Iraq, claimed the U.S. government, was a “threat” to the world because of its alleged possession of “weapons of mass destruction”. In order to explain that no WMD were found in Iraq after the invasion, the notion that there had been an “intelligence failure” has been widely propagated. But any analysis comparing the claims that were made against Iraq against the facts known, not in hindsight, but at the time, reveals huge obstacles to the “intelligence failure” theory.

Take any aspect of the case for war and perform the above analysis. Let’s take anthrax. Among the WMD Iraq was supposed to have possessed was weaponized anthrax, described by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as “an acute infectious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis.”[1] As with other aspects of the government’s case for war, the story of Iraq’s anthrax is instructive, if we are willing to accept the conclusions a review of the facts inevitably leads to.

First, let us recognize the now widely accepted judgment that Iraq actually had no anthrax at the time of the U.S. invasion, or for many years prior, for that matter. According to the report of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) headed by Charles Duelfer, “ISG judges that in 1991 and 1992, Iraq appears to have destroyed its undeclared stocks of BW weapons and probably destroyed remaining holdings of bulk BW agent.”[2]

This is the conclusion—that Iraq had actually told the truth when it declared that it had unilaterally destroyed its proscribed biological weapons—that the CIA was finally forced to concede after the fruitless search for WMD in Iraq and tens of thousands (by the most conservative estimates) of deaths later.

In sharp contrast, the claim from the U.S. government prior to the invasion was that Iraq maintained stockpiles of biological weapons, including anthrax. In September of 2002, President Bush said, “The dangers we face only worsen from month to month and year to year…and each passing day could be the one on which the Iraq regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group.” [3] Bush declared that the U.S. must ensure that Saddam Hussein “never has the capacity to use the stockpiles of anthrax that we know he has…”[4] That same month, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that Saddam Hussein “has amassed large clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including anthrax, botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox.”[5]

The government claim was unambiguous, and stated not as a possibility or judgment, but as absolute fact: Iraq possessed weaponized anthrax, and not just in minute quantities, but in “stockpiles”. But what actual evidence was this claim based upon? Did the intelligence available at the time support these claims? Anthrax was an outstanding issue for UNMOVIC inspectors, but what was the nature of that unresolved dispute?

When he addressed the UN General Assembly in 2002, Bush gave the administration version, saying, “From 1991 to 1995, the Iraqi regime said it had no biological weapons. After a senior official in its program defected and exposed this lie, the regime admitted producing tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents…”[6]

The implication was clear, but the language highly deceptive, and highly relevant facts left deliberately undisclosed. It is true that for the first four years of UN inspections, Iraq denied ever having had a biological weapons program. Then Hussein Kamal defected and revealed that this was false, forcing Iraq to acknowledge its past program (not a then-current program, as implied by Bush’s choice of language), which pre-dated the 1991 Gulf War. Also noticeably absent from Bush’s remarks was the fact that Kamal had told UN inspectors that “nothing remained” of Iraq’s biological weapons, but that they were “destroyed” in 1991.[7]

Another relevant fact relegated to the dustbin of history by the Bush administration is that UN inspectors indeed verified that weapons had been destroyed by Iraq in 1991. As the British dossier on Iraq’s WMD from September 2002 acknowledged, “Iraq destroyed unilaterally and illegally, some biological weapons in 1991 and 1992 making accounting for these weapons impossible.”[8]

This is a remarkable admission, if one is willing to contemplate the implications. The United States and Britain went to war in Iraq claiming Iraq had failed to account for its WMD, even while it was recognized that “accounting for these weapons” would be “impossible”. In other words, they demanded that Iraq do the “impossible” and then invaded when what they knew was an “impossible” task was not accomplished.

The British dossier explained the issue regarding anthrax succinctly: “From a series of Iraqi declarations to the UN during the 1990s we know that by 1991 they had produced at least…8,500 litres of anthrax”, but the UN inspectors “were unable to account for…growth media procured for biological agent production (enough to produce over three times the 8,500 litres of anthrax spores Iraq admits to having manufactured)…” While Iraq had claimed its weapons had been destroyed, “Iraq could not explain large discrepancies between the amount of growth media (nutrients required for the specialized growth of agent) it procured before 1991 and the amounts of agent it admits to having manufactured.”[9]

In other words, the Iraqis admitted to having produced 8,500 litres of anthrax, but they could possibly have produced more. And as the chief inspector for the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) Hans Blix explained, “In most cases, the issues are outstanding not because there is information that contradicts Iraq’s account, but simply because there is a lack of supporting evidence” (emphasis added).[10] In other words, there was no evidence that Iraq still possessed any of its biological weapons produced prior to the arrival in 1991 of inspections teams (then known as the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM). Inspectors simply couldn’t verify that all weapons had indeed been destroyed as declared by Iraq.

Furthermore, as Blix also explained, while “Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 litres” of anthrax, “which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991”, not only was there “no convincing evidence for its destruction”, but “Iraq has provided little evidence for this production…”[11]

In other words, not only was there no evidence that Iraq still possessed the 8,500 litres of anthrax it claimed to have produced, there was “little evidence” it had ever been produced in the first place. Often noted was the fact that it was within the realm of possibility that Iraq had actually produced more than the amount it claimed and that Iraq hadn’t destroyed this anthrax. On the other hand, there was the possibility, usually dismissed outright, that Iraq had destroyed the anthrax and other weapons it admitted to having produced (this author knows of not a single instance of this possibility being acknowledged by any government official).

It’s not surprising that only one of these two possible scenarios ever appeared within the rhetoric of administration officials in making the case for war against Iraq, just as it was never publicly acknowledged in administration speeches that inspectors had verified that weapons had been unilaterally destroyed in 1991. The nature of the outstanding issues of anthrax and other biological weapons were never fully explained, for the obvious reasons.

Consequently, it was also never explained that Iraq had been “fundamentally disarmed” by UN inspectors, in the words of former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter, with “90-95% of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability…verifiably eliminated”. It was never revealed to the American public by the Bush administration that even had Iraq managed to maintain “stockpiles” of the anthrax it had produced, it had a shelf life which would have rendered it useless many years prior. Iraq, Ritter explained, produced only “liquid bulk anthrax”, which “even under ideal storage conditions, germinates in three years, becoming useless.”[12]

This was the nature of the “outstanding” issue as it pertained to anthrax in the months building up to war. For the obvious reasons, the full relevant facts were never disclosed to the American public by administration officials.

Implicating Iraq

On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the U.N. Security Council to present the U.S. case for war to the world. Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit,” he said, holding up a small vial filled with white powder, “about this amount—this is just about the amount of a teaspoon—less than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shut down the United States Senate in the fall of 2001.”

“If concentrated into this dry form,” he said, the amount of anthrax Iraq “could have” produced, “would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons.” Iraq, claimed Powell “had perfected drying techniques for their biological weapons programs” and had “incorporated this drying expertise” into “mobile production facilities.”[13]

The “mobile production facilities” (subject for another critical analysis outside the scope of this exploration) never existed. That aside, Iraq had only produced liquid bulk anthrax. Contrary to Powell’s deceptive language, there is no evidence that Iraq ever successfully produced dried anthrax. The Duelfer Report states that the “ISG has found no information” that Iraq ever produced “weaponizable dried B. anthracis.”[14] In April 2003, a senior scientist in Iraq’s biological weapons program during the 1980s, Dr. Nissar Hindawi, told the New York Times that while they produced “huge quantities” of liquid anthrax, “There were orders to destroy it”, and also that Iraq had never been able to make dried anthrax.[15]

Powell’s insinuation that Iraq had powdered anthrax served several purposes. First, it served to counter the fact, little disclosed as it was, that Iraq’s liquid anthrax would have degraded years before. Second, while Powell stopped short of suggesting Iraq was involved, the reference served as a means to provide a mental association with the anthrax letters mailed in the U.S. shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It was, in short, a useful propaganda ploy, not seen for the first time in his performance before the U.N.

The charge of Iraqi involvement in those anthrax attacks had already been made long before, and needn’t have been directly repeated. After anthrax was mailed to various well-known individuals within the United States following the 9/11 attacks, Iraq was immediately marked as the culprit by many.

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and chairman of the Project for a New American Century, connected the dots between “anthrax cases in Florida” with “a few of the September 11 terrorists, led by Mohammed Atta” who had resided in that state, and then from Atta to “the terrorist-sponsoring country that we know has a long record of developing anthrax as a biological weapon, Iraq”. Furthermore, Kristol wrote, “Atta reportedly met with one or more Iraqi agents in Prague in June 2000 just before flying to the United States”[16] (The claim that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi agents in Prague is yet another subject worthy of an intensive review and analysis, again outside the scope of the present one. Suffice to say, for our present purposes, that this had always been a dubious claim).

The Guardian reported that investigators had “named Iraq as prime suspect as the source of the deadly spores”, thus “adding to what US hawks say is a growing mass of evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved, possibly indirectly, with the 11 September hijackers.” Noting that “In liquid form, anthrax is useless”, the report added that “US intelligence believes Iraq has the technology and supplies of anthrax suitable for terrorist use.” A CIA source was quoted as saying, “They aren’t making this stuff in caves in Afghanistan. This is prima facie evidence of the involvement of a state intelligence agency. Maybe Iran has the capability. But it doesn’t look likely politically. That leaves Iraq.”

The charge that Atta had met with an Iraqi agent was repeated, but, the paper added, “Jim Woolsey, CIA director from 1993 to 1996, recently visited London on behalf of the hawkish Defence Department to ‘firm up’ other evidence of Iraqi involvement in 11 September. Some observers fear linking Saddam to the terrorist attacks is part of an agenda being driven by US hawks eager to broaden the war to include Iraq”[17]

Then former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler, in an interview with CNN, also suggested an Iraq connection to the anthrax mailings. “What we’ve got to be certain about above all is whether it came from a country supporting these terrorists as a matter of policy, such as Iraq, which we know has made this stuff.”

Butler went further, saying, “there’s a credible report, not fully verified, that they may indeed have given anthrax to exactly the group that did the World Trade Center.” The “report” had thus somehow graduated from being merely an alleged meeting to an alleged exchange of anthrax.

Butler, like Powell, was delivering useful propaganda, making an insinuation based upon theories lacking the slightest modicum of evidence and dependent upon a dubious intelligence report. “It’s possible,” he repeated, “that many months ago anthrax, a small quantity of it, was handed over in Prague to Mohammed Atta…and the person who handed it over in Prague was an Iraqi.”[18]

Scott Ritter rebutted the charge against Iraq in the Guardian:

Under the most stringent on-site inspection regime in the history of arms control, Iraq’s biological weapons programmes were dismantled, destroyed or rendered harmless during the course of hundreds of no-notice inspections. The major biological weapons production facility – al Hakum, which was responsible for producing Iraq’s anthrax – was blown up by high explosive charges and all its equipment destroyed…. Thousands of swabs and samples were taken from buildings and soil throughout Iraq. No evidence of anthrax or any other biological agent was discovered. While it was impossible to verify that all of Iraq’s biological capability had been destroyed, the UN never once found evidence that Iraq had either retained biological weapons or associated production equipment, or was continuing work in the field.

Ritter also pointed out that Iraq had produced the Vollum strain of anthrax, while the strain used in the mailings had been the Ames strain, and that even had Iraq the capability, it would “undermine what has been Iraq’s number one priority over the past decade: the lifting of economic sanctions”.

“There is no verifiable link whatever,” wrote Ritter, “and it is irresponsible for someone of Mr Butler’s stature to be involved in unsubstantiated speculation. His behaviour has, it seems, been guided by animosity towards Baghdad, rather than the facts.”[19]

However, the propaganda campaign against Iraq continued unabated. The Washington Post included Iraq alongside the U.S. and former Soviet Union as having “developed the kind of additives that enable anthrax spores to remain suspended in the air, making them more easily inhaled and therefore more deadly.” The paper cited Richard Spertzel, a former member of the UNSCOM team, in reporting that Iraq had a process to dry anthrax spores “in the presence of aluminum-based clays or silica powders”, a reference to bentonite.[20]

Yet Spertzel later testified before the House Committee on International Relations that Iraq’s final product was liquid anthrax. “Iraq used bentonite in its production of Bacillus thuringensis spores,” Spertzel said, but notably did not claim that it had also done so with Bacillus anthracis. While Iraq had worked on drying other materials, possibly with the intention of producing dried anthrax, Spertzel acknowledged that “no samples of such preparations were obtained” by UNSCOM. In other words, there was no evidence Iraq had ever produced dried anthrax. Spertzel also noted that Iraq’s drying process was different from the U.S. and Soviet Union, in particular because it did not mill the spores.[21]

David Kay, who headed up the Iraq Survey Group before being replaced by Charles Duelfer, similarly acknowledged in Senate testimony that Iraq had not dried anthrax but a “simulant”.[22]

Yet before the month of October was out, the London Times could report that “a trail of clues…point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions.” Noting the reported meeting of Atta with an Iraqi agent, the paper stated that “To get proof of the Baghdad connection, senior officials in the Bush Administration even sent a former CIA Director to Britain” and “Intelligence officers in Washington have deliberately leaked the testimony of an Iraqi defector…who said that Saddam set up a terrorist training school…” Citing “Israeli security sources”, the Times repeated the claim “that Atta was handed a vacuum flask of anthrax by his Iraqi contact.”[23]

The editor of The Wall Street Journal opined that the report of the Atta meeting “should be a scales-from-the-eyes moment”, but that the “government is back at the old stand, stressing that any Ph.D. microbiologist can whomp up weapons-grade anthrax and leaking that the FBI and CIA suspect domestic cranks.” Iraq “has the anthrax”, he wrote, adding that it was “capable of milling anthrax to military grade” (recall that, according to Spertzel, the Iraqi process using a simulant did not involve milling). “There is plenty of reason to presume he’s behind the current attacks,” the piece concluded, “with bin Laden and his al Qaeda network as a front or ally.”[24]

Author Laurie Mylroie, who wrote a book claiming that Iraq was involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, another dubious claim repeated by administration officials, stated in an interview that “Iraq is the number one suspect” in the anthrax investigation.[25]

When the fact that the Ames strain was used in the mailings became problematic, The Washington Post assisted the propaganda campaign by reporting that Iraq had attempted to obtain the Ames strain from Britain, and while there is “no proof that Iraqi scientists obtained the Ames strain from another supplier”, Iraq “may yet be linked to the series of biological attacks against the United States.”[26] Guilty until proven innocent.

By December, the propaganda furor had seemed to run its course. The New York Times reported that “Shortly after the first anthrax victim died in October, the Bush administration began in intense effort to explore any possible link between Iraq and the attacks and continued to do so even after scientists determined that the lethal germ was an American strain” and cited a “senior intelligence official” as saying, “We looked for any shred of evidence that would bear on this, or any foreign source. It’s just not there.”

The White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, said “The evidence is increasingly looking like it was a domestic source.” The Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, similarly stated that “based on the investigative work of many agencies, we’re all more inclined to think that the perpetrator is domestic.”[27]

Nonetheless, despite these admissions, the allegation of Iraqi involvement remained alive and well. An article in The Weekly Standard, for instance, in April 2002, again tried to argue in favor of the Iraq conspiracy theory, rehashing the earlier claims.[28]

Colin Powell, in his presentation to the UN, knew the claim of Iraqi involvement in the anthrax mailings was spurious. But he need not have actually made the claim. Merely drawing the mental association between Iraq and the anthrax mailings was enough for propaganda effect, the same propaganda technique that, as polls indicated, led a large majority of Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11.

The Source

As noted earlier, the strain of anthrax used in the mailings was identified as the Ames strain. It did not come from Iraq, but was traced to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The U.S. had been working with powdered anthrax since 1992 in a biowarfare program at Dugway Proving Ground, an Army installation in Utah.[29]

But another interesting footnote to the anthrax story, though usually ignored, reared its head from time to time during the propaganda campaign to implicate Iraq in the anthrax mailings. The UK paper the Telegraph pointed out that “Iraq obtained much of its anthrax supply from the American Type Culture Collection. Between 1985 and 1989, it obtained at least 21 strains of anthrax from ATCC and about 15 other class III pathogens, the bacteria that pose an extreme risk to human health. One strain had a British military pedigree and three of the other strains were listed as coming from the American military’s biological warfare programme.”[30]

Scott Ritter, in his rebuttal to Richard Butler, similarly noted that “Iraq procured the Vollum strain of anthrax from American Type Culture Collection…”[31] David Kelly, also a former UN inspector and British Foreign Office expert, likewise noted the origin of Saddam Hussein’s anthrax strains.[32]

The Washington Post noted at the bottom of an article on page A12 that Iraq “had received the two Vollum strains and five other strains of anthrax bacterium from the American Type Culture Collection…”[33] The New York Times made the same observation, adding that none of the strains Iraq obtained were of the Ames variety.[34]

It was a well known fact by the time the administration began beating the drums of war that Iraq had obtained its anthrax from the U.S. Yet, it was rarely noted during either the maelstrom of reports attempting to implicate Iraq in the anthrax mailings or later during the months the government was making its case for the use of armed force.

Iraq’s anthrax is traceable back to a biological warfare program instituted by Winston Churchill during World War II. The culture developed under that program was sent to the United States.[35] It was this anthrax that Iraq weaponized in its biological warfare program.

As author William Blum noted in 1998, “When Iraq engaged in chemical and biological warfare in the 1980s, barely a peep of moral outrage could be heard from Washington, as it kept supplying Saddam with the materials he needed to build weapons.”[36]

A Senate report in 1994 observed that:

The United States provided the Government of Iraq with “dual use” licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological, and missile-system programs, including…chemical warfare agent precursors; chemical warfare agent production facility plans and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production facility plans); chemical warhead filling equipment; biological warfare related materials; missile fabrication equipment; and, missile-system guidance equipment…. Records available from the supplier for the period from 1985 until the present show that during this time, pathogenic (meaning “disease producing”), toxigenic (meaning “poisonous”), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce…. These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction.[37]

Although Iraq’s biological warfare program was not revealed until years later, it was well known that Iraq had engaged in chemical warfare against Iran and the Kurds during the 1980s. This did not stop the U.S. from supporting Saddam Hussein or helping him to acquire materials such as anthrax which eventually found their way into Iraq’s biological weapons program. The obvious corollary is that the U.S. was little concerned with Iraq’s WMD at the time.

What happened, then? Did the U.S. government suddenly become concerned with WMD? This is the usual hypothesis, that although we made “mistakes” in the past, now we are on a “change of course” to right those wrongs. The U.S., therefore, even though it had assisted him in acquiring them, would now hold Saddam Hussein accountable for his WMD.

There are several problems with this theory. First, many of the policy makers in the George W. Bush administration were the same policy makers during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Secondly, if there had been an honest desire to hold Saddam accountable for his WMD, then facts would have mattered. As a review of the facts reveals, truth was not a companion, but a casualty of the administrations claims against Iraq.

Anthrax was but one part of the case for war against Iraq, and a relatively minor role it played, at that. But, although it is beyond the scope of this review to do so, our experiment may be repeated with virtually any aspect of the case for war. Any rational analysis comparing the claims being made against the known facts leads to one inevitable conclusion: the notion of an “intelligence failure” leading to the Iraq war is nothing more than a myth.

[1] Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/anthrax_g.htm

[2] “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD”, CIA, September 30, 2004

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap6.html

[3] Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, July 7, 2004

[4] Dr David Kay’s Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Senate, January 28, 2004

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KAY401A.html

[5] Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, July 7, 2004

[6] Remarks by the President in Address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html

[7] UNSCOM Debriefing of General Hussein Kamel, August 22, 1995

[8] “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The assessment of the British Government”, September 24, 2002

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page271.asp

[9] “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The assessment of the British Government”, September 24, 2002

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page271.asp

[10] Hans Blix Briefing to the Security Council, December 19, 2002

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/pages/security_council_briefings.asp

[11] Hans Blix Briefing to the U.N. Security Council, January 27, 2003

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/pages/security_council_briefings.asp

[12] “‘Even if Iraq managed to hide these weapons, what they are now hiding is harmless goo'”, The Guardian, September 19, 2002

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,794771,00.html

[13] U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council, February 5, 2003

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html

[14] “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD”, CIA, September 30, 2004

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap6.html

[15] Judith Miller, “Leading Iraqi Scientist Says He Lied to U.N. Inspectors”, The New York Times, April 27, 2003

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D14FD39590C748EDDAD0894DB404482

[16] William Kristol, “Other States”, The Weekly Standard, October 9, 2001

http://www.weeklystandard.com

[17] David Rose and Ed Vulliamy, “Iraq ‘behind US anthrax outbreaks'”, The Guardian, October 14, 2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,573908,00.html

[18] “Ex-U.N. weapons inspector: Possible Iraq-anthrax link”, CNN, October 15, 2001

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/conditions/10/15/anthrax.butler/index.html

[19] Scott Ritter, “Don’t blame Saddam for this one”, The Guardian, October 19, 2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,576755,00.html

[20] Rick Weiss and Dan Eggen, “Additive Made Spores Deadlier”, The Washington Post, October 25, 2001; Page A01

http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/wp011024.html

[21] Richard O. Spertzel Testimony Before the House Committee on International Relations, December 5, 2001

http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/testimony/CT2001Dec05Spertzel.htm

[22] Dr David Kay’s Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Senate, January 28, 2004

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KAY401A.html

[23] Daniel McGrory, “Hijacker ‘Given Anthrax Flask by Iraqi Agent'”, The London Times, October 27, 2001

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001350026-2001372638,00.html

[24] Robert L. Bartley, “Anthrax: The Elephant in the Room”, The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2001

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=95001389

[25] Interview with Laurie Mylroie, “Gunning for Saddam”, PBS Frontline, November 8, 2001

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/mylroie.html

[26] Colum Lynch, “Anthrax Type That Killed May Have Reached Iraq”, The Washington Post, November 25, 2001; Page A12

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10804-2001Nov24?language=printer

[27] William J. Broad and David Johnston, “U.S. Inquiry Tried, but Failed, to Link Iraq to Anthrax Attack”, The New York Times, December 22, 2001

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1222-02.htm

[28] David Tell, “Remember Anthrax?” The Weekly Standard, April 29, 2002, Volume 007, Issue 32

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/147vnjgh.asp?pg=2

[29] “Genetic anthrax analysis won’t be ‘smoking gun'”, Associated Press, December 19, 2001

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001/12/19/anthrax-probe.htm

[30] Roger Highfield, “Iraq’s chemists bought anthrax from America”, The Telegraph, October 18, 2001

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/18/wanth218.xml

[31] Scott Ritter, “Don’t blame Saddam for this one”, The Guardian, October 19, 2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,576755,00.html

[32] Joe Lauriea, “Iraq Purchased Anthrax From US Company”, Vancouver Sun, October 22, 2001

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/2001/1022iraq.htm

[33] Colum Lynch, “Anthrax Type That Killed May Have Reached Iraq”, The Washington Post, November 25, 2001; Page A12

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10804-2001Nov24?language=printer

[34] William J. Broad and David Johnston, “U.S. Inquiry Tried, but Failed, to Link Iraq to Anthrax Attack”, The New York Times, December 22, 2001

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1222-02.htm

[35] Dominic Kennedy, “Saddam’s germ war plot is traced back to one Oxford cow”, The Times, August 9, 2005

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1726745,00.html

Anthony H. Cordesman, “Iraq’s Past and Future Biological Weapons Capabilities”, Center for Strategic and International Studies, February, 1998

http://www.csis.org/mideast/reports/iraq_bios.pdf

[36] William Blum, “Anthrax for Export”, The Progressive, March 1998

http://www.progressive.org/node/1866

[37] “U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and Their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War”, A Report of Chairman Donald W. Riegle, Jr. and Ranking Member Alfonse M. D’Amato of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with respect to Export Administration, United States Senate, May 25, 1994