After holding hearings on U.S. licensed sales to Iraq in September 1990, the House Government Operations Committee sought from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Export Administration, managed by then-Under Secretary of Commerce Dennis Kloske, a list of all U.S. dual-use exports licensed forsale to Iraq between 1985 and 1990.
As several press reports have now revealed even when the Commerce Department was confronted with clear evidence from CONSARC itself of the military purposes such furnaces could serve in Iraq it determinedly pressed for the sale to proceed.
Such an abuse occurred most recently when Commerce tried to keep the Defense Department and others from blocking the sale to Iraq of state-of-the-art furnaces useful for manufacturing ballistic missile components.