By DOUGLAS TURNER
News Washington Bureau Chief
9/23/2002

WASHINGTON - American research companies, with the approval of two
previous presidential administrations, provided Iraq biological cultures that
could be used for biological weapons, according to testimony to a U.S. Senate
committee eight years ago.

West Nile Virus, E. coli, anthrax and botulism were among the potentially fatal
biological cultures that a U.S. company sent under U.S. Commerce Department
licenses after 1985, when Ronald Reagan was president, according to the 
Senate testimony.

The Commerce Department under the first Bush administration also authorized
eight shipments of cultures that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
later classified as having "biological warfare significance."

Between 1985 and 1989, the Senate testimony shows, Iraq received at least 72
U.S. shipments of clones, germs and chemicals ranging from substances that
could destroy wheat crops, give children and animals the bone-deforming
disease rickets, to a nerve gas rated a million times more lethal than Sarin.
Disclosures about such shipments in the late 1980s not only highlight questions
about old policies but pose new ones, such as how well the American military
forces would be protected against such an arsenal - if one exists - should the
United States invade Iraq. 

Testimony on these shipments was offered in 1994 to the Senate Banking
Committee headed by then-Sens. Donald Riegle Jr., D-Mich., and Alfonse M.
D'Amato, R-N.Y., who were critics of the policy. The testimony, which occurred
during hearings that were held about the poor health of some returning Gulf
War veterans, was brought to the attention of The Buffalo News by associates of Riegle.
The committee oversees the work of the U.S. Export Administration of the
Commerce Department, which licensed the shipments of the dangerous
biological agents.

"Saddam (Hussein) took full advantage of the arrangement," Riegle said in an
interview with The News late last week. "They seemed to give him anything he
wanted. Even so, it's right out of a science fiction movie as to why we would
send this kind of stuff to anybody."
 
 

No Blood For Oil Page