Justice Dept. Probes Records of High-Tech Sales to Iraq : Inquiry: The investigation focuses on allegations that officials altered documents sent to Congress. The changes may have violated the law.

The Justice Department is investigating allegations that Bush Administration officials altered records sent to Congress to disguise shipment of technology with military uses to Iraq, according to interviews and documents.

The investigation is trying to determine which officials were responsible for deleting military designations on some of the Administration-approved export licenses and whether the changes violated federal law, two sources said.

Congress requested the list as part of its examination of Administration policies that allowed Iraq to buy high-tech American goods, some of which were used to build Saddam Hussein’s military power. The deletion of some military descriptions meant that Congress did not get an accurate picture of the material licensed for sale.

The information was compiled from information at the Commerce Department, which regulates export of sensitive technology.

Two National Security Council officials supervised the compilation and production of the records for a House investigative committee last year, said two Administration officials familiar with the preparation of the material. The NSC was one of the agencies that implemented a policy, started during the Iran-Iraq war, of selling sensitive technology to Iraq.

The sources said they were aware of no evidence that the NSC officials participated in the alterations, and no one has been accused of wrongdoing.

A confidential internal Commerce Department memo indicates that high-ranking officials at the Commerce Department and the White House provided guidance in the preparation of the list for Congress, but the memo does not discuss any alterations to the list or name any officials.

The investigation centers on Commerce Department export licenses for the sale of $1.5 billion worth of high-tech goods to Iraq between 1985 and 1990. Rep. Doug Barnard Jr. (D-Ga.), chairman of the House Government Operations subcommittee on commerce, consumer and monetary affairs, sought a list of the licenses last year as part of an inquiry into whether lax controls during the Ronald Reagan and Bush administrations allowed Iraq to obtain U.S. technology used in developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The Justice Department confirmed its investigation in a letter to Barnard.

Alterations to entries were discovered after the Commerce Department turned over the list, and subcommittee staff members compared it to other information. Barnard then complained to the Commerce Department.

An internal investigation by the department’s inspector general found alterations on 68 of the 771 licenses on the list, according to a copy of the report. After removing evidence of military uses and making other changes to entries on the list, the report said the permanent files at the Commerce Department were also altered.

The most serious example cited in the report involved changing the description on licenses for $1 billion worth of trucks from “vehicles designed for military use” to “commercial utility cargo trucks,” or simply “vehicles.”

An official of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration, which oversees licensing, told the inspector general’s office that the changes were made “to clarify that the bureau does not license the sale of military trucks,” according to the report. The unidentified official said the changes were justified by a 1983 State Department letter.

The trucks were not shipped, but the inspector general’s report characterized the changes involving the vehicles as “unjustified and misleading.”

In another instance cited in the report, an exporter added a written notice to a license, cautioning that sensitive technology was being shipped to an Iraqi user “involved in military matters,” but the phrase was deleted in the document sent to Congress.

The report did not identify that case, but other Commerce Department documents indicate that it involved $140,000 worth of frequency synthesizers used to calibrate and test surveillance radar sent to an Iraqi military-electronics factory in late 1989.

In a separate memo dated Feb. 26, 1991, Dennis E. Kloske, then undersecretary of commerce for export administration, described preparation of the license list for Barnard and said: “The document also reflects Fifth Floor and White House guidance not to provide information that was not directly responsive to (Barnard’s) request.” (The Commerce Department’s executive offices are on the fifth floor.)

Kloske resigned under pressure last April after congressional testimony in which he criticized Administration policies that allowed Iraq to obtain sensitive U.S. technology.

The Commerce Department investigators did not interview officials at the White House or the NSC, according to the report.

After receiving the inspector general’s findings last summer, Barnard asked the Justice Department to open a criminal probe.

The investigation is being conducted by the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which handles cases involving government officials, according to the Justice Department letter to Barnard.

“I am informed that the investigation is still ongoing and that interviews of a number of people, including some suggested by your staff, have already been conducted or will be conducted in the near future,” W. Lee Rawls, an assistant attorney general, wrote to Barnard on Jan. 31.