The Observer News Page
Iraqis given anthrax secrets by Porton Down scientists
SHYAM BHATIA

01/25/1998
The Observer
Page 003
(Copyright 1998)

THE FATHER of Iraq 's biological warfare programme benefited from a three-day anthrax workshop hosted by scientists from the Government's chemical and biological research centre at Porton Down , Wiltshire.

The embarrassing British link to Iraq 's deadly anthrax research, revealed by United Nations sources, comes only days after Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's assertion that Saddam Hussein makes enough anthrax every week to fill two missile warheads.

President Clinton warned last week on American TV: 'Think how many people can be killed by just a tiny bit of anthrax and think about how it's not just that Saddam Hussein might put it on a Scud and send it to the city he wants to destroy. Think about all the terrorists and other bad actors who could parade through Baghdad and pick up their stores if we don't take action.'

Anthrax toxin is classified as a weapon of mass destruction capable of killing millions within days. Exposure to minute amounts leads to an excruciatingly painful death. UN inspections of suspected storage sites have been suspended because Iraq has blocked access and the chief UN weapons inspector, Richard Butler, says his talks with the Iraqi authorities were characterised by 'moments of abuse and denigration' of his staff.

The West's role in providing Iraq with anthrax know-how began at a key workshop in Winchester in 1988. Among 80 scientists from around the world were Dr Nasser el-Hindawi and his assistant, Dr Thamer Abdel Rahman, microbiologists working for Iraq 's secret biological weapons programme. The programme's aim was to develop weapons to spread anthrax , gas gangrene, botulism toxin, brucellosis, rabbit foot and tetanus.

Hindawi, who is still active in Iraq , was the academic supervisor of another British

trained Iraqi, Dr Rihab el-Taha, widely known as Dr Death. Taha, trained at the University of East Anglia, was in charge of the Al Hakam biological weapons factory blown up in 1996 by UN inspectors.

As a professor at Baghdad University, Hindawi was commissioned by Iraq 's ruling Baath Party to help develop biological weapons in the shortest possible time. By the time he arrived in Winchester, he had a shopping list of what was needed.

UN officials describe the workshop as a 'Who's Who of anthrax research'. They say the three-day meeting was devoted entirely to anthrax with 'a full exchange of ideas and materials'. Among the British participants was Harry Smith, now emeritus professor of microbiology at Birmingham University. A world authority on anthrax , he says: 'To be perfectly frank, I didn't know {the Iraqis} were there.'

'My God, it's quite astounding that no one caught on,' said Dr Alastair Hay, reader in chemical pathology at Leeds University, who has been following Iraq 's chemical and biological programme. 'By 1985, Iran had already accused Iraq of carrying out chemical warfare and Iraq 's interest in weapons of mass destruction had already been flagged up. Why bring these people here?'

UN inspectors say the Iraqis launched their biological warfare programme in mid-1986 at Salman Pak, outside Baghdad. Soon after, the Iraqis started large-scale production of anthrax for deployment in bombs and Scud missiles.

Germ culture to grow the anthrax was freely imported from the US military's centre for chemical and biological research at Fort Detrick, Maryland, via civilian laboratories operated by ATCC, the American Type Culture Collection.

American investigators have established that several shipments of biological material, including 21 batches of anthrax , were licensed for export from the US to Iraq between 1985 and 1988. They were sent to the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Trade in Baghdad.

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Copyright 1996 Newsday, Inc.

Newsday

November 27, 1996, Wednesday, ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: NEWS; Page A04

LENGTH: 2103 words

HEADLINE: UNDISCLOSED CONNECTION / SCIENTIST ON GULF WAR SYNDROME LINKED TO SUPPLIER OF IRAQI ANTHRAX

BYLINE: By Patrick J. Sloyan. WASHINGTON BUREAU

DATELINE: Washington

BODY:

Washington - A Nobel laureate who headed a 1994 Pentagon study that dismissed links between chemical and biological weapons and Persian Gulf War illnesses was also a director of a U.S. firm that had earlier exported anthrax and other lethal materials to Iraq before the 1991 conflict, according to federal records.

Renowned geneticist Joshua Lederberg of New York served as chairman of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects. At the time of the 1994 study, Lederberg was also one of 10 directors on the board of American Type Culture Collection, or ATCC.

Newsday has found that the nonprofit Rockville, Md., firm made 70 government-approved shipments of anthrax and other disease-causing pathogens to Iraqi scientists between 1985 and 1989, according to congressional records. Lederberg became a director, an unpaid position, in 1990, a year after the shipments were halted by the Bush administration. Lederberg resigned from ATCC last year.

During and after the 1991 gulf war, U.S. intelligence became convinced that the ATCC shipments, along with supplies from other countries, had been used by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's scientists for an expanded biological weapons program, according to U.S. officials.

A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said ATCC's products, designed for research, were ideal for growing tiny samples into wartime stocks. "They ATCC were not the only source, but they made a contribution" to the Iraqi weapons program, the official said.

For the Bush administration, those Iraqi biological weapons were the "nightmare scenario" of the 1991 gulf war - the potential of a Scud rocket warhead filled with anthrax attacking Tel Aviv, prompting an Israeli nuclear counterattack on Baghdad. More than 150,000 frontline U.S. combat troops got anthrax vaccine injections, according to Desert Storm records.

Despite the wartime fears, UN Special Commission investigators in Iraq have found no evidence that Baghdad used biological weapons or even succeeded in developing the pathogens into usable battlefield munitions. But laywers for veterans groups argue that some biological weapons may have been included in nerve gas and other chemical poisons encountered on the gulf war battlefield.

Dispersed as an aerosol, anthrax spores can produce high fever, breathing difficulty, chest pain and eventually blood poisoning and death. In addition, areas hit with anthrax spores can remain lethal to humans for decades, according to the U.S. Army.

In 1993, after a growing number of gulf war veterans complained of fatigue, sore joints, sleep problems, diarrhea, memory loss and other problems, President Bill Clinton ordered the Pentagon study to determine whether U.S. troops had been exposed to chemical or biological weapons during the war. Most of the 75,000 ailing gulf war veterans share the array of symptoms called gulf war syndrome, according to the Pentagon health officials and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Lederberg, who shared the 1958 Nobel for medicine or physiology, was a director of ATCC when he was picked to head the study, which was overseen by Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch, now director of Central Intelligence.

As chairman of the seven-month Pentagon investigation, Lederberg was specific in his personal summary of the 1994 report.

"There is no scientific or medical evidence that either chemical or biological warfare was deployed at any level against us, or that there were any exposures of U.S. service members to chemical or biological warfare agents in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia," Lederberg wrote in the report.

Despite repeated requests for comment, Lederberg declined to be interviewed or to answer Newsday's written questions. Deutch, through a spokesman, said he was unaware of Lederberg's connection to ATCC or that the firm had shipped anthrax to Iraq.

Some members of the 1994 Pentagon panel who served with Lederberg, 71, the former president of Rockefeller University in Manhattan, were unaware of his ties to ATCC. But in recent interviews they defended Lederberg's performance as chairman.

"He is a real humanitarian," said retired Army Maj. Gen. Phil Russell of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Along with Russell, John Baldeschweiler of the California Institute of Technology was unaware of Lederberg's connection with ATCC. "But I do not view it as a conflict of interest," Baldeschweiler said.

But critics of that Pentagon report such as James Tuite III, head of the Gulf War Veterans Foundation, said Lederberg should have recused himself from the Pentagon task force because of ATCC's involvement. "It's an ethical issue," Tuite said.

According to Houston attorney Gary Pitts, Lederberg should have disclosed his tie to ATCC. "It doesn't pass the smell test," said Pitts, who noted that the task force pre-emptively ruled out biological weapons as a cause of gulf war syndrome.

Pitts is one of the lawyers representing more than 2,000 gulf veterans participating in a class-action suit in state court in Texas seeking damages from ATCC and other firms that exported products that could have been used in Iraq's chemical and biological warfare program.

ATCC officials say the firm did nothing improper or illegal in shipping the products to Iraq.

Some veterans suspect that biological weapons caused their illnesses. Pitts said the Soviet-trained Iraqi army may have mixed biological and chemical weapons to create a lethal battlefield "cocktail" discussed in Russian military doctrine.

Kay Sloan-Breen, an ATCC spokeswoman, said Lederberg received no money during his five-year stint as a director and trustee. She described ATCC as a distinguished, 70-year-old nonprofit repository of bacteria, fungi and other products used by the global scientific community as a standard of reference for research.

Shipping ATCC's products to Iraq required approval by the U.S. Commerce Department during the Reagan administration, Sloan-Breen said. "These shipments were up to the Commerce Department," she said.

At the time Robert Stevenson, then chief executive of ATCC, was a member of the Commerce Department's Technical Advisory Committee. But Sloan-Breen said Stevenson and the panel did not advise the department on specific exports. Instead, she said, the committee was seeking rules to restrict exports of potentially dangerous products. "But that committee's efforts went nowhere," she said.

"We are a collection of scientists wearing white hats," Sloan-Breen said.

ATCC's role as a supplier of anthrax to Iraq became public on Feb. 9, 1994, when Sen. Donald Riegle (D-Mich.) delivered a Senate speech outlining ATCC's shipments and criticizing Commerce Department export controls.

"I think the U.S. government approving export of these materials to a government like that and to someone like Saddam Hussein violates every standard of logic and common sense," Riegle said. By then it had been widely reported that Iraq had inflicted heavy casualties on Iranian troops with chemical weapons since 1981.

The senator noted that ATCC shipped "bacillus anthracis," twice - in May, 1986, and September, 1988. There were also two shipments of clostridium botulinum - a bacteria used to make botulinum toxin - on the same dates. The batches, frozen in tiny vials, were shipped to Baghdad's Ministry of Education.

According to CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and UN Special Committee reports, Iraq had expanded its biological warfare program in 1986 at facilities in Salman Pak. Workers in gas masks and polyethylene suits were spotted at the "strictly controlled" plant, according to a recently declassified CIA document.

Eight days after the senator's floor speech, Lederberg wrote Riegle on stationery headed "Office of the Secretary of Defense." Lederberg noted that he had been assigned to examine all available information regarding gulf war syndrome.

"I was intrigued by your recent suggestion that the medical problems being exhibited by some gulf war veterans might be related to biological warfare, specifically, to the list of biological materials sent to Iraq from the American Type Culture Collection," Lederberg wrote in the letter.

He requested a briefing by a member of Riegle's staff. "I am sure that you understand the necessity for us to examine all the scientific facts that may bear on this matter," Lederberg wrote.

Riegle sent Tuite, the director of a Senate Banking Committee investigation of gulf war illnesses, to testify before Lederberg's panel on Feb. 25, 1994. None of Tuite's testimony or details about ATCC's shipments were contained in Lederberg's report.

Lederberg's task force devoted only a half-page to biological weapons in the 1994 Pentagon report. "Biological agents are easily recognized through their effects on a target population," the report said. "The effects of the two most likely Iraqi agents - botulinum toxin and anthrax - are very well understood.

"There were no reported cases of botulinum toxicity or of infection by anthrax," the report said in concluding that Iraq did not deploy or use biological weapons in the gulf war.

All evidence indicates that that conclusion is still valid. UN inspectors in Iraq after the war found facilities to grow a tiny vial of infection-causing pathogens into weapons, but they are still searching for actual biological weapons.

One possible source of a low-level exposure to biological weapons may have been the destruction of Iraqi biological facilities by U.S. warplanes, according to military leaders.

The main production facility, Salman Pak, was bombed from the outset of the war after an extensive debate between President George Bush and his military commanders. They feared fallout from the air strikes could pollute the battlefield.

After the war, Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf recounted in his memoirs the decision to bomb. He quoted Bush as saying "that if we do not attack these plants, we cannot guarantee that these agents won't be used on U.S. troops. This would be unforgivable."

Widespread criticism by members of Congress, veterans groups and the media of the Pentagon's investigation of gulf illnesses resulted in Clinton's creating an advisory committee on the issue almost a year ago.

The White House committee was instrumental in forcing disclosures this year that at least 20,800 soldiers may have been exposed to sarin nerve gas after 14 tons of the poison were destroyed in March, 1991. The panel's final report is due next month and may recommend yet another investigation outside of the control of the Defense Department.

The Pentagon now is taking another look at the possibility of exposure to biological weapons as well as to chemical weapons.

"I am keeping an open mind," said Bernard Rostker, the assistant Navy secretary who is directing a major review of all such gulf war evidence. "There's a lot we still don't know." Key Events - 1985-1989: American Type Culture Collection, a nonprofit company based in Rockville, Md., exports 70 shipments of anthrax and other disease- causing pathogens to Iraqi scientists. - 1990: Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg retires from Rockefeller University and joins ATCC as unpaid director. - 1993: President Bill Clinton orders Pentagon study of gulf war syndrome, and Lederberg is named to direct it. - Feb. 9, 1994:

Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.), speaking on the floor of the Senate, criticizes the approved shipment of anthrax and other lethal materials to Iraq by American Type Culture Collection. - Feb. 17, 1994: Lederberg asks Riegle to brief the special task force investigating gulf war syndrome. - Feb. 25, 1994: Riegle sends director of Senate committee's investigation of gulf war illnesses to testify before Lederberg's panel. - June, 1994: Lederberg panel concludes that there is no scientific evidence that chemical or biological warfare was deployed by Iraqis during the gulf war, and no known exposure of U.S. troops to such weapons. - September, 1994: ATCC chief executive Raymond Cypess informs all directors and officers of the company about the earlier shipments of anthrax to Iraq. - May 26, 1995: Responding to stinging criticism of the Pentagon panel's report, Clinton names Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses. - Oct. 22, 1996: U.S. officials say 20,800 soldiers may have been exposed to sarin nerve gas after 14 tons of the poison was destroyed in March, 1991. - Nov. 13, 1996: Pentagon begins new investigation of possible exposure of U.S. soldiers to biological weapons.

=====================================
Hypocrisy Seen in U.S. Stand on Iraqi Arms
Mideast: Officials say American intelligence aided Baghdad’s use of
chemical weapons against Iran in ’80s.
By ROBIN WRIGHT, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON—-A decade before the current showdown over weapons of mass destruction, the United States turned a blind eye when Iraq used American intelligence for operations against Iran that made rampant use of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles, according to senior administration and former intelligence officials.

The attacks against civilian and military targets during the Iran-Iraq War included some of the most pervasive uses of chemical weapons anywhere since World War I. The combination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and American intelligence eventually helped turn the tide of the eight-year war in Baghdad's favor. The collaboration reached a peak shortly after a secret U.S. estimate projected for the first time that Iran could win one of the century's bloodiest wars. "We knew [the Iraqis] used chemicals in any major campaign," said a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with the American role. "Although we publicly opposed the use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world, we knew the intelligence we gave the Iraqis would be used to develop their own operational plans for chemical weapons."

Now, 10 years later, the United States is trying to rally world support for the use of military strikes to destroy the same kinds of Iraqi weapons—on the grounds that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein should not be allowed to use them in the future. As the U.S. struggles to assemble a new coalition to force Iraq to give up such weapons, Clinton administration officials acknowledge the apparent hypocrisy in U.S. policy. The United States, under President Reagan, "virtually encouraged" the use of chemical weapons a decade ago, noted a frustrated senior Clinton administration official.

But the shift also reflects changes in the political landscape, U.S. officials now argue. In the 1980s, "Saddam Hussein was the great white hope" holding back what was then viewed as a militant Islamic tide from Iran, the administration official said. "They built this guy up and let him do whatever it took to win. And that included the use of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles." The climax of the relationship was the 1988 Iraqi counterattack at the Faw Peninsula, a swampy but strategic southern oil port captured by Iran in 1986. Iraq lost the peninsula in part because U.S. intelligence misread an Iranian military buildup. To help regain the peninsula, U.S. intelligence sources provided data on Iran's equipment and troop strength that guided the Iraqi military in designing and staging a dress rehearsal of the offensive, the sources say. Washington had an "additional incentive" to provide detailed data because of its role in the loss of Faw, a former U.S. diplomat said.

Iraq's 1988 counterattack was a rapid success. And the casualties were among the grisliest of the war. Thousands of Iranian troops were killed, many because gas masks did not fit snugly enough over their beards and thus allowed seepage of lethal toxins. Empty syringes, some of which had contained a faulty antidote, were found beside hundreds of bodies, the sources said. The Reagan administration never actively encouraged Iraq's use of chemical weapons or missiles. And officially, it was neutral in the Iran-Iraq War.

But Washington was well aware that Iraq began using chemical weapons in 1983 and intensified their use in 1986, creating a pattern that made it virtually impossible not to know that Iraq intended to use chemical weapons on the Faw Peninsula, former intelligence officials said.

"By 1986, Iraq had proven itself better at the use of chemical weapons than any fighting force in the world," said a former senior U.S. diplomat involved in Iraq. By 1988, Iraq's use of gases had also repeatedly been documented by U.N. specialists. "It was all done with a wink and a nod," said a former U.S. intelligence official. "We knew exactly where this stuff was going, although we bent over backwards to look the other way." Washington knew Iraq was "dumping boatloads" of chemical weapons on Iranian positions, he added.

Missiles were also pivotal in turning the war in Iraq's favor, especially when Iraq fired Russian-made Scuds on Iranian civilian areas and major cities, including Tehran. The "war of the cities," during which Iran also targeted Iraq, eventually gave better-equipped Iraq a strong psychological edge in the conflict. Today, Reagan administration officials contend that they could not have prevented Hussein's use of weapons of mass destruction. "Get real. We couldn't have stopped him," (my note: so they provided him with assistance and intelligence instead?) said a former National Security Councilstaffer. "The Iraqis were fighting for survival." (my note: they were the invadeders!)

Policy at the time, said another former Reagan official, recognized that "Hussein is a bastard. But at the time, he was our bastard."

Ironically, the most difficult task initially was persuading the Iraqis to believe U.S. intelligence data. "We gave them so much help with intelligence in the conduct of overall campaigns—showing them where Iran was moving troops, where it was most vulnerable, and projecting how to exploit both to their advantage," the former intelligence official said. At first, Iraq ignored or discarded much of the American data. "It took a long time for them to trust us and listen to us," the official said. "Eventually, it sunk in that we were telling them what they needed to know."

The Faw operation was the high point of a blooming relationship between Baghdad and Washington that was founded on a common fear of and deep enmity toward Iran. It overcame more fundamental differences over Israel that led Iraq to sever relations with the U.S. in 1967.

After relations resumed in 1984, U.S. intelligence agents began to provide data about Iran's military operations, largely from satellite photography. The goal at one stage was to provide a counterweight to the supply of arms and intelligence the Reagan administration was providing to Iran as part of the 1985-86 arms-for- hostages swap, according to Reagan administration officials. But in 1986, as the Iran-Iraq War began to turn decisively in Iran's favor, the pace of U.S. intelligence information escalated as part of a bid to at least restore Iraq's edge. The United States was not alone. In advance of the Faw counteroffensive, France, Egypt and Jordan provided help in reorganizing and retraining the weary Iraqi military, Reagan administration officials point out.

And the very countries now most threatened by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction helped pay for them, according to U.S. officials. Of the $100 billion Iraq spent on arms during the 1980s, up to $40 billion was provided by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, either in cash or in free oil.

Copyright Los Angeles Times

=========================================

Profile: Helping Saddam; Iraqi government ordered anthrax and botulism- producing bacteria from United States in late 1980s

02/22/1998
60 Minutes
CBS, Inc. Burrelle's Information Services
(Copyright (c) 1998 CBS, Inc. All rights reserved.)

HELPING SADDAM

MORLEY SAFER, co-host:

Exactly what weapons Saddam is hiding and where he's hiding them remains a mystery. Where he got them and how he developed them is not. He got a lot of help from the British, the French, the Germans, the Russians and from us. Back in the late '80s when Saddam was considered by some as our friend or at least the enemy of our enemy Iran, we provided Iraq with two of the deadliest substances known to man, bacteria that produces botulism and anthrax . Among those who thought that what we were doing was all wrong was a former deputy undersecretary of defense named Dr. Steven Bryen.

Dr. STEVEN BRYEN (Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense): Well, it was very complicated before the Gulf War because the administration was trying very hard to be friends with Saddam Hussein, largely because of the great concern about Iran and the fear of Iran. And Iraq was seen as a--a balancer and as a moderate force, whereas Iran was an Islamic force. So there was a lot of pressure to release technology to Iraq ; technology that shouldn't go there, in my opinion.

SAFER: Were people out saying, `Look, this guy is not a very stable ally'?

Dr. BRYEN: People were not saying, `This guy is not a very stable ally.' That was the problem. Official Washington turned a blind eye to that sort of thing because it really wanted very badly to establish a positive relationship with Saddam.

(Footage of Steven Bryen; Department of State building; Saddam Hussein; vintage footage of Kurdish village after nerve gas attack)

SAFER: (Voiceover) Dr. Bryen was the Pentagon's top cop, the man whose job it was to ensure that sensitive technology would be kept from enemies, potential enemies and questionable allies. But he was up against a formidable adversary: the US State Department, who wanted to satisfy Saddam's appetite despite the clear and present danger.

Dr. BRYEN: (Voiceover) Even as late as 1988 when the Kurdish village in- -in Iraq was attacked by helicopters carrying nerve gas, the Washington reaction was still hands off.

SAFER: He realized `Look, I could bomb Kurdish villages with nerve gas, I could use chemical agents against the Iranians.'

Dr. BRYEN: `And the Americans won't say anything about it.' There was no official condemnation by the United States of these attacks. At that point, Saddam had to think we were a heck of a good ally because here we are letting him get away with these things.

(Footage of American Type Culture Collection building; ATCC sign; vials of cultures; storage containers; infectious substance label; photograph of document with close-up of text: 881215 Iraq Atomic Energy Commission)

SAFER: (Voiceover) Getting away with it was easy. The bacteria was simply ordered from this facility, The American Type Culture Collection of Rockville, Maryland, a non-profit supplier of microbes to the world. They're generally used for public health research. The Iraqi orders, including 34 batches of the deadliest bacteria, did not pass through Pentagon watchdogs. They were simply approved by the Commerce Department.

Dr. BRYEN: I was shocked to see that biological samples would be going to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission because in--it was absolutely clear that--that--that the at--Is--Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission was involved in their nuclear weapons programs and God knows what other weapons programs.

SAFER: I--in very precise terms, what was the--the policy about shipping bacterial cultures like anthrax and botulism to Iraq ?

Dr. BRYEN: I don't think there was a policy in--in--in the administration at the time. I think there was a--a general understanding that a shipment of these kinds of materials was sensitive, required a license.

SAFER: And yet the Commerce Department signed off on them?

Dr. BRYEN: The Commerce Department approved all these licenses. There were a number of licenses. We're not talking about one got through and the others got stopped; we're talking about they all got through, un-- untouched, unstopped.

(Footage of person at computer; ATCC order form coming out of printer; anthrax )

SAFER: (Voiceover) And to find out how to order up some anthrax , just dial up ATCC 's Web site, as we did today, and with the flip of a printer, your order form. Visa and MasterCard accepted. By the way, the effect of inhaled anthrax : one day of flu symptoms, followed by a few days of pneumonia symptoms, followed by death.

Dr. BRYEN: The one experience we have with anthrax in Sverdlovsk in Russia where some of this leaked into the air is that it killed people and animals for over 40 miles from where--where the damage occurred.

SAFER: We do know it was a relatively small amount.

Dr. BRYEN: A relatively small amount and it wasn't because the place was bombed; it was because something leaked and it escaped into the a-- air. So when you hit it with a bomb, you potentially could release everything. So it's worrisome to me that we might set loose some of this kind of material.

SAFER: When you were in that job as--as the--the Pentagon's cop to oversee what was going where, did you get into any confrontations?

Dr. BRYEN: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I had a big confrontation over the shipment of atropine injectors to Iraq . I blocked it. And atropine is an antidote for nerve gas. And so far as I knew, the only nerve gas in the region was Iraqi nerve gas, so it was clear that they wanted one-- they wanted this for offensive purposes, not for defense.

SAFER: To protect their own troops?

Dr. BRYEN: To protect their own troops, and--and to allow them to use it in fairly close-in situations against--against other forces, Iranians or Americans or whoever.

SAFER: You got into confrontations with whom?

Dr. BRYEN: Well, the--the--the fight was mostly with the State Department. It was a million and a half injectors they were talking about, 1.5 million injectors, and these were militarized injectors; the same ones are used by the US Army. And I will--I just said no. It took me three months of--of quarreling, and--and--and finally, I threatened to have a press conference if they wouldn't stop. But in the intervening period, the news of the Kurdish attacks came out, and I think that discouraged the enthusiasm in the State Department for promoting this transaction.

(Footage of Bryen with Safer)

SAFER: (Voiceover) But the export of biochemical technology was not the only source of conflict with the State Department.

Dr. BRYEN: Well, there were a number of licenses that we had blocked for the Iraqi missile programs. Some of them were computers that were used for testing this--the missile track and trajectory. Some of them were equipment to build missile cases and things like that. And--and we blocked them. The State Department didn't like that very much. This

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