Naked City

The official U.S. reason for its delay in sharing the complete Iraqi declaration on weapons of mass destruction was to prevent sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands. But according to reports in European papers, an unedited version of the declaration was leaked to a German newspaper -- perhaps directly from Baghdad -- and it contains potentially embarrassing information about foreign firms involved in supplying weapons-related materials to Iraq, beginning in 1975 and continuing in some cases until at least 1999.

According to a Dec. 18 report in The Independent (UK), the uncensored report lists "150 foreign companies, including some from America, Britain, Germany and France, that supported Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme." The 24 U.S. corporations listed as supporting various Iraqi WMD programs prior to 1991 include such multinational giants as Honeywell, Semetex, UNISYS, Sperry Corp., Rockwell, Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, and Bechtel.

Much of this information was initially collected by UN inspectors between 1991 and 1998, but the five permanent members of the Security Council -- the U.S., Britain, Russia, France, and China -- say they oppose revealing the extent of the companies' involvement in order to not "jeopardize necessary cooperation" from such firms. You never know when you might be in need of more WMD expertise. European and Canadian media widely noted the German report. But as of Dec. 23, with the exception of a New York Times dispatch listing the involvement of only two (defunct) U.S. companies, a database search revealed no mention of this story in a single U.S. newspaper.