Iraq and the West Nile Virus:
A Possible Connection?

According to newly publicized documents, the U.S. shipped a variety of dangerous viruses and pathogens to Iraq during the 1980s, including anthrax, the West Nile virus, botulinum toxin and the plague, among others. These announcements raise the possibility that the West Nile virus was artificially introduced into the United States by Iraq in 1999 in order to test Iraq's bioweapon capabilities and U.S. defenses.

A Centers for Disease Control source told CDI the CDC is investigating the possibility that the appearance of West Nile was part of a coordinated plan to introduce biological weapons into the United States by Iraq. "We've been investigating that possibility pretty much since nine-eleven," he said. The source refused to provide his name, citing security concerns, as did other health communication experts contacted through the CDC public inquiry hotline, and added that he cannot speculate on any probabilities until further investigation is complete. A CDC media spokesperson denied these statements in a later interview, adding that the CIA briefly investigated this possibility in 1999.

The CDC shipped strains of West Nile to the Department of Microbiology at the University of Basrah on May 21 1985. The first recorded case of West Nile in the Western Hemisphere occurred in New York City in the early summer of 1999. Since then it has steadily spread westward, killing 160 people this year alone. The CDC states on its website that although they do not know the origin of the virus, the U.S. strain is genetically closest to strains found in the Middle East. A recent article in BusinessWeek, however, said the U.S. strain is not the same one that was provided to Iraq. In September 2002, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., urged the American government to explore a possible connection between Iraq and the West Nile outbreak.

"In the Shadow of Saddam," published by a small U.K. press in 1999, alleges that Saddam had plans to develop a lethal strain of the West Nile virus. The book was written by Mikhael Ramadan, Saddam's reputed former bodyguard and look-alike, and published several months before the initial outbreak in New York City.

While there is no conclusive evidence, the question remains: Is the United States now in the position of waging war on a biological weapons program that it may have helped to create? As Sen. Robert Byrd, D.-W.Va., asked U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, "Are we now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?" The administration of President George W. Bush has been reluctant to address the issue: Rumsfeld's response to Byrd's questions was to flatly deny knowledge of any such transactions and express doubts that they ever took place.

Rumsfeld later said he would ask government agencies to search for documents that confirmed these shipments. On Oct. 8, 2002, the American Gulf War Veteran Association called for Rumsfeld's resignation, stating that his unawareness or denial of the sales represented a danger to the lives of American soldiers. Perhaps he truly did not know about the shipments — but to downplay the possibility as an insignificant event from the distant past is a mistake. This is not the first time U.S. policies have come back to haunt their makers — one particularly well-known instance is the CIA's support of Osama bin Laden against the Soviets in the 1980s, when the U.S. government trained and armed the very people it recently targeted in Afghanistan. Around the same time, U.S. supported Iraq in its war against Iran, which might explain why the shipments were allowed in the first place.

The shipments were approved by the Commerce Department, requested by Iraq for public health research purposes. A Center for Disease Control (CDC) document shows eight separate shipments, the first coming on April 26, 1985 and the last on Nov. 28, 1989. In addition to the CDC shipments, the American Type Culture Collection, a Virginia-based biological sample company, made 11 shipments to Iraq between 1985 and 1988.

In 1986, for instance, the company sent a package of anthrax, botulinum toxin, and gas gangrene to the University of Baghdad, which the UN inspectors later concluded to be a front for Iraq's biological weapons program. That same year, the CDC shipped botulinum toxin and its vaccine directly to the al-Muthanna chemical and biological weapons complex.

Unfortunately, there is no clear solution to this problem, especially when dealing with unstable regimes, or with countries whose populace does not support its government. Nor is it easy to differentiate between efforts by nations to combat disease and those aimed at using disease as weapons.

No one can be sure whether the West Nile outbreak began its circuitous trek to New York at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. But the possibility itself illustrates once again the dangers inherent in ephemeral alliances — satisfying short-term goals at the cost of long-term stability.

Sources

Dean Foust and John Carey, "A U.S. Gift to Iraq: Deadly Viruses", BusinessWeek, Sept. 20, 2002

Matt Kelley, "U.S. Gave Germs to Iraq in 1980s", The Associated Press, Oct. 1, 2002.

CDC West Nile Virus Home Page

Lawrence Morahan, "Vets Group Wants Rumsfeld Out Over Alleged Shipment to Iraq", CNSNews.com, Oct. 8, 2002

Seva Gunitskiy CDI Research Assistant vgunitskiy@cdi.org

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