The New York Times is dropping a bombshell, claiming that in 2006, the CIA bought and destroyed nerve agent rockets from an Iraqi seller in an attempt to keep them out of the hands of terrorists. As The Times has it:
The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The Times goes on to report that officers withheld “important intelligence” about the risks of the mission and did not provide adequate medical treatment to those exposed to the chemicals. The CIA declined to comment on the story, and the Pentagon offered only vague acknowledgement that “the U.S. military worked diligently to find and remove weapons that could be used against our troops and the Iraqi people” …
