House Panel Chairman Asks Clinton for Iraq Documents

The chairman of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee asked President Clinton on Friday to provide the panel with documents withheld by the George Bush Administration concerning illegal U.S. loans to Iraq.

Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.) had spearheaded congressional attacks on the Bush Administration’s support of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein before the Persian Gulf War.

In a letter to Clinton, he asked the new President to “take a personal interest in ensuring that the Banking Committee’s investigation (of the Iraq loans) receives the utmost cooperation from the executive branch.”

Gonzalez asked Clinton to require the White House and federal agencies to “immediately turn over” all the documents which were denied by Bush Administration officials. He also urged the new Administration to halt any efforts by outgoing Bush officials to tamper with or destroy government documents.

“I am wholly committed to the principle that the citizens of this nation have the right to know how and why their government decided to assist Saddam Hussein, regardless of the embarrassment it may cause the persons that made such decisions,” Gonzalez told Clinton. “I am confident that you share this belief.”

Bush Administration officials refused to provide the documents on grounds that their release could harm national security. In addition, Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and former Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher declined to testify before Congress last October on the politically charged issue of U.S. technology exports to Iraq before the Gulf War.

The documents the committee is seeking are related mainly to Italy’s Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, whose Atlanta office illegally loaned Iraq $5.5 billion in the years before the Gulf War. Gonzalez and other Democratic lawmakers have alleged that Iraq used the money to develop its military and nuclear arsenals.

Most of the documents are classified, said a committee aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. The aide said many of the documents are related to Canadian Gerald Bull, the alleged designer of a long-range “supergun” built by the Iraqis to deliver nuclear weapons.

Bull was found slain outside his Brussels apartment in 1990, shortly before British customs officers seized large steel tubes destined for Iraq that they said could be used to construct a giant gun barrel.

Under Bush, the White House refused to provide any classified documents related to Iraq, the committee aide said.