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December 19, 2002

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These 24 U.S. corporations all illegally helped Iraq, according to the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung, which published the list today.

The report is based on top-secret portions of the Iraq weapons document received by the paper’s Geneva correspondent Andreas Zumach.

Iraq’s report also implicates the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and Agriculture and U.S. government nuclear weapons laboratories Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia.

Zumach also revealed today that Iraq’s report indicates two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Russia and China, continue to this day to arm Iraq.

The names of the companies were supposed to be top secret. Two weeks ago Iraq provided two copies of its full 12,000-page report, one to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Geneva, and one to the United Nations in New York. Zumach said the U.S. broke an agreement of the Security Council and blackmailed Colombia, which at the time was presiding over the Council, to take possession of the UN’s only copy. The U.S. then proceeded to make copies of the report for the other four permanent Security Council nations, Britain, France, Russia and China. Only Tuesday did the remaining members of the Security Council receive their copies. By then, all references to foreign companies had been removed.

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.

Related link:

• Full Democracy Now! coverage