public condemnation of companies involved in questionable sales could “act as a discipline to the conduct of those companies.”