BIS Undersecretary Not Transparent About Providing Licensing Info to Congress, Senator Claims
The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the acting head of the Bureau of Industry and Security misrepresented facts in front of a congressional commission last week (see 2109080062), saying he wasn't straightforward about the agency’s “delayed and incomplete” provision of export licensing decisions to Congress. Although BIS Acting Undersecretary Jeremy Pelter told the commission that BIS has complied with all laws regarding the disclosure of licensing information to Congress, Rep. Michael McCaul said the agency hasn’t been transparent.
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“Undersecretary Pelter’s answers yesterday at the Commission on the transparency of export control licensing decisions with Congress misrepresents the facts,” McCaul said. “To date, Congress and the general public have been provided no comprehensive data on licenses granted or denied for companies under export control restrictions, such as Huawei,” China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. or any other Chinese government-controlled company “that is facilitating genocide.”
McCaul in February made similar claims, saying BIS was failing to comply with congressional oversight requirements because it hadn’t yet provided him with information about its China licensing process that he had requested in November (see 2102160079). When BIS officials did provide him with the information, McCaul said, they “only provided data for a limited number of entities over a limited period of time,” and he said BIS told him that “providing the full information we requested would take too much effort.”
“When I formally requested this information from BIS, it was unreasonably delayed and incomplete,” McCaul said Sept. 9. “If Mr. Pelter is serious about working constructively with Congress, it starts with basic transparency and accountability.”
During a hearing held Sept. 8 by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Pelter said BIS has a “duty of care to keep licensing information confidential” but does share some of that information with Congress when it can. “I'm not aware of any instance, where within the bounds of what we're able to provide through that section, that we've not provided it,” Pelter said.
A Commerce Department spokesperson said BIS "works diligently to comply, to the extent permitted by law, as quickly as possible with appropriately submitted requests for information that is protected from disclosure," especially requests from Congress. "In certain circumstances, BIS may not collect, track, or have reports for, categories of information as requested," the spokesperson added. "Nevertheless, BIS always works to be transparent with Congress when it comes to requests for extensive ongoing reporting, which often require expending significant resources and even the potential procurement of new information systems."