Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal -- American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry, presumably to help keep track of political opponents; helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for video surveillance applications; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, IAEC, and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of bacteria/fungi/protozoa to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacteria cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale.

(Source: Newsweek, 9/23/02; Photo: President Reagan and Iraq Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, White House, 11/26/84)