The Board of Directors of the Washington Council on International Trade (WCIT) directed its chair, Henry (Skip) Kotkins, Jr. to submit a letter to Jim Compton, Chair, Accountability Review Committee (ARC), Jan Drago, Chair of ARC Panel One, and Nick Licata, Chair of ARC Panel Two.

It did so to express its strong exception to the series of inaccurate findings and unwarranted and unfair calls for sanctions against WCIT and its President, Patricia Davis contained in the report by the Citizen's Advisory Panel One to ARC dated June 29th, 2000.

WCIT is compelled to make this submission to set the record straight and to respectfully request that ARC take the appropriate actions to correct the erroneous and unsubstantiated findings.

This letter is intended to provide ARC with an overview of WCIT's position. In addition, WCIT has enclosed with this letter Attachment C, which is a point-by-point rebuttal to the Panel One Report and is supported by references to the record.

• I. What was the Mandate of ARC's Panel One?
  
  To review contacts and determine what agreements were reached. Panel One improperly exceeded its mandate by making allegations and recommendations for sanctions.
  
  
• II. How did the WTO meeting come to be held in Seattle?
  
  A broadly inclusive public-private sector coalition carried out the invitational process. The allegation that WCIT, acting on its own, invited the WTO belies not only the facts presented to the Panel, but the chronology of events detailed in the Panel's own report.
  
  
• III. Was the December 16, 1998 invitational proposal properly presented?
  
  The Panel overlooked the fact that the letter was an expression of the corporate community's willingness to financially support specific budgeted components and not a commitment to fund actual expenditures, whatever they might be. This fact was, however, clearly understood by the federal government and by the broad coalition pursuing the invitation, including the City of Seattle.
  
  
• IV. Was the City or its Police Department misled or prevented from properly budgeting for the event?
  
  The entire matter of security was one handled by the City and a coalition group of security agencies. Neither WCIT nor the Seattle Host Organization (SHO) was involved in that structure or any of its meetings.
  
  
• V. Were commitments made on behalf of the City of Seattle, King County or the State of Washington?
  
  No commitments were made by WCIT on behalf of public jurisdictions. There is no justification for this unwarranted allegation, and nothing in the report substantiates it.
  
  
• VI. Were commitments made to the City regarding reimbursement of security expenses?
  
  No such assurance was ever made to the City, nor was there any claim by any City official that such an assurance was given. Public and private sector entities understood that the Seattle Host Committee was offering to make a contribution toward budgeted security costs and that a separate security group would handle security.
  
  
• VII. Were the Recommendations for Sanctions and Personal Attacks Fair and Appropriate?
  
  The Panel inaccurately assigned blame without regard to the facts it had gathered during interviews. Not only were the allegations therefore unfair, they were also inappropriate because they were not within the mandate of the Panel.
  
  
• VIII. Conclusion
  
  In light of the failure of Panel One to accurately examine and accurately reflect the record and because Panel One exceeded its mandate from ARC in connection with its Recommendation 2, we respectfully request that ARC (a) enter into the public record a correction of Panel One's erroneous findings and (b) expressly reject the notion of sanctions against WCIT and President Davis.
  
  Clearly Panel One failed to follow ARC's instructions in this regard. Accordingly, we further respectfully request that this submission by WCIT be placed of record in its entirety adjacent to wherever Panel One's Report is made available to the general public including but not limited to being placed adjacent to any posting on ARC's website.