United States Military Aid Iraq

In early March of 1987, Vice President George Bush met with Nizar Hamdoon, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, to deliver some good news: Bush's lobbying efforts were about to pay off handsomely for Saddam Hussein. First, Hamdoon was told, two long-awaited licenses permitting Hussein's government to buy militarily sensitive American technology had been approved--over the objections of the Pentagon, according to classified documents.

In the fall of 1989, at a time when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was only nine months away and Saddam Hussein was desperate for money to buy arms, President Bush signed a top-secret National Security Decision directive ordering closer ties with Baghdad and opening the way for $1 billion in new aid, according to classified documents and interviews. The $1-billion commitment, in the form of loan guarantees for the purchase of U.S.

As vice president during the Ronald Reagan Administration, George Bush acted as an intermediary in sending strategic military advice to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at a critical point in the Iran-Iraq war, according to sources and classified documents. The specific advice--that Iraq unleash its air force against Iran--was passed on during a trip to the Middle East by then-Vice President Bush in August, 1986.

A former undersecretary of commerce has told congressional investigators that White House officials and top aides to former Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher supervised preparation of a list of export licenses to Iraq that was altered before it was submitted to Congress, it was disclosed Tuesday. The claims by the former official, Dennis E. Kloske, stopped short of saying that the officials ordered the changes.

The CIA-backed Iraqi National Congress and two Kurdish militias controlling parts of northern Iraq will be among seven Iraqi opposition groups designated by the Clinton administration as eligible to receive $97 million in U.S. military assistance under the Iraq Liberation Act, administration officials said Friday. Officials described the selection of those groups as a first step toward unifying the Iraqi opposition.

Congress' $97-million man is having a bad day. Ahmad Chalabi, the longtime leader of the Iraqi opposition movement, is sitting on a leather couch in his spacious, quiet, well-furnished office in fashionable Kensington. As aides work the phones and computers nearby, Chalabi recites his usual lament: The Clinton administration won't show the Iraqi exile movement any respect. "There's a problem in the Pentagon," Chalabi mourns.

A book to be published today contends that former President George Bush was personally involved in efforts to keep Congress from getting documents revealing the extent of U.S. assistance to Iraq before the Persian Gulf War. Three unidentified Bush Administration officials are quoted in the book, "Spider's Web," as saying that Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, were the driving force behind the effort to keep the records from congressional committees in 1991 and 1992.

Efforts to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the Bush Administration's covert policies and prewar assistance to Iraq received a boost Wednesday when the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said his panel will consider the matter. "Some disturbing information has surfaced suggesting that this officially sanctioned policy may have gone as far as to involve violations of federal criminal law," said Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks (D-Tex.).

Venting his "anxiety" in a bruising election year, President Bush on Saturday angrily accused congressional Democrats of launching a "political inquest" and a "witch hunt" with their investigation of the Administration's assistance to Iraq before the Persian Gulf War. "I know politics when I see it," Bush said as an Earth Summit news conference quickly turned to his troubles at home. "I know political timing when I see it. . . . (And) I must say, this smells political to me."

A former senior Commerce Department official said Thursday that President Bush's lawyer instructed the department to eliminate information from a list of Iraqi export licenses prepared for Congress. But former Commerce Undersecretary Dennis E. Kloske took responsibility for some of the alterations himself. He also said that no one had tried to deceive Congress by eliminating military designations and making other changes in the list. The statement was the first direct contention that C.

Congress' $97-million man is having a bad day. Ahmad Chalabi, the longtime leader of the Iraqi opposition movement, is sitting on a leather couch in his spacious, quiet, well-furnished office in fashionable Kensington. As aides work the phones and computers nearby, Chalabi recites his usual lament: The Clinton administration won't show the Iraqi exile movement any respect. "There's a problem in the Pentagon," Chalabi mourns.

The CIA-backed Iraqi National Congress and two Kurdish militias controlling parts of northern Iraq will be among seven Iraqi opposition groups designated by the Clinton administration as eligible to receive $97 million in U.S. military assistance under the Iraq Liberation Act, administration officials said Friday. Officials described the selection of those groups as a first step toward unifying the Iraqi opposition.

A book to be published today contends that former President George Bush was personally involved in efforts to keep Congress from getting documents revealing the extent of U.S. assistance to Iraq before the Persian Gulf War. Three unidentified Bush Administration officials are quoted in the book, "Spider's Web," as saying that Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, were the driving force behind the effort to keep the records from congressional committees in 1991 and 1992.

A Justice Department special counsel on Tuesday finished a report on whether an independent criminal investigation should be conducted into the Bush Administration's handling of a bank fraud case involving Iraq. The counsel, retired federal judge Frederick B. Lacey, planned to deliver the report to Atty. Gen. William P. Barr's office in the evening, Justice Department spokesman Paul McNulty said.

Eight months ago, the Los Angeles Times published the first in a continuing series of articles charging that the Bush Administration had secretly funneled several billion dollars worth of loan guarantees and military technology to Saddam Hussein from 1986 to 1990. Directly and indirectly, the stories said, this money and materiel gave Hussein the very weapons he later used against American and allied forces in the Persian Gulf War.

Statements by President Bush that U.S. exports did not assist Iraq's development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons before the Persian Gulf War are contradicted by newly declassified documents, a Democratic congressman charged Wednesday. One of the documents shows that by July, 1990, a month before Iraq invaded Kuwait, the State Department had identified 73 exports approved by the U.S. government that were probably being used in Iraq's ambitious weapons programs.

Iraqi Shiite Muslim leaders say they are building support to launch a new popular uprising against President Saddam Hussein, hoping a united opposition front will lure weapons and supplies from the United States, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Gathering for a crucial meeting in Tehran this week to heal rifts within the Iraqi opposition, Shiite leaders say they have received encouragement from U.S.

In the spring of 1989, a CIA officer approached the president of a small engineering firm in Alabama and quizzed him about a carbide-tool manufacturing facility the company was building at an Iraqi government installation southwest of Baghdad. In the fall of that year, a Customs Service agent and an Agriculture Department criminal investigator visited the firm, XYZ Options Inc. in Tuscaloosa, and posed a similar set of questions to its president, William H. Muscarella.

The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged in a classified report that the agency had strong evidence about Iraq's worldwide effort to buy nuclear weapons technology a month before President Bush signed an order mandating closer ties to Baghdad in the fall of 1989, according to sources. The disclosure was contained in a report provided by the CIA to the Senate Intelligence Committee, two sources familiar with the report said Wednesday.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has called for a Pentagon investigation into whether Congress was misled by the official account of the downing of an Iranian commercial airliner by a Navy cruiser four years ago. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) is asking the Pentagon to determine whether the shooting down of the passenger jet occurred during covert operations by the Navy designed to provoke Iranian attacks as part of a U.S. effort to assist Iraq in the final stages of the Iran-Iraq War.