Make Iraq Trade List Public, Panel Says : Congress: Subcommittee gives the White House until Wednesday to release names of U.S. companies that did business with the Mideast nation.

A congressional subcommittee has given the White House until Wednesday to make public a secret list of U.S. companies that sold technology and other goods with military potential to Iraq or the committee itself will go public with the list, according to a California congressman and other sources.

The ultimatum by the House subcommittee on commerce, consumer and monetary affairs was given to National Security Council officials late this week, according to U.S. Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park). It was preceded by months of debate between the committee and Commerce Department officials, who have resisted releasing the list.

Other sources said that Robert Gates, deputy director of the National Security Council, is leaning toward releasing the list but that a final decision has not been made. Gates’ spokesman declined to return calls Friday.

The Commerce Department issued export licenses to U.S. companies for the sale of $1.5 billion of dual-use technology to Iraq between 1985 and 1990. The House subcommittee obtained a list of those export licenses after subpoenaing the information from Commerce in late September.

When he provided the information, Dennis Kloske, Commerce’s undersecretary for Export Administration, told the subcommittee that the names of the companies should not be revealed because the firms were given assurances of confidentiality when they applied for federal export licenses.

He cited a section of the Export Administration Act which provides that the names of companies receiving export licenses be kept confidential unless it has been determined that there is a “national security interest” in disclosure.

Martinez and other members of the subcommittee, including Los Angeles Democrat Henry A. Waxman, maintain that there is a national security interest in disclosing what goods were sold to Iraq and who the sellers were. Waxman said disclosure would prove more embarrassing to the Commerce Department than to individual companies.

Martinez also contended that U.S. policy “is the big issue. . . . We want to know who was selling what, to who and why.”

But Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) said it would be unfair to many companies to make the list public. “There is a McCarthyesque aspect to releasing the names of firms who traded with Iraq. Most did so by carefully following the rules and in many cases did so with the encouragement of the Department of Commerce,” he said.

Meanwhile, the California State World Trade Commission has launched a lobbying effort to keep the names secret. Commission Chairman Robert T. Monagan, former Speaker of the California Assembly, sent a letter to every California congressman and several other influential congressmen advocating that confidentiality be maintained.

Disclosure “could have a chilling effect on U.S. trade,” Monagan wrote in his Feb. 11 letter. “It is grossly unfair to hold business executives responsible for not correctly guessing changes in America’s foreign policy. They cannot know whether one of today’s allies may become tomorrow’s enemy.”

He was referring to the fact that the Commerce Department and the State Department encouraged increased trade with Iraq in the 1980s as part of a “tilt” toward Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war and in an attempt to woo Iraq away from the Soviet Union, its longtime ally.

But others contend that disclosure would provide information needed to assess how much the United States helped to arm Iraq. “I think it is unconscionable that the American public cannot know how much American exports have increased Saddam Hussein’s strategic potential,” said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

He dismissed arguments that releasing detailed information about sales to Iraq would hurt the competitive position of American companies. “The deals are over and the money is in the bank,” Milhollin said.

Martinez said he thought disclosure of the information would be useful in facilitating a review of current U.S. export policies, particularly in regard to Iran and Syria, “either one of which is a potential Iraq.”