A new report by the Foreign Policy has revealed that US guided forces of Saddam Hussain, Iraqi slain dictator, to attack Iranian army soldiers, while they knew a chemical attack was planned.
In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses.
US intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.
The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses.
The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on US satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence.
These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq's favor and ensured that the Reagan administration's long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed.
According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the US had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983.
At the time, Iran was publicly alleging that illegal chemical attacks were carried out on its forces, and was building a case to present to the United Nations.
But it lacked the evidence implicating Iraq, much of which was contained in top secret reports and memoranda sent to the most senior intelligence officials in the US government.
The CIA declined to comment for this story.
In contrast to today's wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene against Syrian government over conflicting reports of an alleged chemical attack in Syria, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein's widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people.
The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted.
In the documents, the CIA said that Iran might not discover persuasive evidence of the weapons' use -- even though the agency possessed it. Also, the agency noted that the Soviet Union had previously used chemical agents in Afghanistan and suffered few repercussions.
It has been previously reported that the United States provided tactical intelligence to Iraq at the same time that officials suspected Hussein would use chemical weapons.
But the CIA documents, which sat almost entirely unnoticed in a trove of declassified material at the National Archives in College Park, Md., combined with exclusive interviews with former intelligence officials, reveal new details about the depth of the United States' knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly agents.
They show that senior US officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks.
They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.
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