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Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate)
Page S8987-S8998
SOURCE:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html
(Copied and Pasted in case the information disappears) (39 Pages Long)
HOW SADDAM HAPPENED
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, yesterday, at a hearing of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, I asked a question of the Secretary of Defense. I
referred to a Newsweek article that will appear in the September 23,
2002, edition. That article reads as follows. It is not overly lengthy.
I shall read it. Beginning on page 35 of Newsweek, here is what the
article says:
America helped make a monster. What to do
with him--and
what happens after he is gone--has haunted us for a
quarter
century.
The article is written by Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas. It
reads as follows:
The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam
Hussein, he gave
him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years
ago,
Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew
recorded the
historic moment.
The once and future Defense secretary, at
the time a
private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald
Reagan to
Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with
a
pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident,"
according to a now declassified State Department cable
obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld "conveyed the
President's
greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in
Baghdad,"
wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to
business,
talking about the need to improve relations between
their two
countries.
Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld
was aware that
Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists
and was
trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had
already
bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the
time,
America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan
administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries
who
had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American
diplomats
for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East
and
its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of
my
enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to
support
Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting
between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the
next
five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United
States
backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence,
economic
aid and covert supplies of munitions.
Rumsfeld is not the first American diplomat
to wish for the
demise of a former ally. After all, before the cold
war, the
Soviet Union was America's partner against Hitler in
World
War II. In the real world, as the saying goes, nations
have
no permanent friends, just permanent interests.
Nonetheless,
Rumsfeld's long-ago interlude with Saddam is a reminder
that
today's friend can be tomorrow's mortal threat. As
President
George W. Bush and his war cabinet ponder Saddam's
successor's regime, they would do well to contemplate
how and
why the last three presidents allowed the Butcher of
Baghdad
to stay in power so long.
The history of America's relations with
Saddam is one of
the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and
again,
America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw
him as
the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat
him. No
single policymaker or administration deserves blame for
creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of
their
decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there
are
moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make
one
cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the
1980s,
America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission
to import bacterial cultures that might be used to
build
biological weapons.
Let me read that again:
It is hard to believe that, during most of
the 1980s,
America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission
to import bacterial cultures that might be used to
build
biological weapons. But it happened.
America's past stumbles, while
embarrassing, are not an
argument for inaction in the future. Saddam probably is
the
"grave and gathering danger" described by President
Bush in
his speech to the United Nations last week. It may also
be
true that "whoever replaces Saddam is not going to be
worse," as a senior administration official put it to
Newsweek. But the story of how America helped create a
Frankenstein monster it now wishes to strangle is
sobering.
It illustrates the power of wishful thinking, as well
as the
iron law of unintended consequences.
America did not put Saddam in power. He
emerged after two
decades of turmoil in the '60s and '70s, as various
strongmen
tried to gain control of a nation that had been
concocted by
British imperialists in the 1920s out of three distinct
and
rival factions, the Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds. But
during
the cold war, America competed with the Soviets for
Saddam's
attention and welcomed his war with the religious
fanatics of
Iran. Having cozied up to Saddam, Washington found it
hard to
break away--even after going to war with him in 1991.
Through
years of both tacit and overt support, the West helped
create
the Saddam of today, giving him time to build deadly
arsenals
and dominate his people. Successive administrations
always
worried that if Saddam fell, chaos would follow,
rippling
through the region and possibly igniting another Middle
East
war. At times it seemed that Washington was transfixed
by
Saddam.
The Bush administration wants to finally
break the spell.
If the administration's true believers are right,
Baghdad,
after Saddam falls will look something like Paris after
the
Germans fled in August 1944. American troops will be
cheered
as liberators, and democracy will spread forth and push
Middle Eastern despotism back into the shadows. Yet if
the
gloomy predictions of the administration's many critics
come
true, the Arab street, inflamed by Yankee imperialism,
will
rise up and replace the shaky but friendly autocrats in
the
region with Islamic fanatics.
While the Middle East is unlikely to become
a democratic
nirvana, the worst-case scenarios, always a staple of
the
press, are probably also wrong or exaggerated. Assuming
that
a cornered and doomed Saddam does not kill thousands of
Americans in some kind of horrific Gotterdammerung--a
scary
possibility, one that deeply worries administration
officials--the greatest risk of his fall is that one
strongman may simply be replaced by another. Saddam's
successor may not be a paranoid sadist. But there is no
assurance that he will be America's friend or forswear
the
development of weapons of mass destruction.
American officials have known that Saddam
was a
psychopath--
Get that.
American officials have known that Saddam
was a psychopath
ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in
the
early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took
the
title of president in 1979 was to videotape a session
of his
party's congress, during which he personally ordered
several
members executed on the spot.
Let me repeat that:
American officials have known that Saddam
was a psychopath
ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in
the
early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took
the
title of president in 1979 was to videotape--
Videotape--
a session of his party's congress, during which he
personally
ordered several members executed on the spot.
The message, carefully conveyed to the Arab
press, was not
that these men were executed for plotting against
Saddam, but
rather for thinking about plotting against him. From
the
beginning, U.S. officials worried about Saddam's taste
for
nasty weaponry; indeed, at their meeting in 1983,
Rumsfeld
warned that Saddam's use of chemical weapons might
"inhibit" American assistance. But top officials in the
Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate.
By
going to war with Iran, he could bleed the radical
mullahs
who had seized control of Iran from the pro-American
shah.
Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar
Sadat,
capable of making Iraq into a modern secular state,
just as
Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his
assassination in
1981.
But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war
against Iran
was going badly by 1982. Iran's "human wave attacks"
threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington
decided to
give Iraq a helping hand.
After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983,
U.S.
intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with
satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official
documents suggest that America may also have secretly
arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be
shipped
to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt,
Egyptian
tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon
skeptics,
the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to
buy a
wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from
American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce
Department export-control documents obtained by
NEWSWEEK, the
shopping list included a computerized database for
Saddam's
Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of
political
opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials;
television cameras for "video surveillance
applications";
chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous
shipments
of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to
former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used
to
make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State
Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million
atropine
injectors, for use against the effects of chemical
weapons,
but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters,
some
American officials later surmised, were used to spray
poison
gas on the Kurds.
The United States almost certainly knew
from its own
satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical
weapons
against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish
rebels and
civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin,
tabun
and VX in 1988, the
[[Page S8988]]
Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before
acknowledging, under pressure from congressional
Democrats,
that the culprits were Saddam's own forces. There was
only
token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were
unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the
Kurds,
records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as
Ali
Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing
the
Kurds. "Who is going to say anything?" he asks. "The
international community? F----k them!"
The United States was much more concerned
with protecting
Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped
through the
Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an
American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf,
killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States
excused
Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead
used the
incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the
gulf.
The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S.
commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and
attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American
warship
in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus,
killing
290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and
fearing American intervention, gave up its war with
Iraq.
Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support
of the West, he
had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran.
America
favored him as a regional pillar; European and American
corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was
visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob
Dole of
Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to
promote
American farm and business interests. But Saddam's
megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his
hand. In
1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several
Iraqi
agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used
to
make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam
gained the world's attention by threatening "to burn
Israel
to the ground." At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn
that
Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried
to buy
some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making
nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and
in
the Bush administration continued to see him as a
useful, if
distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department
was
equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he
invaded
Kuwait in August 1990.
Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a
hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during
the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:
Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the
United States
help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological
weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now
facing
the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?
The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he
would review Pentagon records.
I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns
and the concerns of others have grown.
A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I
shall submit for the Record, shows very clearly that the United States
is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in
1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W.
Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two
dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples
that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly
diseases.
According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald
Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist
to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.
The Armed Services Committee is requesting information from the
Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense on the history of the
United States, providing the building blocks for weapons of mass
destruction to Iraq. I recommend that the Department of Health and
Human Services also be included in that request.
The American people do not need obfuscation and denial. The American
people need the truth. The American people need to know whether the
United States is in large part responsible for the very Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction which the administration now seeks to destroy.
We may very well have created the monster that we seek to eliminate.
The Senate deserves to know the whole story. The American people
deserve answers to the whole story.
Also yesterday, in the same 6 minutes that I was given in which to
ask questions--which was extended by virtue of the kindness of the
distinguished Senator from Georgia, Mr. Max Cleland, and other members
of the committee, so it was perhaps 9 or 10 minutes--there was another
interesting question that I asked. Let me read a portion of that
transcript from the Armed Services Committee:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these
hearings. Mr.
Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States
help Iraq
to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons
during
the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the
possibility of reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld: Certainly not to my knowledge. I
have no
knowledge of United States companies or government
being
involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological
or
nuclear weapons.
There is another excerpt from that question and answer period in
which Secretary Rumsfeld and I engaged:
Byrd: Now, the Washington Post reported
this morning
[yesterday] that the United States is stepping away
from
efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons
Convention. Are
we not sending exactly the wrong signal to the world,
at
exactly the wrong time?
Doesn't this damage our credibility in the
international
community at the very time that we are seeking their
support
to neutralize the threat of Iraq's biological weapons
program? If we supplied, as the Newsweek article said,
if we
supplied the building blocks for germ and chemical
warfare to
this madman in the first place, this psychopath, how do
we
look to the world to be backing away from this effort
to
control it at this point?
That question speaks for itself. I ask unanimous consent that the
following material be printed in the Record at the close of my remarks:
The partial transcript from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing
on September 19; the article from the Washington Post of yesterday,
titled "U.S. Drops Bid to Strengthen Germ Warfare Accord"; the
Newsweek article, which I have alluded to already; a letter dated
January 6, 1994, requesting information from the Centers for Disease
Control and a response to the Honorable Donald W. Riegle, Jr., U.S.
Senator, dated June 21, 1995, from David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D.,
Director; a U.S. Senate Hearing Report 103-900, dealing with U.S.
exports of biological materials to Iraq to the Senate Committee on
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs which has oversight responsibility
for the Export Administration Act, and keeping in mind that the U.S.
Department of Commerce approves licenses by that Department for
exports; including also the U.S. Senate hearing report in that matter.
Included in the approved sales are such items as Bacillus Anthracis,
anthrax, Clostridium Botulinum, Histoplasma Capsulatum, which causes a
disease superficially resembling tuberculosis that may cause pneumonia;
Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria which can cause chronic fatigue, and so
on; Clostridium Perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. I believe that
completes the list.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Byrd-Rumsfeld Transcript--Partial Transcript From Senate Armed Services
Committee, September 19, 2002
Levin. Senator Byrd?
Byrd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding
these hearings.
Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the
United States
help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological
weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now
facing
the possibility of reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld. Certainly not to my knowledge. I
have no
knowledge of United States companies or government
being
involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological
or
nuclear weapons.
Byrd. Mr. Secretary, let me read to you
from the September
23, 2002, Newsweek story. I read this, I read excerpts,
because my time is limited.
"Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as
another Anwar
Sadat, capable of making Iraq into a modern secular
state,
just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his
assassination in 1981. But Saddam had to be rescued
first.
The war against Iran was going badly by 1982."
Byrd. "Iran's human-wave attacks threatened
to overrun
Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a
helping
hand. After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1982, U.S.
intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with
satellite photos showing Iranian deployments.
"Official documents suggest that America
may also have
secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware
to be
shipped to Iraq in a swap deal: American tanks to
Egypt,
Egyptian tanks to Iraq.
"Over the protest of some Pentagon
skeptics, the Reagan
administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide
variety of, quote, `dual-use,' close quote, equipment
and
materials from American suppliers.
"According to confidential Commerce
Department export
control documents obtained
[[Page S8989]]
by Newsweek, the shopping list included a computerized
database for Saddam's Interior Ministry, presumably to
help
keep track of political opponents, helicopters to help
transport Iraqi officials, television cameras for video
surveillance applications, chemical analysis equipment
for
the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, IAEC, and, most
unsettling, numerous shipments of the bacteria, fungi,
protozoa to the IAEC.
"According to former officials the
bacterial cultures
could be used to make biological weapons, including
anthrax.
The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5
million atropine injectors for use against the effects
of
chemical weapons but the Pentagon blocked the sale.
"The helicopters, some American officials
later surmised,
were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds. The United
States
almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery
that
Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian
troops.
"When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and
civilians with a
lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in
1988,
the Reagan administration first blamed Iran before
acknowledging, under pressure from congressional
Democrats,
that the culprit were Saddam's own forces. There was
only
token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were
unfazed.
"An Iraqi audiotape later captured by the
Kurds records
Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Ali
Chemical,
talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds.
Quote, `Who is going to say anything?' close quote, he
asks,
`the international community? F-blank them!'
exclamation
point, close quote."
Now can this possibly be true? We already
knew that Saddam
was dangerous man at the time. I realize that you were
not in
public office at the time, but you were dispatched to
Iraq by
President Reagan to talk about the need to improve
relations
between Iraq and the U.S.
Let me ask you again: To your knowledge did
the United
States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of
biological
weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we, in fact, now
facing
the possibility of reaping what we have sown?
The Washington Post reported this morning
that the United
States is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the
Biological Weapons Convention. I'll have a question on
that
later.
Let me ask you again: Did the United States
help Iraq to
acquire the building blocks of biological weapons
during the
Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the
possibility of
reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld. I have not read the article. As
you suggest, I
was, for a period in late '83 and early '84, asked by
President Reagan to serve as Middle East envoy after
the
Marines--241 Marines were killed in Beirut.
As part of my responsibilities I did visit
Baghdad. I did
meet with Mr. Tariq Aziz. And I did meet with Saddam
Hussein
and spent some time visiting with them about the war
they
were engaged in with Iran.
At the time our concern, of course, was
Syria and Syria's
role in Lebanon and Lebanon's role in the Middle East
and the
terrorist acts that were taking place.
As a private citizen I was assisting only
for a period
of months. I have never heard anything like what you've
read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt
it.
Byrd. You doubt what?
Rumsfeld. The questions you posed as to
whether the United
States of America assisted Iraq with the elements that
you
listed in your reading of Newsweek and that we could
conceivably now be reaping what we've sown.
I think--I doubt both.
Byrd. Are you surprised that this is what
I've said? Are
you surprised at this story in Newsweek?
Rumsfeld. I guess I'm at an age and
circumstance in life
where I'm no longer surprised about what I hear in the
newspapers.
Byrd. That's not the question, I'm of that
age, too.
Somewhat older than you, but how about that story I've
read?
Rumsfeld. I see stories all the time that
are flat wrong. I
just don't know. All I can say . . .
Byrd. How about this story? This story? How
about this
story, specifically?
Rumsfeld. As I say, I have not read it, I
listened
carefully to what you said and I doubt it.
Byrd. All right.
Now the Washington Post reported this
morning that the
United States is stepping away from efforts to
strengthen the
Biological Weapons Convention. Are we not sending
exactly the
wrong signal to the world, at exactly the wrong time?
Byrd. Doesn't this damage our credibility
in the
international community at the very time that we are
seeking
their support to neutralize the threat of Iraq's
biological
weapons program? If we supplied, as the Newsweek
article
said, if we supplied the building blocks for germ and
chemical warfare to this madman in the first place,
this
psychopath, how do we look to the world to be backing
away
from this effort to control it at this point?
Rumsfeld. Senator, I think it would be a
shame to leave
this committee and the people listening with the
impression
that the United States assisted Iraq with chemical or
biological weapons in the 1980s. I just do not believe
that's
the case.
Byrd. Well, are you saying that the
Newsweek article is
inaccurate?
Rumsfeld. I'm saying precisely what I said,
that I didn't
read the Newsweek article, but that I doubt it's
accurate.
Byrd. I'll be glad to send you up a copy.
Rumsfeld. But that I was not in government
at that time,
except as a special envoy for a period of months. So
one
ought not to rely on me as the best source as to what
happened in that mid-'80s period that you were
describing.
I will say one other thing. On two
occasions I believe when
you read that article, you mentioned the IAEC, which as
I
recall is the International Atomic Energy Commission,
and
mentioned that if some of the things that you were
talking
about were provided to them, which I found quite
confusing to
be honest.
With respect to the Biological Weapons
Convention, I was
not aware that the United States government had taken a
position with respect to it. It's not surprising
because it's
a matter for the Department of State, not the
Department of
Defense.
If in fact they have indicated, as The
Washington Post
reports, that they are not going to move forward with
a--I
believe it's an enforcement regime, it's not my place
to
discuss the administration's position when I don't know
what
it is.
But I can tell you, from a personal
standpoint, my
recollection is that the biological convention never,
never
was anticipated that there would even be thought of to
have
an enforcement regime. And that an enforcement regime
on
something like that, where there are a lot of countries
involved who are on the terrorist list who were
participants
in that convention, that the United States has, over a
period
of administrations, believed that it would not be a
good
idea, because the United States would be a net loser
from an
enforcement regime.
But that is not the administration's
position. I just don't
know what the administration's position is.
Levin. We're going to have to leave it
there, because
you're way over.
Byrd. This is a very important question.
Levin. It is indeed, and you're over time,
I agree with you
on the importance, but you're way over time, sir.
Byrd. I know I'm over time, but are we
going to leave this
in question out there dangling?
Levin. One last question.
Byrd. I ask unanimous consent that I may
have an additional
five minutes.
Levin. No, I'm afraid you can't do that. If
you could just
do one last--well, wait a minute, ask unanimous
consent, I
can't stop you from doing that.
(Unknown). I object.
(Laughter)
Byrd. Mr. Chairman?
Levin. Just one last question. Would that
be all right so
you could wind that up?
Senator Byrd, if you could just take one
additional
question.
Byrd. I've never--I've been in this
Congress 50 years. I've
never objected to another senator having a few
additional
minutes.
Now Mr. Chairman, I think that the
secretary should have a
copy of this report, this story that--from Newsweek
that I've
been querying him about. I think he has a right to look
at
that.
Levin. Could somebody take that out to the
secretary?
Byrd. Now, while that's being given to the
secretary, Mr.
Secretary, I think we're put into an extremely bad
position
before the world today if we're going to walk away from
an
international effort to strengthen the Biological
Weapons
Convention against germ warfare, advising its allies
that the
U.S. wants to delay further discussions until 2006.
Especially in the light of the Newsweek story; I think
we
bear some responsibility.
Inhofe. Mr. Chairman I ask for a point of
order.
Levin. Can we just have this be the last
question, if you
would just go along with us please, Senator Inhofe?
Inhofe. I'll only say though, in all
respect to the Senator
from West Virginia, we have a number of senators here.
We
have a limited time of six minutes each, and we're
entitled
to have our six minutes. That should be a short
questions if
it's the last question.
Levin. If we could just make that the last
question and
answer, I would appreciate it. The chair would
appreciate the
cooperation of all senators.
Secretary Rumsfeld, could you answer that
question please?
Rumsfeld. I'll do my best.
Senator, I just in glancing at this, and I
hesitate to do
this because I have not read it carefully.
But it says here that, "According to
confidential Commerce
Department export control documents obtained by
Newsweek, the
shopping list included." It did not say that there were
deliveries of these things. It said that Iran--Iraq
asked for
these things. It talks about a shopping list.
Second, in listing these things, it says
that they wanted
television cameras for video surveillance applications,
chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission, the IAEC--and that may very well be the
Iraqi
Atomic Energy Commission, which would be--mean that my
earlier comment would not be correct, because I thought
it
was the International Atomic Energy Commission. But
this
seems to indicate it's the Iraq Commerce Commission.
Byrd. Mr. Chairman, may I say to my friend
from Oklahoma,
I'm amazed that he himself wouldn't yield me time for
this
important question. I would do the same for him.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask . . .
[[Page S8990]]
(Cleland). I yield my five minutes,
Senator.
Byrd. I thank the distinguished Senator.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the
secretary--and I
don't just like to ask him--I asked him to review
Pentagon
records to see if the Newsweek article is true or not.
Will
the secretary do that?
Rumsfeld. It appears that they're
Department of Commerce
records, as opposed to Pentagon. But I can certainly
ask that
the Department of Commerce and, to the extent that it's
relevant, the Department of State, look into it and see
if we
can't determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of some
aspects of
this. Yes, sir.
Levin. And we go one step further than
that. I think the
request is that the Defense Department search its
records.
Will you do that?
Rumsfeld. We'll be happy to search ours,
but this refers to
the Commerce Department.
Levin. We will ask the State Department and
the Commerce
Department to do the same thing.
Rumsfeld. We'd be happy to.
Levin. And we will also ask the
Intelligence Committee to
stage a briefing for all of us on that issue, so that
Senator
Byrd's question. . .
Byrd. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman.
Levin. Thank you very much, Senator.
Byrd. I thank the secretary.
Rumsfeld. Thank you.
Levin. Senator Byrd, we will ask Senator
Graham and Senator
Shelby to hold a briefing on that subject, because it
is a
very important subject.
Byrd. I thank the chairman.
____
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2002]
U.S. Drops
Bid To Strengthen Germ Warfare Accord
(By Peter Slevin)
The Bush administration has abandoned an
international
effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention
against germ warfare, advising its allies that the
United
States wants to delay further discussions until 2006. A
review conference on new verification measures for the
treaty
has been scheduled for November.
Less than a year after a State Department
envoy abruptly
pulled out of biowarfare negotiations in Geneva,
promising
that the United States would return with new proposals,
the
administration has concluded that treaty revisions
favored by
the European Union and scores of other countries will
not
work and should not be salvaged, administration
officials
said yesterday.
The decision, which has been conveyed to
allies in recent
weeks, has been greeted with warnings that the move
will
weaken attempts to curb germ warfare programs at a time
when
biological weapons are a focus of concern because of
the war
on terrorism and the administration's threats to launch
a
military campaign against Iraq. It also comes as the
administration, which has angered allies by rejecting a
series of multilateral agreements, is appealing to the
international community to work with it in forging a
new U.N.
Security Council resolution on Iraq's programs to
develop
weapons of mass destruction.
The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention,
which has been
ratified by the United States and 143 other countries,
bans
the development, stockpiling and production of germ
warfare
agents, but has no enforcement mechanism. Negotiations
on
legally binding measures to enforce compliance have
been
underway in Geneva for seven years.
The administration stunned its allies last
December by
proposing to end the negotiators' mandate, saying that
while
the treaty needed strengthening, the enforcement
protocol
under discussion would not deter enemy nations from
acquiring
or developing biological weapons if they were
determined to
do so. Negotiators suspended the discussions, saying
they
would meet again in November when U.S. officials said
they
would return with creative solutions to address the
impasse.
Instead, U.S. envoys are now telling allies
that the
administration's position is so different from the
views of
the leading supporters of the enforcement protocol that
a
meeting would dissolve into public squabbling and
should be
avoided, administration officials said. Better, they
said, to
halt discussions altogether.
"It's based on an incorrect approach. Our
concern is that
it would be fundamentally ineffective," a State
Department
official said. Another administration official said the
"best and least contentious" approach would be to hold
a
very brief meeting in November--or even no meeting at
all--
and talk again when the next review is scheduled four
years
from now.
Amy Smithson, a biological and chemical
weapons specialist,
said the administration is making a mistake by halting
collaborative work to strengthen the convention. "It
sounds
to me as though they've thrown the baby out with the
bath
water," said Smithson, an analyst at the Henry L.
Stimson
Center. "The contradiction between the rhetoric and
what the
administration is actually doing--the gulf is huge. Not
a day
goes by when they don't mention the Iraq threat."
The Stimson Center is releasing a report
today that
criticizes the U.S. approach to the convention. Drawn
from a
review by 10 pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology
experts, the document argues that bioweapons
inspections can
be effective with the right amount of time and the
right
science and urges the administration to develop
stronger
measures.
"To argue that this wouldn't be a useful
remedy would just
be a mistake. I think it's because they're looking
through
the wrong end of the telescope," said Matthew Meselson,
a
Harvard biologist who helped draft a treaty to
criminalize
biological weapons violations. "We're denying ourselves
useful tools."
The administration has focused publicly on
a half-dozen
countries identified by the State Department as
pursuing germ
warfare programs. Undersecretary of State John R.
Bolton said
the existence of Iraq's bioweapons project is "beyond
dispute." The U.S. government also believes Iran, North
Korea, Sudan, Libya and Syria are developing such
weapons, he
said.
Meselson concurred with the
administration's position that
a limited enforcement provision for the bioweapons
treaty
could not provide confidence that countries are staying
clean. But he said that a pact establishing standards
and
verification measures would deter some countries while
also
helping to build norms of international behavior.
Bolton, on the other hand, told delegates
to last year's
review conference that "the time for
`better-than-nothing'
protocols is over. We will continue to reject flawed
texts
like the BWC draft protocol, recommended to us simply
because
they are the product of lengthy negotiations or
arbitrary
deadlines, if such texts are not in the best interests
of the
United States."
With only hours to go at the meeting,
Bolton stopped U.S.
participation in the final negotiations. He said of the
resulting one-year delay, "This gives us time to think
creatively on alternatives."
In Bolton's view, each country should
develop criminal laws
against germ warfare activities, develop export
controls for
dangerous pathogens, establish codes of conduct for
scientists and install strict biosafety procedures. The
administration has proposed that governments resolve
disputes
over biowarfare violations among themselves, perhaps
through
voluntary inspections or by referral to the United
Nations
secretary general.
Such an approach is "at best ineffectual,"
said the
specialists gathered by the Stimson Center. At worst,
they
concluded, the approach could damage U.S. interests
because
it would not be structured to deliver "meaningful
monitoring."
"If a challenge inspection system is not
geared to pursue
violators aggressively, then it does not serve U.S.
security
interests," the 65-page report states. The participants
strongly favored establishing mandatory standards
backed by
penalties and "robust" inspections, which goes
significantly further than the proposed protocol backed
by
the EU and other nations.
The State Department Web site has not yet
been changed to
reflect the change in policy. It says, "The United
States is
committed to strengthening the BWC as part of a
comprehensive
and multidisciplinary strategy for combating the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and
international terrorism. . . . We would like to share
these
ideas with our international partners."
____
Partial Transcript From Senate Armed Services Committee, September 19,
2002
Levin. Senator Byrd?
Byrd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding
these hearings.
Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the
United States
help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological
weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now
facing
the possibility of reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld. Certainly not to my knowledge. I
have no
knowledge of United States companies or government
being
involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological
or
nuclear weapons.
Byrd. Mr. Secretary, let me read to you
from the September
23, 2002, Newsweek story. I read this, I read excerpts,
because my time is limited.
"Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as
another Anwar
Sadat, capable of making Iraq into a modern secular
state,
just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his
assassination in 1981. But Saddam had to be rescued
first.
The war against Iran was going badly by 1982."
"Iran's human-wave attacks threatened to
overrun Saddam's
armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand.
After
Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence
began
supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos
showing
Iranian deployments.
"Official documents suggest that America
may also have
secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware
to be
shipped to Iraq in a swap deal: American tanks to
Egypt,
Egyptian tanks to Iraq.
"Over the protest of some Pentagon
skeptics, the Reagan
administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide
variety of, quote, `dual-use,' close quote, equipment
and
materials from American suppliers.
"According to confidential Commerce
Department export
control documents obtained by Newsweek, the shopping
list
include a computerized database for Saddam's Interior
Ministry, presumably to help keep track of political
opponents, helicopters to help transport Iraqi
officials,
television cameras for video surveillance applications,
chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission, IAEC, and, most unsettling, numerous
shipments of
the bacteria, fungi, protozoa to the IAEC.
[[Page S8991]]
"According to former officials the
bacterial cultures
could be used to make biological weapons, including
anthrax.
The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5
million atropine injectors for use against the effects
of
chemical weapons but the Pentagon blocked the sale.
"The helicopters, some American officials
later surmised,
were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds. The United
States
almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery
that
Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian
troops.
"When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and
civilians with a
lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in
1988,
the Reagan administration first blamed Iran before
acknowledging, under pressure from congressional
Democrats,
that the culprit were Saddam's own forces. There was
only
token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were
unfazed.
"An Iraqi audiotape later captured by the
Kurds records
Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Ali
Chemical,
talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds.
Quote, `Who is going to say anything?' close quote, he
asks,
`the international community? F-blank them!'
exclamation
point, close quote."
Now can this possibly be true? We already
knew that Saddam
was dangerous man at the time. I realize that you were
not in
public office at the time, but you were dispatched to
Iraq by
President Reagan to talk about the need to improve
relations
between Iraq and the U.S.
Let me ask you again: To your knowledge did
the United
States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of
biological
weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we, in fact, now
facing
the possibility of reaping what we have sown?
The Washington Post reported this morning
that the United
is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the
Biological
Weapons Convention. I'll have a question on that later.
Let me ask you again: Did the United States
help Iraq to
acquire the building blocks of biological weapons
during the
Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the
possibility of
reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld. I have not read the article. As
you suggest, I
was, for a period in late `83 and early `84, asked by
President Reagan to serve as Middle East envoy after
the
Marines--241 Marines were killed in Beirut.
As part of my responsibilities I did visit
Baghdad. I did
meet with Mr. Tariq Aziz. And I did meet with Saddam
Hussein
and spent some time visiting with them about the war
they
were engaged in with Iran.
At the time our concern, of course, was
Syria and Syria's
role in Lebanon and Lebanon's role in the Middle East
and the
terrorist acts that were taking place.
As a private citizen I was assisting only
for a period
of months. I have never heard anything like what you've
read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt
it.
Byrd. You doubt what?
Rumsfeld. The questions you posed as to
whether the United
States of America assisted Iraq with the elements that
you
listed in your reading of Newsweek and that we could
conceivably now be reaping what we've sown.
I think--I doubt both.
Byrd. Are you surprised that this is what
I've said? Are
you surprised at this story in Newsweek?
Rumsfeld. I guess I'm at an age and
circumstance in life
where I'm no longer surprised about what I hear in the
newspapers.
Byrd. That's not the question. I'm of that
age, too.
Somewhat older than you, but how about that story I've
read?
Rumsfeld. I see stories all the time that
are flat wrong. I
just don't know. All I can say . . .
Byrd. How about this story? This story? How
about this
story, specifically?
Rumsfeld. As I say, I have not read it, I
listened
carefully to what you said and I doubt it.
Byrd. All right.
Now the Washington Post reported this
morning that the
United States is stepping away from efforts to
strengthen the
Biological Weapons Convention. Are we not sending
exactly the
wrong signal to the world, at exactly the wrong time?
Byrd. Doesn't this damage our credibility
in the
international community at the very time that we are
seeking
their support to neutralize the threat of Iraq's
biological
weapons program? If we supplied, as the Newsweek
article
said, if we supplied the building blocks for germ and
chemical warfare to this madman in the first place,
this
psychopath, how do we look to the world to be backing
away
from this effort to control it at this point?
Rumsfeld. Senator, I think it would be a
shame to leave
this committee and the people listening with the
impression
that the United States assisted Iraq with chemical or
biological weapons in the 1980s. I just do not believe
that's
the case.
Byrd. Well, are you saying that the
Newsweek article is
inaccurate?
Rumsfeld. I'm saying precisely what I said,
that I didn't
read the Newsweek article, but that I doubt its
accurate.
Byrd. I'll be glad to send you up a copy.
Rumsfeld. But that I was not in government
at that time,
except as a special envoy for a period of months. So
one
ought not to rely on me as the best source as to what
happened in that mid-'80s period that you were
describing.
I will say one other thing. On two
occasions I believe when
you read that article, you mentioned the IAEC, which as
I
recall is the International Atomic Energy Commission,
and
mentioned that if some of the things that you were
talking
about were provided to them, which I found quite
confusing to
be honest.
With respect to the Biological Weapons
Convention, I was
not aware that the United States government had taken a
position with respect to it. It's not surprising
because it's
a matter for the Department of State, not the
Department of
Defense.
If in fact they have indicated, as The
Washington Post
reports, that they are not going to move forward with
a--I
believe it's an enforcement regime, it's not my place
to
discuss the administration's position when I don't know
what
it is.
But I can tell you, from a personal
standpoint, my
recollection is that the biological convention never,
never
was anticipated that there would even be thought of to
have
an enforcement regime. And that an enforcement regime
on
something like that, where there are a lot of countries
involved who are on the terrorist list who were
participants
in that convention, that the United States has, over a
period
of administrations, believed that it would not be a
good
idea, because the United States would be a net loser
from an
enforcement regime.
But that is not the administration's
position. I just don't
know what the administration's position is.
Levin. We're going to have to leave it
there, because
you're way over.
Byrd. This is a very important question.
Levin. It is indeed, and you're over time.
I agree with you
on the importance, but you're way over time, sir.
Byrd. I know I'm over time, but are we
going to leave this
in question out there dangling?
Levin. One last question.
Byrd. I ask unanimous consent that I may
have an additional
five minutes.
Levin. No, I'm afraid you can't do that. If
you could just
do one last--well, wait a minute, ask unanimous
consent, I
can't stop you from doing that.
(Unknown). I object.
(Laughter)
Byrd. Mr. Chairman?
Levin. Just one last question. Would that
be all right so
you could wind it up?
Senator Byrd, if you could just take one
additional
question.
Byrd. I've never--I've been in this
Congress 50 years. I've
never objected to another senator having a few
additional
minutes.
Now Mr. Chairman, I think that the
secretary should have a
copy of this report, this story that--from Newsweek
that I've
been querying him about. I think he has a right to look
at
that.
Levin. Could somebody take that out to the
secretary?
Byrd. Now, while that's being given to the
secretary, Mr.
Secretary, I think we're put into an extremely bad
position
before the world today if we're going to walk away from
an
international effort to strengthen the Biological
Weapons
Convention against germ warfare, advising its allies
that the
U.S. wants to delay further discussions until 2006.,
Especially in the light of the Newsweek story; I think
we
bear some responsibility.
Inhofe. Mr. Chairman I ask for a point of
order.
Levin. Can we just have this be the last
question, if you
would just go along with us please, Senator Inhofe?
Inhofe. I'll only say though, in all
respect to the senator
from West Virginia, we have a number of senators here.
We
have a limited time of six minutes each, and we're
entitled
to have our six minutes. That should be a short
question if
it's the last question.
Levin. If we could just make that the last
question and
answer, I would appreciate it. The chair would
appreciate the
cooperation of all senators.
Rumsfeld. I'll do my best.
Senator, I just in glancing at this, and I
hesitate to do
this because I have not read it carefully.
But it says here that, "According to
confidential Commerce
Department export control documents obtained by
Newsweek, the
shopping list included." It did not say that there were
deliveries of these things. It said that Iran--Iraq
asked for
these things. It talks about a shopping list.
Second, in listing these things, it says
that they wanted
television cameras for video surveillance applications,
chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission, the IAEC--and that may very well be the
Iraqi
Atomic Energy Commission, which would be--mean that my
earlier comment would not be correct, because I thought
it
was the International Atomic Energy Commission. But
this
seems to indicate it's the Iraq Commerce Commission.
Byrd. Mr. Chairman, may I say to my friend
from Oklahoma,
I'm amazed that he himself wouldn't yield me time for
this
important question. I would do the same for him.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask . . .
(Cleland). I yield my five minutes,
Senator.
Byrd. I thank the distinguished senator.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the
secretary--and I
don't just like to ask him--I ask him to review
Pentagon
records to see if the Newsweek article is true or not.
Will
the secretary do that?
Rumsfeld. It appears that they're
Department of Commerce
records, as opposed to Pentagon. But I can certainly
ask that
the
[[Page S8992]]
Department of Commerce and, to the extent that it's
relevant,
the Department of State, look into it and see if we
can't
determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of some aspects of
this.
Yes, sir.
Levin. And we go one step future than that.
I think the
request is that the Defense Department search its
records.
Will you do that?
Rumsfeld. We'll be happy to search ours,
but this refers to
the Commerce Department.
Levin. We will ask the State Department and
the Commerce
Department to do the same thing.
Rumsfeld. We'd be happy to.
Levin. And we will also ask the
Intelligence Committee to
stage a briefing for all of us on that issue, so that
Senator
Byrd's question . . .
Byrd. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman.
Levin. Thank you very much, Senator.
Byrd. I thank the secretary.
Rumsfeld. Thank you.
Levin. Senator Byrd, we will ask Senator
Graham and Senator
Shelby to hold a briefing on that subject, because it
is a
very important subject.
Byrd. I thank the chairman.
____
[From Newsweek, Sept. 23, 2002]
How Saddam Happened
(By Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas)
The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam
Hussein, he gave
him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years
ago,
Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew
recorded the
historic moment.
The once and future Defense secretary, at
the time a
private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald
Reagan to
Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with
a
pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident,"
according to a new declassified State Department cable
obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld "conveyed the
President's
greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in
Baghdad,"
wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to
business,
talking about the need to improve relations between
their two
countries.
Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld
was aware that
Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists
and was
trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had
already
bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the
time,
America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan
administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries
who
had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American
diplomats
for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East
and
its vital oilfields. On the theory that the enemy of my
enemy
is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support
Iraq in
a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between
Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next
five
years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United
States
backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence,
economic
aid and covert supplies of munitions.
former allies
Rumsfeld is not the first American diplomat
to wish for the
demise of a former ally. After all, before the cold
war, the
Soviet Union was America's partner against Hitler in
World
War II. In the real world, as the saying goes, nations
have
no permanent friends, just permanent interests.
Nonetheless,
Rumsfeld's long-ago interlude with Saddam is a reminder
that
today's friend can be tomorrow's mortal threat. As
President
George W. Bush and his war cabinet ponder Saddam's
successor's regime, they would do well to contemplate
how and
why the last three presidents allowed the Butcher of
Baghdad
to stay in power so long.
The history of America's relations with
Saddam is one of
the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and
again,
America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw
him as
the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat
him. No
single policymaker or administration deserves blame for
creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of
their
decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there
are
moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make
one
cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the
1980s,
America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission
to import bacterial cultures that might be used to
build
biological weapons. But it happened.
America's past stumbles, while
embarrassing, are not an
argument for inaction in the future. Saddam probably is
the
"grave and gathering danger" described by President
Bush in
his speech to the United Nations last week. It may also
be
true that "whoever replaces Saddam is not going to be
worse," as a senior administration official put it to
Newsweek. But the story of how America helped create a
Frankenstein monster it now wishes to strangle is
sobering.
It illustrates the power of wishful thinking, as well
as the
iron law of unintended consequences.
transfixed by saddam
America did not put Saddam in power. He
emerged after two
decades of turmoil in the '60s and '70s, as various
strongmen
tried to gain control of a nation that had been
concocted by
British imperialists in the 1920s out of three distinct
and
rival factions, the Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds. But
during
the cold war, America competed with the Soviets for
Saddam's
attention and welcomed his war with the religious
fanatics of
Iran. Having cozied up to Saddam, Washington. . . .
While the Middle East is unlikely to become
a democratic
nirvana, the worst-case scenarios, always a staple of
the
press, are probably also wrong or exaggerated. Assuming
that
a cornered and doomed Saddam does not kill thousands of
Americans in some kind of horrific Gotterdammerung--a
scary
possibility, one that deeply worries administration
officials--the greatest risk of his fall is that one
strongman may simply be replaced by another. Saddam's
successor may not be a paranoid sadist. But there is no
assurance that he will be America's friend or forswear
the
development of weapons of mass destruction.
a taste for nasty weapons
American officials have known that Saddam
was a psychopath
ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in
the
early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took
the
title of president in 1979 was to videotape a session
of his
party's congress, during which he personally ordered
several
members executed on the spot. The message, carefully
conveyed
to the Arab press, was not that these men were executed
for
plotting against Saddam, but rather for thinking about
plotting against him. From the beginning, U.S.
officials
worried about Saddam's taste for nasty weaponry;
indeed, at
their meeting in 1983, Rumsfeld warned that Saddam's
use of
chemical weapons might "inhibit" American assistance.
But
top officials in the Reagan administration saw Saddam
as a
useful surrogate. By going to war with Iran, he could
bleed
the radical mullahs who had seized control of Iran from
the
pro-American shah. Some Reagan officials even saw
Saddam as
another Anwar Sadat, capable of making Iran into a
modern
secular state, just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt
before his assassination in 1981.
But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war
against Iran
was going badly by 1982. Iran's "human wave attacks"
threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington
decided to
give Iraq a helping hand. After Rumsfeld's visit to
Baghdad
in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi
dictator
with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments.
Official
documents suggest that America may also have secretly
arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be
shipped
to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt,
Egyptian
tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon
skeptics,
the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to
buy a
wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from
American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce
Department export-control documents obtained by
Newsweek, the
shopping list included a computerized database for
Saddam's
Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of
political
opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials;
television cameras for "video surveillance
applications";
chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous
shipments
of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to
former officials, the bacteria cultures could be used
to make
biological weapons, including anthrax. The State
Department
also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine
injectors,
for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but
the
Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some
American
officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas
on
the Kurds.
"who is going to say anything?"
The United States almost certainly knew
from its own
satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical
weapons
against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish
rebels and
civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin,
tabun
and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed
Iran,
before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional
Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces.
There
was only token official protest at the time. Saddam's
men
were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the
Kurds, records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid
(known as
Ali Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about
gassing
the Kurds. "Who is going to say anything?" he asks.
"The
international community? F--k them!"
The United States was much more concerned
with protecting
Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped
through the
Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an
American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf,
killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States
excused
Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead
used the
incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the
gulf.
The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S.
commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and
attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American
warship
in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus,
killing
290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and
fearing American intervention, gave up its war with
Iraq.
Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support
of the West, he
had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran.
America
favored him as a regional pillar; European and American
corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was
visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob
Dole of
Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to
promote
American farm and business interests. But Saddam's
megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his
hand. In
1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several
Iraqi
agents who were trying to buy
[[Page S8993]]
electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear
bombs.
Not long after, Saddam gained the world's attention by
threatening "to burn Israel to the ground." At the
Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a
growing
menace, especially after he tried to buy some
American-made
high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb
parts. Yet
other officials in Congress and in the Bush
administration
continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful,
regional
strongman. The State Department was equivocating with
Saddam
right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August
1990.
ambivalent about saddam's fate
Some American diplomats suggest that Saddam
might have
gotten away with invading Kuwait if he had not been
quite so
greedy. "If he had pulled back to the Mutla Ridge
[overlooking Kuwait City], he'd still be there today,"
one
ex-ambassador told Newsweek. And even though President
George
H.W. Bush compared Saddam to Hitler and sent a
half-million-
man Army to drive him from Kuwait, Washington remained
ambivalent about Saddam's fate. It was widely assumed
by
policymakers that Saddam would collapse after his
defeat in
Desert Storm, done in by him humiliated officer corps
or
overthrown by the revolt of a restive minority
population.
But Washington did not want to push very hard to topple
Saddam. The gulf war, Bush I administration officials
pointed
out, had been fought to liberate Kuwait, not oust
Saddam. "I
am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have
been
like the dinosaur in the tar pit--we would still be
there,"
wrote the American commander in Desert Storm, Gen.
Norman
Schwarzkopf, in his memoirs. America's allies in the
region,
most prominently Saudi Arabia, feared that a
post-Saddam Iraq
would splinter and destabilize the region. The Shiites
in the
south might bond with their fellow religionists in
Iran,
strengthening the Shiite mullahs, and threatening the
Saudi
border. In the north, the Kurds were agitating to break
off
parts of Iraq and Turkey to create a Kurdistan. So
Saddam was
allowed to keep his tanks and helicopters--which he
used to
crush both Shiite and Kurdish rebellions.
The Bush administration played down
Saddam's darkness after
the gulf war. Pentagon bureaucrats compiled dossiers to
support a war-crimes prosecution of Saddam, especially
for
his sordid treatment of POWs. They documented police
stations
and "sports facilities" where Saddam's henchmen used
acid
baths and electric drills on their victims. One
document
suggested that torture should be "artistic." But top
Defense Department officials stamped the report secret.
One
Bush administration official subsequently told The
Washington
Post, "Some people were concerned that if we released
it
during the [1992 presidential] campaign, people would
say,
`Why don't you bring this guy to justice?' " (Defense
Department aides say politics played no part in the
report.)
The Clinton administration was no more
aggressive toward
Saddam. In 1993, Saddam apparently hired some Kuwaiti
liquor
smugglers to try to assassinate former president Bush
as he
took a victory lap through the region. According to one
former U.S. ambassador, the new administration was less
than
eager to see an open-and-shut case against Saddam, for
fear
that it would demand aggressive retaliation. When
American
intelligence continued to point to Saddam's role, the
Clintonites lobbed a few cruise missiles into Baghdad.
The
attack reportedly killed one of Saddam's mistresses,
but left
the dictator defiant.
clinton-era covert actions
The American intelligence community, under
orders from
President Bill Clinton, did mount covert actions aimed
at
toppling Saddam in the 1990s, but by most accounts they
were
badly organized and halfhearted. In the north, CIA
operatives
supported a Kurdish rebellion against Saddam in 1995.
According to the CIA's man on the scene, former case
officer
Robert Baer, Clinton administration officials back in
Washington "pulled the plug" on the operation just as
it
was gathering momentum. The reasons have long remained
murky,
but according to Baer, Washington was never sure that
Saddam's successor would be an improvement, or that
Iraq
wouldn't simply collapse into chaos. "The question we
could
never answer," Baer told Newsweek, "was, `After Saddam
goes, then what?' " A coup attempt by Iraqi Army
officers
fizzled the next year. Saddam brutally rolled up the
plotters. The CIA operatives pulled out, rescuing
everyone
they could, and sending them to Guam.
Meanwhile, Saddam was playing cat-and-mouse
with weapons of
mass destruction. As part of the settlement imposed by
America and its allies at the end of the gulf war,
Saddam was
supposed to get rid of his existing stockpiles of chem-bio
weapons, and to allow in inspectors to make sure none
were
being hidden or secretly manufactured. The U.N.
inspectors
did shut down his efforts to build a nuclear weapon.
But
Saddam continued to secretly work on his germ- and
chemical-
warfare program. When the inspectors first suspected
what
Saddam was trying to hide in 1995, Saddam's son-in-law,
Hussein Kamel, suddenly fled Iraq to Jordan. Kamel had
overseen Saddam's chem-bio program, and his defection
forced
the revelation of some of the secret locations of
Saddam's
deadly labs. That evidence is the heart of the "white
paper" used last week by President Bush to support his
argument that Iraq has been defying U.N. resolutions
for the
past decade. (Kamel had the bad judgment to return to
Iraq,
where he was promptly executed, along with various
family
members.)
By now aware of the scale of Saddam's
efforts to deceive,
the U.N. arms inspectors were unable to certify that
Saddam
was no longer making weapons of mass destruction.
Without
this guarantee, the United Nations was unwilling to
lift the
economic sanctions imposed after the gulf war. Saddam
continued to play "cheat and retreat" with--the
inspectors,
forcing a showdown in December 1998. The United Nations
pulled out its inspectors, and the United States and
Britain
launched Operation Desert Fox, four days of bombing
that was
supposed to teach Saddam a lesson and force his
compliance.
Saddam thumbed his nose. The United States
and its allies,
in effect, shrugged and walked away. While the U.N.
sanctions
regime gradually eroded, allowing Saddam to trade
easily
on the black market, he was free to brew all the chem-bio
weapons he wanted. Making a nuclear weapon is harder,
and
intelligence officials still believe he is a few years
away from even regaining the capacity to manufacture
enriched uranium to build his own bomb. If he can steal
or
buy ready-made fissile material, say from the Russian
mafia, he could probably make a nuclear weapon in a
matter
of months, though it would be so large that delivery
would
pose a challenge.
lashing out?
As the Bush administration prepares to oust
Saddam, one way
or another, senior administration officials are very
worried
that Saddam will try to use his WMD arsenal
Intelligence
experts have warned that Saddam may be "flushing" his
small, easy-to-conceal biological agents, trying to get
them
out of the country before an American invasion. A vial
of
bugs or toxins that could kill thousands could fit in a
suitcase--or a diplomatic pouch. There are any number
of grim
end-game scenarios. Saddam could try blackmail,
threatening
to unleash smallpox or some other grotesque virus in an
American city if U.S. forces invaded. Or, like a
cornered
dog, he could lash out in a final spasm of violence,
raining
chemical weapons down on U.S. troops, handing out his
bioweapons to terrorists. "That's the single biggest
worry
in all this," says a senior administration official.
"We
are spending a lot of time on this," said another top
official.
Some administration critics have said, in
effect, let
sleeping dogs lie. Don't provoke Saddam by threatening
his
life; there is no evidence that he has the capability
to
deliver weapons of mass destruction. Countered White
House
national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, "Do we wait
until he's better at it?" Several administration
officials
indicated that an intense effort is underway, covert as
well
as overt, to warn Saddam's lieutenants to save
themselves by
breaking from the dictator before it's too late. "Don't
be
the fool who follows the last order" is the way one
senior
administration official puts it.
The risk is that some will choose to go
down with Saddam,
knowing that they stand to be hanged by an angry mob
after
the dictator falls. It is unclear what kind of justice
would
follow his fall, aside from summary hangings from the
nearest
lamppost.
post-saddam iraq
The Bush administration is determined not
to "overthrow
one strongman only to install another," a senior
administration official told Newsweek. This official
said
that the president has made clear that he wants to
press for
democratic institutions, government accountability and
the
rule of law in post-Saddam Iraq. But no one really
knows how
that can be achieved. Bush's advisers are counting on
the
Iraqis themselves to resist a return to despotism.
"People
subject to horrible tryanny have strong antibodies to
anyone
who wants to put them back under tyranny," says a
senior
administration official. But as another official
acknowledged, "a substantial American commitment" to
Iraq
is inevitable.
At what cost? And who pays? Will other
nations chip in
money and men? It is not clear how many occupation
troops
will be required to maintain order, or for how long.
Much
depends on the manner of Saddam's exit: whether the
Iraqis
drive him out themselves, or rely heavily on U.S.
power.
Administration officials shy away from timeables and
specifies but say they have to be prepared for all
contingencies. "As General Eisenhower said, `Every plan
gets
thrown out on the first day of battle. Plans are
useless.
Planning is everything'," said Vice President Cheney's
chief
of staff, I, Lewis (Scooter) Libby.
It is far from clear that America will be
able to control
the next leader of Iraq, even if he is not as
diabolical as
Saddam. Any leader of Iraq will look around him and see
that
Israel and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and that Iran
may
soon. Just as England and France opted to build their
own
bombs in the cold war, and not depend on the U.S.
nuclear
umbrella, the next president of Iraq may want to have
his own
bomb. "He may want to, but he can't be allowed to,"
says a
Bush official. But what is to guarantee that a newly
rich
Iraqi strongman won't buy one with his nation's vast
oil
wealth? In some ways, Iraq is to the Middle East as
Germany
was to Europe in the 20th century, too large, too
militaristic and too competent to coexit peacebly with
neighbors. It took two world wars and millions of lives
to
solve "the German problem." Getting rid of Saddam may
be
essential to creating a stable, democratic
[[Page S8994]]
Iraq. But it may be only a first step on a long and
dangerous
march.
____
Per our previous conversation, after
reviewing the
available licensing records of the Bureau of Export
Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, related to
biological materials exported to the government of
Iraq,
additional information identifying the genus species,
and
strain or origin (if known) of the following viruses,
bacteria, fungi, and protozoa for which export licenses
were
granted is requested.
Date License Approved, Consignee, and Material
information:
02/08/85, Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, Ustilago
02/22/85 (2 each), Ministry of Higher Education, Fungi
Histoplasma
07/11/85 (2 each), Middle and Near East Regional A,
Fungi
Histoplasma
10/02/85 (46 each), Ministry of Higher Education,
Bacteria
10/08/85 (10 each), Ministry of Higher Education,
Bacteria,
Clostridium, Francisella
03/21/86 (18 each), Agriculture and Water Resources,
Fungi,
Alysidium, Aspergillus,
Hypopichia
03/21/86 (21 each), Agriculture and Water Resources,
Fungi,
Actinormucor, Aspergillus,
Rhizopus, Rhizomucor,
Talaromyces, Fusarium,
Penicillium, Tricyoderma
02/04/87 (11 each), State Company for Drug Indust,
Bacteria
Bacillus, Bacillus,
Escherichia, Staphylococcus,
Klebsiella, Salmonella,
Pseudomonas
08/17/87 (2 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission,
Bacteria,
Escherichia
03/24/88 (3 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission,
Bacteria,
Escherichia
04/22/88, Sera and Vaccine Institute, Bacteria,
Salmonella
(Class I), Clostridium (Class
II), Brucella (Class III),
Corynebacterium (II), Vibrio
(Class III)
05/05/88 (1 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission,
Bacteria,
Escherichia
08/16/88, Ministry of Trade, Bacteria, (12 each)
Bacillus
(Class III), (6 each) Bacillus
(Class II), (6 each)
Bacillus (Class III), (9 each)
Clostridium (Class 10)
11/07/88 (2 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission,
Bacteria,
Escherichia (Class I)
12/19/88 (3 each), Iraq Atomic Energy Commission,
Bacteria
Escherichia (Class I)
The above listing includes only those
material for which
export licenses were granted from January 1, 1985,
until the
present. A number of requests were returned without
action.
If any information is available as to the specific
materials
requested by |
