from http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Buy Pakistani?
The Pentagon is about to waive "buy American" provisions of U.S. law and
allow Pakistan to provide the goatskin leather used in the distinctive U.S.
aviator bomber jackets. The Defense Department has notified a U.S. leather
tanner that it will waive provisions of the law known as the Berry Amendment
that requires the Pentagon to buy key components from U.S. manufacturers. In
April, the Pentagon announced it would buy 12,000 to 30,000 of the brown,
fur-collared bomber jackets over the next several years. According to
congressional aides, the Defense Department in the past allowed the jackets
to be made with Pakistani goatskin. This is because the military did not
believe either that U.S. suppliers had sufficient stocks of raw U.S.
goatskins, or that U.S. tanners were capable of making the soft brown
leather. According to the aides, the Pentagon believes the buy-American law
does not apply to the leather used to make the bomber jackets, only the
jackets themselves. We are told that the United States has plenty of
suppliers of raw goatskin for the jackets and at least seven tanners who can
make the jackets. "The Pentagon's disregard of the Berry Amendment to allow
foreign leather to be used in this procurement is entirely unnecessary, as
well as unlawful," one House aide said. "The Defense Department should be
urged to reconsider its waiver." Proposed changes to the Berry Amendment in
the House version of the pending defense-authorization bill would include
bomber-jacket leather in the buy-American law.