In February 2015, the New York Times released a detailed investigation of Operation Avarice. In this secret program, the CIA purchased rockets containing nerve agents from a secret merchant in post-Hussein Iraq, with the goal of keeping these weapons out of the hands of terrorists. (This sort of buyback program is conducted frequently by the CIA; they’ve done it with surface-to-air missiles in both post-Soviet Afghanistan and post-Qaddafi Libya.) From 2005 to 2006, more than 400 Borak rockets containing sarin gas were purchased and destroyed by the U.S. government, and others had been turning up as early as 2004. Meanwhile, American ordinance disposal teams were digging up M110 mustard gas artillery shells. In total, over 5,000 weapons, including airdropped bombs, were discovered over the course of the American occupation.