The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention ( news
- web
sites) sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons
inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein ( news
- web
sites)'s biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records
from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming it
needed them for legitimate medical research.
The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture
Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons,
including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs
that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other
deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus ( news
- web
sites).
The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq
in its war against Iran. They were detailed in a 1994 Senate Banking
Committee report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the Senate.
The exports were legal at the time and approved under a program
administered by the Commerce Department ( news
- web
sites).
"I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government
deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons
programs," said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons
inspector.
"But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public
health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time."
The disclosures put the United States in the uncomfortable position of
possibly having provided the key ingredients of the weapons America is
considering waging war to destroy, said Sen. Robert Byrd ( news,
bio,
voting
record), D-W.Va. Byrd entered the documents into the Congressional
Record this month.
Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the germ
transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee ( news
- web
sites) hearing. Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983, when
Rumsfeld was President Reagan's Middle East envoy.
"Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have
sown?" Byrd asked Rumsfeld after reading parts of a Newsweek article on
the transfers.
"I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge
of it whatsoever, and I doubt it," Rumsfeld said. He later said he would
ask the Defense Department and other government agencies to search their
records for evidence of the transfers.
Invoices included in the documents read like shopping lists for
biological weapons programs. One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based
American Type Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six
strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of the
bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later admitted to the United
Nations ( news
- web
sites) that it had made weapons out of all three.
The company sent the bacteria to the University of Baghdad, which U.N.
inspectors concluded had been used as a front to acquire samples for
Iraq's biological weapons program.
The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi Atomic Energy
Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin and
botulinum toxiod — used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin —
directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at
al-Muthanna, the records show.
Botulinum toxin is the paralyzing poison that causes botulism. Having a
vaccine to the toxin would be useful for anyone working with it, such as
biological weapons researchers or soldiers who might be exposed to the
deadly poison, Tucker said.
The CDC also sent samples of a strain of West Nile virus to an Iraqi
microbiologist at a university in the southern city of Basra in 1985, the
records show.
___
On the Net:
The documents are available at: http://rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/inlinks/*http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html
CDC: http://rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/inlinks/*http://www.cdc.gov
ATCC: http://rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/inlinks/*http://www.atcc.org
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