Why is the U.N. -- at the White House's request -- censoring 8,000 pages of Iraq's weapons declaration?
Feb. 27, 2003 Joe Conason's Journal
The leading media outfits often proclaim their devotion to "investigative reporting," but the priorities of our journalistic sleuths can be hard to understand. Liberal or conservative, the mainstream media spoke as one in demanding every scrap of paper that might reveal an errant detail about the failed Whitewater land investment -- and they eventually got thousands of pages of documents around and about and tangential to that topic, which almost none of them ever bothered to read. (Too complicated, and too exculpatory.)
Now the U.N. Security Council is burying roughly 8,000 pages from the 12,000-page weapons declaration delivered by Baghdad last December -- and nobody in the major U.S. media seems to be trying to obtain those crucial papers or protesting the U.N. censorship. Who cares? This is about war -- and therefore not nearly as intriguing as land development in rural Arkansas. The missing pages reportedly are being withheld at the request of the Bush administration, but this is an issue on which adversaries and allies apparently agree. France, Germany, Russia, China and Britain all have no quarrel with keeping those pages secret.
Why? Evidently those documents name corporations and other entities from all those countries that supplied the Iraqi weapons industries, back when our politicians still considered Saddam Hussein preferable to the alternatives and cared little for the fate of the Kurds, the Shia and the tortured Iraqi people. (The National Security Archive has posted a series of important documents dating from 1980 to 1984 that show how the Reagan administration -- then staffed by the likes of Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld -- sought to downplay Iraq's use of chemical weapons.)
Both the Sunday Herald in Scotland and Die Tageszeitung in Germany have recently published extracts from the censored documents, naming prominent firms in their own countries and the United States as major suppliers of chemical, biological and nuclear equipment to the Iraqi regime. Among the firms named by the Sunday Herald is International Military Services, a commercial branch of the U.K. Ministry of Defense.
The role of Western governments and companies in arming Saddam is not exactly a secret, of course. Covert U.S. financial and military assistance to Iraq was the subject of one of the unfinished scandals of the first Bush administration -- named "Iraqgate" by William Safire, if I recall correctly. Only a few news organizations, notably the L.A. Times and the Financial Times, pursued that story aggressively, but it scared the Republicans badly. These days, they have little to fear from the docile press corps.
Meanwhile, as the nation considers war and its aftermath, perhaps we can look forward to learning exactly what is in those hidden U.N. documents when this President Bush fulfills his promise to prosecute Iraqi war crimes. Any accused Iraqi could mount a defense based in part on U.S. and U.K. complicity in Saddam's war machine. But then again, perhaps such cases will be handled by the president's military tribunals -- without defense attorneys or subpoenaed evidence -- to insure that none of those embarrassing facts need ever be brought to light.
==========
Revealed: 17 British firms armed Saddam with his
weapons
Investigation: By Neil Mackay Home Affairs Editor
sundayherald.com
SEVENTEEN British companies who supplied Iraq with nuclear, biological, chemical, rocket and
conventional weapons technology are to be investigated and could face prosecution following a
Sunday Herald investigation.
One of the companies is Inter national Military Services, a part of the Ministry of Defence,
which sold rocket technology to Iraq. The companies were named by Iraq in a 12,000 page
dossier submitted to the UN in December. The Security Council agreed to US requests to
censor 8000 pages -- including sections naming western businesses which aided Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction programme.
The five permanent members of the security council -- Britain, France, Russia, America and
China -- are named as allowing companies to sell weapons technology to Iraq.
The dossier claims 24 US firms sold Iraq weapons. Hewlett-Packard sold nuclear and rocket
technology; Dupont sold nuclear technology, and Eastman Kodak sold rocket capabilities. The
dossier also says some '50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises conducted their arms business
with Iraq from the US'.
It claims the US ministries of defence, energy, trade and agri culture, and the Lawrence
Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, supplied Iraq with WMD technology.
Germany, currently opposed to war, is shown to be Iraq's biggest arms-trading partner with
80 companies selling weapons technology, including Siemens. It sold medical machines with
dual-purpose parts used to detonate nuclear bombs. The German government reportedly
'actively encouraged' weapons co-operation and assistance was allegedly given to Iraq in
developing poison gas used against Kurds.
In China three companies traded weapons technology; in France eight and in Russia six. Other
countries included Japan with five companies; Holland with three; Belgium with seven; Spain
with three and Sweden with two, including Saab.
The UN claims publicly naming the companies would be counter-productive. Although most of
the trade ended in 1991 on the outbreak of the Gulf War, at least two of the five permanent
security council members -- Russia and China -- traded arms with Iraq in breach of UN
resolutions after 1991. All trade in WMD technology has been outlawed for decades.
UNSCOM found documents showing preparations by the Russian firms Livinvest, Mars Rotor and
Niikhism to supply parts for military helicopters in 1995. In April 1995, Mars Rotor and Niikhism
sold parts used in long-range missiles to a Palestinian who transported them to Baghdad. In
2001 and 2002, the Chinese firm Huawei Technologies sent supplies to Iraqi air defence.
Foreign companies supplied Iraq's nuclear weapons programme with detonators, fissionable
material and parts for a uranium enrichment plant. Foreign companies also provided Iraq's
chemical and biological programmes with basic materials; helped with building labs; assisted the
extension of missile ranges; provided technology to fit missiles with nuclear, biological and
chemical warheads; and supplied Scud mobile launch-pads. Nearly all the weapons that were
supplied have been destroyed, accounted for or immobilised, according to former weapons
inspectors.
The Foreign Office said: 'The UK will investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute any UK
company found to have been in breach of export control legislation.' The Department of Trade
and Industry said details on export licences, including information on weapons sold to Iraq,
was unavailable.
A spokesman for one of the British companies named, Endshire Export Marketing, said it had
sold a consignment of magnets to a German middle-man who sold them to Iraq. Responding to
claims that magnets could be used in a nuclear programme, the spokesman said: 'I've no idea if
this is the case. I couldn't tell one end of a nuclear bomb from the other.' The company was
included on a US boycott list in 1991.
He said the company considered the deal 'genuine business' at the time but that, with the
'benefit of hindsight', the firm would not have taken part in the deal. A spokesman for the
MoD's International Military Services said he could not comment as no staff from 1991 were on
the payroll and no documents from then existed.
Mick Napier of the Stop The War Coalition said: 'How can we support a government which says
it's against mass murder when its record is one of supporting and supplying Iraq? This
government depends on public mass amnesia.'
Tommy Sheridan, leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, said: 'The evidence of British armament
companies, with central government support, arming the Butcher of Baghdad lays to rest the
moral garbage spewed from the British government. It exposes the fact that Britain, along
with America, France and Russia, armed Saddam to the teeth while he was butchering his own
people.'
Labour MP Tam Dalyell said: 'What the Sunday Herald has printed is of huge significance. It
exposes the hypocrisy of Blair and Bush. The chickenhawks who want war were up to their
necks in arms deals. This drives a coach and horses through the moral case for war.'
UK firms that sold arms to Iraq
Key: A -- nuclear, B -- biological, C -- chemical, R -- rocket, K -- conventional
Euromac Ltd-UK (A)
C Plath-Nuclear (A)
Endshire Export Marketing (A)
International Computer Systems (A, R, K)
MEED International (A, C)
Walter Somers Ltd. (R)
International Computer Limited (A, K)
Matrix Churchill Corp. (A)
Ali Ashour Daghir (A)
International Military Services (R)
Sheffield Forgemasters (R)
Technology Development Group (R)
International Signal and Control (R)
Inwako (A)
TMG Engineering (K)
XYY Options, Inc (A)
==========
Only parts of a 1998 Iraqi weapons declaration to the UN were released last December to non-permanent members of the Security Council. The missing data concerned details of the arms trade with Iraq by U.S. government agencies, research labs, and U.S. and foreign private companies. However, Die Tageszeitung, a German daily, published details that had been withheld, including a list of 24 U.S. companies it claims were listed as having supplied Saddam with construction materials for nuclear weapons and rocket programs and with anthrax.
The German paper reported that the document had been censored mostly at the urging of the U.S., which is a permanent member of the Security Council. The companies are a Who's Who of American industry, including DuPont, Honeywell, Eastman Kodak, Rockwell, Bechtel, and Sperry. Some of these companies have been substantial contributors to political campaigns. Honeywell ranks 12th in the list of defense industry firms making contributions, pouring $364,227 into the 2000 presidential election cycle, two-thirds of it to Republicans. Asked for comment, a company spokesperson said, "Honeywell does not engage in business with Iraq or any other entity that we suspect would divert our products to Iraq." Citing various government reports, The Progressive revealed in 1998, "From 1985 to 1990, the United States government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application." Only 39 applications were rejected. A Senate committee inquiring into American export policies toward Iraq heard testimony in 1992 that Commerce Department personnel "changed information on sixty-eight licenses, that references to military end uses were deleted, and the designation 'military truck' was changed. This was done on licenses having a total value of over $1 billion." In 1994 a group of veterans sued a group of firms, including American Type Culture Collection, for assisting Iraq in producing or obtaining biochemical agents that the vets said caused Gulf War syndrome. A 1994 Pentagon study found there was no link between the syndrome and chemical and biological agents, but the man who headed the study was a director of a company that produced and sold anthrax to Iraq, according to a Newsday investigation at the time. A suit is still pending against 56 companies; more than 5000 vets are seeking $1 billion in damages. |
