Whar Rumsfeld Did or Didn’t Know

United States Embassy in Turkey Cable from Richard W. Boehm to the Department of State. “Back Up of Transshipment Cargos for Iraq,” November 21, 1980. Shortly after the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. embassy in Ankara reports that Turkish ports have a backlog of goods awaiting transshipment to Iraq, and that a substantial amount of Israeli goods transit Turkey for “Islamic belligerents,” including Israeli chemical products for Iran. It remarks on “Israeli acumen” in selling to both Iran and Iraq.

United States District Court (Florida: Southern District) Affidavit. “United States of America, Plaintiff, v. Carlos Cardoen [et al.]” [Charge that Teledyne Wah Chang Albany Illegally Provided a Proscribed Substance, Zirconium, to Cardoen Industries and to Iraq], January 31, 1995. Former Reagan administration National Security Council staff member Howard Teicher says that after Ronald Reagan signed a national security decision directive calling for the U.S. to do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq’s defeat in the Iran-Iraq war, Director of Central Intelligence William Casey personally led efforts to ensure that Iraq had sufficient weapons, including cluster bombs, and that the U.S. provided Iraq with financial credits, intelligence, and strategic military advice. The CIA also provided Iraq, through third parties that included Israel and Egypt, with military hardware compatible with its Soviet-origin weaponry.

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.

“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 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.