Bethesda-based USAID contractor Development Alternatives, Inc (DAI) recently agreed to pay the Bureau of Industry and Security a $7,500 fine for attempted exports in July 2004 of concealable vests, body armor and bomb blast blankets to Iraq without a license. During that time period, DAI was performing a $72 million USAID contract in Iraq to “restore the capacity of small and medium agro-enterprises to produce, process, and market agricultural goods and services.”

There’s no question, of course, that DAI needed licenses here and that BIS had the right to penalize DAI for these attempted exports. And, I suppose that the slight mitigation of the fine by BIS possibly reflected its sympathy that DAI had a legitimate need for these items to protect its employees in Iraq.

But this situation highlights a difficulty confronted by Iraq contractors in dealing with BIS. Unlike DDTC which has an expedited channel for exports of items being used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, BIS has no procedure to expedite exports by contractors of body armor and protective material to be used by their employees in Iraq. I suspect that if BIS had an office in Iraq, it would be much easier to export body armor to Iraq for use by U.S. employees.

UPDATE: Like every blog, we have our very own troll who comes to try to leave a nasty comment every time we say anything even vaguely negative about BIS. Although the troll won’t leave his or her real name or email address, the IP Address from which he comes suggests that he may be in one of the regional OEEs, although this is by no means certain. The troll took issue with my statement that if BIS had an office in Iraq it would be much easier to export body armor there.

Much easier?? Easier for the US Government to outfit it’s employees?? This would NOT be an export if the USG did it!!! C’mon Cliff…be more conversant!!

Trolls like to use lots of exclamation points and question marks for some reason. And the troll, as trolls often do, missed my point entirely.

My point was that if BIS employees were being shot at in Iraq they would be more sympathetic to the plight of private sector U.S. employees in Iraq running the same dangers and might adopt some procedure to expedite those private sector exports. That might be a hard point for our troll to fathom since I imagine that if he were in Iraq and had his own body armor, the plight of other U.S. citizens wouldn’t be of much concern to him (or her): “I got mine, suckas!” or something like that.

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