Iraq Arms Aid Traced to U.S. Firms : Persian Gulf: A lawmaker says American companies sold key technology. He contradicts a White House report.

Investigators have found evidence that American firms provided crucial technology for Iraq’s weapons program, contradicting a classified report to Congress by the Bush Administration that exonerated U.S. companies, the chairman of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee said Monday.

Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.), the committee chairman, said his investigators have identified 13 U.S. firms that supplied equipment for an Iraqi missile program code-named Project 395 and that more are under scrutiny.

Gonzalez said the panel’s findings contradict the previously undisclosed report the Administration sent Congress in September. This report said U.S. firms did not contribute directly to Iraq’s arms programs, according to Gonzalez.

“The report to Congress is clearly inaccurate. In fact, numerous U.S. companies provided critical support to Iraqi weapons programs, including missiles,” Gonzalez said in a letter to President Bush.

The chairman also said that Secretary of State James A. Baker III has hampered the committee probe by refusing to ask the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency for documents naming U.S. firms that supplied military equipment to Iraq.

In inspections over the last year, the United Nations and the agency obtained thousands of pages of documents about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, including evidence that American companies had played key roles.

The Administration has not sought the names of U.S. suppliers, despite public offers by the international agencies to provide the lists, according to a U.N. official.

“I thought every government would be keen to know what was in those documents, but apparently that is not the case,” said the official, who asked not to be named. “It is my understanding (that) several governments in Europe have requested the names of their manufacturers and suppliers and have been provided them.”

A State Department official said that he had not determined whether the names of U.S. firms had been sought. A White House spokesman had no comment on the letter.

In all, the U.S. government approved sales to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of technology with both commercial and military uses between 1985 and 1990. Congress and others have criticized the Bush Administration for approving the sale of sensitive equipment that helped Iraq and are seeking tighter export control laws.

House Banking investigators began examining the involvement of U.S. firms as part of an inquiry into the activities of the Atlanta branch of Italy’s Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. Last spring, the branch manager and four Iraqi government officials were indicted in connection with $4 billion in allegedly unauthorized loans to Iraq.

A federal task force in Atlanta also is investigating the bank’s role in financing Iraq’s worldwide arms procurement network. According to an internal U.S. Customs Service memo, the branch “is suspected to have provided loans to various firms for export to Iraq of missile related technology for use in the Condor II project.”

The Condor II, which a German intelligence report said was code-named Project 395, was an effort by Iraq to develop a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead at a range of more than 600 miles.

Iraq tried to disguise purchases for the Condor by saying that the material was going to be used to build a dam, according to banking committee documents. It is unclear whether the American firms knew that technology and equipment identified as bound for the dam were actually going to be used to develop the missile.

Congressional investigators said Iraqi purchasers were often military officers and that the U.S. export licenses for the Condor project identified the user as the Iraqi Technical Corps for Special Projects, which also was responsible for extending the range of Scud missiles.

Murray Waas, a special Times correspondent, contributed to this report.