IP: Iraq bought lethal germs in U.S.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> >From The Miami Herald,
> http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/world/digdocs/084030.htm
> -
> Published Sunday, December 2, 2001
>
> IRAQ BOUGHT LETHAL GERMS IN U.S.
> BY JUDITH MILLER, STEPHEN ENGELBERG
> AND WILLIAM BROAD
>
> During the Reagan years, the intelligence agencies began to collect
> new information about germ weapons and to issue reports on their
> spread to Third World countries. In June 1988, they said Iraq was well
> on its way to building ``a bacteriological arsenal'' under the cover
> of legitimate scientific research. The classified study was produced
> at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the headquarters for the U.S. germ
> research program, by the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center.
>
> The analysts said Baghdad's scientists had already produced weapons
> from Clostridium botulinum, which produces a deadly toxin 10,000 times
> more lethal than nerve gas. The report said Iraq was also trying to
> produce ``research and development'' quantities of weapons from
> anthrax and other deadly microbes.
>
> Details of the program were accompanied by a revelation that should
> have caught the eye of senior American officials. Iraqi scientists
> were buying their starter germs -- the foundation of any
> biological-weapons program -- from an American company.
>
> A scientific supply company then located in the Maryland suburbs of
> Washington, the American Type Culture Collection, housed the world's
> largest collection of germ strains, including particularly virulent
> variants of anthrax and botulinum discovered in the mid-1950s as part
> of the American germ-warfare program. The collection served as a
> global lending library for scientists beginning their own research in
> the field of microbiology and was considered an important tool in the
> fight to improve global health.
>
> Overseas customers were required to obtain a license from the Commerce
> Department to export the most virulent strains, but in 1988 this was
> largely a formality. Applications, from Iraq or anywhere else, were
> seldom denied.
>
> Two years earlier, in May 1986, the company had sold an assortment of
> germs to the University of Baghdad, including three different types of
> anthrax, five variants of botulinum, and three kinds of brucella,
> which causes an animal disease, brucellosis, that is incapacitating
> but rarely fatal. Further orders were planned.

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