Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Recommendation 5.19: The Bureau of Export Administration should expand itspost-shipment verifications to encompass technologies of proliferation concern,and Congress should ensure that the Bureau has the resources and the discretionit needs to implement an effective and aggressive post-shipment verificationprogram.Informing CongressThe Commission believes it is important that Congress have access to export licensinginformation. The Export Administration Act provided for such access by appropriatecommittees in Congress, along with confidentiality provisions in Section 12(c), and theCommerce Department should fully comply with any and all requests from Congress inaccordance with that section. By keeping such information from Congress, the executivebranch insulates itself from healthy engagement with Congress.Recommendation 5.20: Congress and the executive branch should develop amechanism for ensuring that Congress has greater access to export licensinginformation.BXA should report this export licensing information annually to Congress to facilitateoversight of the administration’s implementation of dual-use export controls.Effective Enforcement of Export ControlsCommerce’s Office of Export Enforcement (OEE) has about 100 agents in eight fieldoffices nationwide whose sole responsibility is enforcing the Export AdministrationRegulations. The Export Administration Act authorized the law-enforcement powers ofCommerce’s special agents. However, since the EAA expired, OEE special agents mustbe deputized annually by the U.S. Marshal’s Service in order to continue working toenforce U.S. export control laws.OEE agents are closely linked to the export licensing process and review pending exportlicense applications. The special agents can flag companies who produce targetedtechnologies, parties under investigation or parties they or the Intelligence Community (IC)have identified as front companies for would-be proliferators. In a number of cases, OEEhas provided information to licensing officials that caused them to deny an export licenseand in other cases, licensing officials have alerted OEE to possible violations based on anexport license application.74