This is not a joke. There were actually two pages on the CIA website under the title Iraqi Rewards Program offering rewards for information regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). One web page was in English (at http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm) and the other was in Arabic (at http://www.cia.gov/cia/arabic_rewards.htm). The CIA removed the English version after some time, perhaps because it generated a great deal of amusement because it was "used inappropriately by visitors" who probably posted useless or abusive information on the feedback form. Now, only the Arabic version exists on the CIA website. So, I decided to host the English version on this website.
If you have information relating to Iraq which you believe might be of interest to the U.S. Government, please contact us through our secure online form. We will carefully protect all information you provide, including your identity.
To help us confirm and act quickly on your information, you must provide your full name, nationality, occupation and contact information including phone number. This allows the U. S. Government to grant rewards for valuable information. We will maintain strict confidentiality.
Imminent attacks: If you have information regarding an imminent attack by insurgents or terrorists we ask that you also contact a Coalition Force member or Iraqi police immediately.
Weapons of mass destruction: The presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq puts at risk the health and safety of all Iraqis. The U.S. Government offers rewards to Iraqis who give specific and verifiable information that helps Iraqis rid their country of these dangerous materials and devices. Rewards will be available for specific and verifiable information on:
The location of stocks of recently made chemical or biological weapons munitions, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, or their component parts;
The location of chemical or biological laboratories and factories, development and production sites, and test sites associated with WMD, or sites where these materials were secretly disposed of;
Weapons system plans, military orders, or other relevant documents about biological and chemical weapons, missiles, or unmanned aerial vehicles;
Iraqis who are able and willing to provide detailed information on Iraq's WMD programs and efforts to hide them.
Ba'thist leaders: U.S. Government Rewards are available for the following information on former Ba'thist regime leaders, including 10 million U.S. dollars for information leading to the capture of former Revolutionary Command Council Chairman `Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri:
The current location and activities of these individuals;
Who these individuals are meeting with and their future plans.
Insurgency and terrorism: Insurgents loyal to the former regime, and terrorists are trying to undermine Iraq's future. Rewards are available for specific and verifiable information that helps in their capture or otherwise to deprive them of sanctuary and support, such as information on:
Al-Qa'ida, Ansar Al-Islam, Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi and affiliates in Iraq;
Individuals or groups obtaining explosives and other weapons to use against Coalition forces, Iraqi police, Iraqi Civil Defense Corps members, schools, businesses, or civilians;
Individuals or groups providing insurgents and terrorists with safe houses, training, logistics support;
Individuals or groups involved in, or knowledgeable about, terrorist smuggling routes into Iraq;
Individuals or groups recruiting, facilitating, fundraising, and otherwise supporting terrorism in Iraq;
Facilitators providing documents that assist terrorists' travel to Iraq;
Travel agencies, NGOs, and front companies involved in facilitating terrorists' travel to Iraq.
Missing Coalition personnel: Rewards are available for information on missing Coalition service personnel, as well as Gulf War officer, U.S. naval aviator Michael Speicher.
The last paragraph containing one line about missing Coalition personnel is not shown here. To display it,
Timeline:
10 February 2004: The CIA posts information on the Iraqi Rewards Program on its website at http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm.
12 February 2004: I open the CIA web page in Internet Explorer. I choose the File » Send » Page by E-Mail and the send the mail to my Hotmail account.
Interim: The english_rewards.htm page vanishes from the CIA website. Almost all the links now point to the Arabic version (http://www.cia.gov/cia/arabic_rewards.htm). The secure online form is now available only in Arabic at https://comm.cia.gov/cgi/arp_form.cgi.
July 2004: Referrer log of my blog Moral Volcano indicates that someone visited the site after searching for "Iraqi Rewards Program" english translation. I check the CIA website and find that the English version has been taken down. To retrieve the CIA web page's HTML source and images, I add my Hotmail account to Outlook Express and find the above-mentioned e-mail. The page is then reproduced on the blog. It remains there for sometime until it is shifted to this location.
17 September 2004: I forward the e-mail to John Young, who maintains an archive of documents that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance -- open, secret and classified documents -- but not limited to those. Now, the English version of the Iraqi Rewards Program web page is available on his Cryptome.org website.
7 October 2004: A CIA report, authored by Charles Duelfer, who advises the director of central intelligence on Iraqi weapons, said Iraq's WMD program had essentially been destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended Iraq's nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney later rejected the reports findings and said he believed Iraq may have moved its WMDs across the border into Syria.
13 December 2004: I notice that the CIA contact page at http://www.cia.gov/cia/contact.htm still points to the missing english_rewards.htm page. Will someone tell them?
19 December 2004: I get bored checking the CIA contact page (http://www.cia.gov/cia/contact.htm) every day to see if they have changed the link. Losing patience, I use their contact form to tell them about the broken link. I also give them my e-mail address.
23 December 2004: The CIA replies ("We removed the English-language versions of the Iraqi Rewards Program because the pages were being used inappropriately by visitors.") that it will update the broken link. In case you are wondering, be assured that the CIA uses a slightly different domain to send mail about its website.
24 December 2004: I find that the broken link on the CIA contact page has been corrected. So, what will happen to the Iraqi Rewards Program? Will the link to the arabic_rewards.htm page disappear from the CIA home page?
13 January 2005: U.S. officials announce that the 1,700-strong Iraq Survey Group had wrapped up physical searches in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. They have concluded that prewar Iraq had no WMD stockpiles.
26 April 2005: CIA has officially ended the search for Iraqi WMD. CIA man Charles Duelfer posted an addendum to the October 2004 report. The addendum stated that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria was unlikely. It could not, however, rule out an "unofficial" transfer of WMD material. On the CIA home page, I notice that the English and Arabic hyperlinks to the arabic_rewards.htm page have been moved to a header row. I guess the CIA will covertly remove the header row in the next few days. Sneaky bastards!
2 February 2005: I was rather late to spot that the CIA website had put an update to the Iraqi Rewards Program page on 2nd November 2005. I guess that the current Arabic version on the CIA website would be inconsistent with the archived copy provided here. However, no change will be made to the archive because the original English version was made by the honorable CIA.
---o0O0o---
How Did WMD Get Inside Iraq? Saddam Replies
The American Type Culture Collection made 70 shipments of the anthrax and other pathogenic agents to Iraq.
The American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped my army calibrate mustard gas so that it can be used against Iranian soldiers. Later, Chemical Ali used this expertise to attack the people of the Kurdish town of Halabja. CIA contractors brokered deals for billions of dollars worth of weapons for Iraq. Dow Chemical wanted to ship pesticides that acted like nerve gas on humans. Sidewinder components were transshipped through Italy to Iraq.
The Bechtel Corporation signed an agreement to build a huge petrochemical complex in Bagdad, just two months after Chemical Ali killed 5000 people in the Kurdish town of Halabja.
U.S. Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) provided me with loan guarantees, which I used to get European companies to supply me with dual use materials. German firms even sold Iraq whole factories capable of mass-producing poison gas on the strength of the CCC's credit guarantees.
Donald Rumsfeld met me in 1982 with a handwritten note from Ronald Reagan offering to arrange the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Iraq in order to secure better trade and economic relations and to firm up plans to run a pipeline from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba that would benefit mainly the Bechtel Corporation. He did this despite knowing that we were using chemical weapons in Iran.
The Reagan administration sought to keep a low profile and avoid attention by using obscure U.S. government loan guarantee programs set up by the Department of Agriculture. It was able to do this through fronts, cutouts and sham corporations, allowing for plausible denial. Deals were made to use Brazil as a transshipment point for these weapons. Jordan was used as an intermediary and a convenient false end-user destination. Saudi Arabia transferred hundreds of bombs to Iraq to use against Iran.
Washington's political, military and economic sweetheart deals with me came to light when in August 1989, FBI agents raided the Atlanta branch of the Rome-based Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) and uncovered massive fraud involving the CCC loan guarantee scheme and billions of dollars worth of unauthorised off-the-books loans to Iraq. BNL Atlanta manager Chris Drougal had used the CCC program to underwrite programs that had nothing to do with agricultural exports. Using this covert set-up, my regime tried to buy the most hard-to-get components for its nuclear weapons and missile programs on the black market. An Agriculture Department employee shredded documents describing department's role in obtaining $5.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans to Iraq through BNL, an Italian bank. The shredding was witnessed by a Justice Department paralegal.
Lobbied for Iraq on numerous occasions. Bush signed a classified secret policy called National Security Directive 26 which encouraged U.S. oil companies to do business with Iraq. During the period when my troops were using poison gas against Iranians, the then Vice President Bush Sr. intervened personally to ensure that the U.S. Export-Import Bank guaranteed loans to Iraq worth $500 million to build an oil pipeline. In 1988, the year when I was gassing thousands of Kurds, President Bush Sr. provided my government with $500 million in credit to buy U.S. farm products. The year after the genocide, Bush Sr. doubled this subsidy to $1 billion and sent with the package germ seed for anthrax, more helicopters and dual use materials that could be used for making the very chemical and biological weapons.
George Shultz was Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan. Along with Vice President George Bush, he lobbied for financial and military aid for Iraq. Schultz persuaded Representative Howard Berman to drop his bill returning Iraq to list of countries sponsoring terrorism. In 1988, at the UN, Schultz downplayed Iraq's use of chemical weapons on Kurds. He now heads the Bechtel Corporation. In an op-ed article in The Washington Times, months before the invasion, saying that "a strong foundation exists for immediate military action against [Saddam] Hussein and for a multilateral effort to rebuild Iraq after he is gone." Bechtel is the biggest beneficiary of Iraqi "reconstruction" contracts.
Depleted Uranium In Iraq
Interestingly, the US military has used over 1000 tons of depleted uranium (DU) in Iraq. Depleted uranium is harder than steel and is used to protect armour and to reinforce armour-piercing ammunition. Depleted uranium is extremely dangerous to health if ingested. Because depleted uranium has mixed with groundwater and is part of the foodchain, scores of Iraqis suffer from DU poisoning. Coalition personnel who were exposed to DU dust have begun to show symptoms of DU poisoning.
Depleted Uranium In Iraq