Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s media arm, the Washington Times, has made a shocking discovery: lawyers represent clients. Washington Times reporter Jim McElhatton reveals this horrifying discovery in a piece he wrote on Eric Hirschorn, the Obama administration’s nominee to head up the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”). The headline to the article says it all: “Exports [sic] nominee tied to 2 watch list firms.”
The article itself continues this ominous tone and hints that Hirschorn plans to dismantle BIS and hand the keys over to Iran and other terrorist interests:
President Obama’s pick to oversee export controls at the Commerce Department is a trade lawyer whose recent clients include two companies on a government watch list and a shipping business that agreed to pay millions of dollars last year to resolve a federal probe into shipments to Iran, Sudan and Syria.
All three companies have had recent interests before the government office that Eric Hirschhorn would oversee if he is confirmed as undersecretary of commerce for industry and security [sic].
The companies referred to by the Washington Times article are DHL as well as two companies that were put on the BIS Entity List because of suspected ties to Mayrow Trading Company. Why the DHL representation is an issue isn’t explained given that under current rules, Hirschorn would not be allowed to be involved in any case involving DHL for two years. Nor is it clear why representing the two companies on the entity list is a problem given that, as administration officials quoted at the end of the article state, Hirschorn’s representation of the two companies occurred after the companies were placed on the list and involved advice to the two companies on how to comply with U.S. export laws.
McElhatton’s fainting couch routine about Hirschorn’s legal work for these companies rings more than a little hollow when you consider this: throughout the 1990s the Moon organization, which pays Mr. McElhatton’s salary, paid millions of dollars to the regime of North Korea when such payments were forbidden by the United States because of concerns with respect to that regime’s WMD and missile program.
Last week, in his 
For several years now the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) has had the statutory authority to impose a civil penalty of $250,000 per export violation but has yet impose anything near that fine. So when BIS finally whacks someone with a $2.5 million fine for 10 violations, you might assume that the person paying such a fine did something really terrible like exporting dual-use items to Iran that Iran could use in uranium enrichment facilities. But you would be wrong.
There has never been a seriously-advocated rational reason for the U.S., unlike most other countries, to have one export agency regulating exports of weapons and a separate export agency regulating exports of dual use items. A new regulation
For any exporters who may be thinking of ignoring prior export violations hoping that no one will find out,
Minnesota-based 
A headline in last Thursday’s Washington Times
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