Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in '84 Despite Chemical Raids
December 23, 2003
DOCUMENTS
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - As a special envoy for the Reagan administration
in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled
to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States
was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein
despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified
documents show.
Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time,
was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to reinforce a message that a
recent move to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons was strictly
in principle and that America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the
Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.
During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq
with combat planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein's
use of chemical weapons was widely known. The highly classified
program involved more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, who shared intelligence on Iranian
deployments, bomb-damage assessments and other crucial information with Iraq.
The disclosures round out a picture of American
outreach to the Iraqi government,
even as the United States professed to be neutral in the
eight-year war, and suggests a private nonchalance toward
Mr. Hussein's use of chemicals in warfare. Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush
administration officials have cited Iraq's use of poisonous gas as
a main reason for ousting Mr. Hussein.
The documents, which were released as part of a declassification
project by the National Security Archive, and are available on the Web at
www.nsarchive.org, provide details of the instructions given
to Mr. Rumsfeld on his second trip to Iraq in four months. The notes of Mr. Rumsfeld's
encounter with Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister, remain classified,
but officials acknowledged that it would be unusual if Mr. Rumsfeld did not carry
out the instructions.
Since the release of the documents, he has told members
of his inner circle at the Pentagon that he does not recall whether he had read, or even
had received, the State Department memo, Defense Department officials said.
One official noted that the documents reflected the State Department's
thinking on Iraq, but did not indicate Mr. Rumsfeld's planning for his
meeting with Mr. Hussein nor his comments on the meeting after its conclusion.
Mr. Rumsfeld's trip was his second visit to Iraq. On his first visit,
in late December 1983, he had a cordial meeting with Mr. Hussein, and
photographs and a report of that encounter have been widely published.
In a follow-up memo, the chief of the American interests section reported
that Mr. Aziz had conveyed Mr. Hussein's satisfaction with the meeting.
"The Iraqi leadership was extremely pleased with Amb. Rumsfeld's visit,"
the memo said. "Tariq Aziz had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as
a person."
When news emerged last year of the December trip, Mr. Rumsfeld
told CNN that he had "cautioned" Mr. Hussein to forgo chemical weapons. But
when presented with declassified notes of their meeting that made
no mention of that, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue
in a meeting with Mr. Aziz.
Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday
that there was no inconsistency between Mr. Rumsfeld's previous comments on
his missions to Iraq and the State Department documents.
By early 1984, events threatened to upset the American-Iraqi relationship.
After pleading for a year for international action against the chemical
warfare, Iran had finally persuaded the United Nations to criticize the
use of chemical weapons, albeit in vague terms.
Pressure mounted on the Reagan administration, which had already
verified Iraq's "almost daily" use of the weapons against Iran and against
Kurdish rebels, documents show. In February, Iraq warned Iranian
"invaders" that "for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of
annihilating it." Within weeks, the American authorities intercepted
precursor chemicals that were bound for Iraq. Finally, on March 5, the United
States issued a public condemnation of Iraq.
But days later, Mr. Shultz and his deputy met with an Iraqi diplomat,
Ismet Kittani, to soften the blow. The American relationship with Iraq was too
important - involving business interests, Middle East diplomacy
and a shared determination to thwart Iran - to sacrifice. Mr. Kittani left the
meeting "unpersuaded," documents show.
Mr. Shultz then turned to Mr. Rumsfeld. In a March 24 briefing
document, Mr. Rumsfeld was asked to present America's bottom line. At first, the
memo recapitulated Mr. Shultz's message to Mr. Kittani, saying it
"clarified that our CW [chemical weapons] condemnation was made strictly out of
our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it
occurs." The American officials had "emphasized that our interests in
1) preventing an Iranian victory and 2) continuing to improve bilateral
relations with Iraq, at a pace of Iraq's choosing, remain undiminished," it
said.
Then came the instructions for Mr. Rumsfeld: "This message bears
reinforcing during your discussions."
The American relationship with Iraq during its crippling war with Iran was
rife with such ambiguities. Though the United States was outwardly
neutral, it tilted toward Iraq and even monitored talks toward the sale
of military equipment by private American contractors.
Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive,
said: "Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980's, and it didn't make any
difference to U.S. policy."
Mr. Blanton suggested that the United States was now paying
the price for earlier indulgence. "The embrace of Saddam in the 1980's and what it
emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have
to look closely at all our murky alliances," he said. "Shaking hands with
dictators today can turn them into Saddams tomorrow."
Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.
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