December 18, 2002

on Democracy NOW!

Story: TOP SECRET IRAQ WEAPONS REPORT SAYS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT & CORPORATIONS HELPED TO ILLEGALLY ARM IRAQ WE TALK WITH THE GERMAN REPORTER WHO OBTAINED LEAKED PORTIONS OF THE UNEDITED REPORT THAT NAMES HEWLETT PACKARD, DUPONT AND BECHTEL & 20 OTHER U.S. COMPANIES AS WELL AS LOS ALAMOS AND LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORIES AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

A German newspaper has obtained portions of Iraq's top secret weapons report that reveals at least 24 U.S. corporations as well as four agencies of the U.S. government illegally helped Iraq build its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

Some of the corporations include Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Honeywell, Rockwell, Tectronics, Bechtel, International Computer Systems, Unisys, Sperry and TI Coating.

The Berlin-based paper Die Tageszeitung also reports the U.S. Department of Energy delivered essential non-fissile parts for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. The Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Defense also provided assistance.

According to the paper, only one country had more business ties to Iraq than the U.S. That was Germany. As many as 80 German companies are also listed in Iraq's report. And the paper reported that some German companies continued to do business with Iraq until last year.

The list of companies who worked with Iraq was supposed to be top secret. Iraq produced only two identical copies of its 12,000-page report for international review. One went to the International Atomic Energy Agency and one went to the United Nations. The Bush Administration quickly took control of the UN version, and made unedited copies for the other permanent members of the Security Council, Britain, France, Russia and China. The U.S. then made edited copies, which deleted all reference to nuclear weapons production and all mentions of international corporations. This was the report that the world was supposed to see.

But the German paper obtained several hundred pages of unedited text and began publishing articles based on the leaked documents yesterday. We're joined right now from Geneva by Andreas Zumach, the journalist who broke the story for Die Tageszeitung.

Guest:

* Andreas Zumach, Geneva-based UN correspondent with the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung who obtained an unedited copy of Iraq's 12,000 page report to the United Nations. The report reveals how German and U.S. corporations helped build Iraq's weapons program.