http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/03/119547.php
excerpt:
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq received the lion's share of
American support because at the time Iran was regarded as the
greater threat to U.S. interests. According to a 1994 Senate
report, private American suppliers, licensed by the U.S.
Department of Commerce, exported a witch's brew of biological
and chemical materials to Iraq from 1985 through 1989. Among
the biological materials, which often produce slow, agonizing
death, were:
* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.
* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.
* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs,
brain, spinal cord, and heart.
* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major
organs.
* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing
systemic illness.
* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.
Also on the list: Escherichia coli (E. coli), genetic
materials, human and bacterial DNA, and dozens of other
pathogenic biological agents. "These biological materials
were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of
reproduction," the Senate report stated. "It was
later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United
States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors
found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare
program."
The report noted further that U.S. exports to Iraq included
the precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical
and biological warfare production facilities, and
chemical-warhead filling equipment.
The exports continued to at least November 28, 1989, despite
evidence that Iraq was engaging in chemical and biological
warfare against Iranians and Kurds since as early as 1984.
The American company that provided the most biological
materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American Type Culture
Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made seventy
shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic
agents, according to a 1996 Newsday story.
Other American companies also provided Iraq with the chemical
or biological compounds, or the facilities and equipment used
to create the compounds for chemical and biological warfare.
Among these suppliers were the following:
* Alcolac International, a Baltimore chemical manufacturer
already linked to the illegal shipment of chemicals to Iran,
shipped large quantities of thiodiglycol (used to make mustard
gas) as well as other chemical and biological ingredients,
according to a 1989 story in The New York Times.
* Nu Kraft Mercantile Corp. of Brooklyn (affiliated with the
United Steel and Strip Corporation) also supplied Iraq with
huge amounts of thiodiglycol, the Times reported.
* Celery Corp., Charlotte, NC
* Matrix-Churchill Corp., Cleveland, OH (regarded as a front
for the Iraqi government, according to Representative Henry
Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who quoted U.S. intelligence
documents to this effect in a 1992 speech on the House floor).
The following companies were also named as chemical and
biological materials suppliers in the 1992 Senate hearings on
"United States export policy toward Iraq prior to Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait":
* Mouse Master, Lilburn, GA
* Sullaire Corp., Charlotte, NC
* Pure Aire, Charlotte, NC
* Posi Seal, Inc., N. Stonington, CT
* Union Carbide, Danbury, CT
* Evapco, Taneytown, MD
* Gorman-Rupp, Mansfield, OH
Additionally, several other companies were sued in connection
with their activities providing Iraq with chemical or
biological supplies: subsidiaries or branches of Fisher
Controls International, Inc., St. Louis; Rhone-Poulenc, Inc.,
Princeton, NJ; Bechtel Group, Inc., San Francisco; and Lummus
Crest, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, which built one chemical plant in
Iraq and, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990,
was building an ethylene facility. Ethylene is a necessary
ingredient for thiodiglycol
In 1994, a group of twenty-six veterans, suffering from what
has come to be known as Gulf War Syndrome, filed a
billion-dollar lawsuit in Houston against Fisher,
Rhone-Poulenc, Bechtel Group, and Lummus Crest, as well as
American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) and six other firms,
for helping Iraq to obtain or produce the compounds which the
veterans blamed for their illnesses. By 1998, the number of
plaintiffs has risen to more than 4,000 and the suit is still
pending in Texas.
A Pentagon study in 1994 dismissed links between chemical and
biological weapons and Gulf War Syndrome. Newsday later
disclosed, however, that the man who headed the study, Nobel
laureate Joshua Lederberg, was a director of ATCC. Moreover,
at the time of ATCC's shipments to Iraq, which the Commerce
Department approved, the firm's CEO was a member of the
Commerce Department's Technical Advisory Committee, the paper
found.
A larger number of American firms supplied Iraq with the
specialized computers, lasers, testing and analyzing
equipment, and other instruments and hardware vital to the
manufacture of nuclear weapons, missiles, and delivery
systems. Computers, in particular, play a key role in nuclear
weapons development. Advanced computers make it feasible to
avoid carrying out nuclear test explosions, thus preserving
the program's secrecy. The 1992 Senate hearings implicated the
following firms:
* Kennametal, Latrobe, PA
* Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, CA
* International Computer Systems, CA, SC, and TX
* Perkins-Elmer, Norwalk, CT
* BDM Corp., McLean, VA
* Leybold Vacuum Systems, Export, PA
* Spectra Physics, Mountain View, CA
* Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, PA
* Finnigan MAT, San Jose, CA
* Scientific Atlanta, Atlanta, GA
* Spectral Data Corp., Champaign, IL
* Tektronix, Wilsonville, OR
* Veeco Instruments, Inc., Plainview, NY
* Wiltron Company, Morgan Hill, CA
The House report also singled out: TI Coating, Inc., Axel
Electronics, Data General Corp., Gerber Systems, Honeywell,
Inc., Digital Equipment Corp., Sackman Associates, Rockwell
Collins International, Wild Magnavox Satellite Survey, Zeta
Laboratories, Carl Schenck, EZ Logic Data, International
Imaging Systems, Semetex Corp., and Thermo Jarrell Ash
Corporation.
Some of the companies said later that they had no idea Iraq
might ever put their products to military use. A spokesperson
for Hewlett Packard said the company believed that the Iraqi
recipient of its shipments, Saad 16, was an institution of
higher learning. In fact, in 1990 The Wall Street Journal
described Saad 16 as "a heavily fortified,
state-of-the-art complex for aircraft construction, missile
design, and, almost certainly, nuclear-weapons research."
...more...
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