ABSTRACT
In the waning years of the Reagan administration, Steven Bryen served asdeputy undersecretary of Defense for trade security and director of the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA). In September 1990 testimony before Congress, Bryen recalled that in June 1988, the administration received a request from a Maryland company for an advisory opinion regarding an export license for 500,000 to 1,000,000 injectors for atropine for the Iraqi army. (Atropine is an antidote for tabin and sarin nerve gases.) According to Bryen, it took him three months to persuade officials at State and Defense, who saw this as a defensive and humanitarian measure, not to support the application. Bryen had to point out that Iraq was the only country in the region with these nerve agents. Coupled with Iraqi use of chemical weapons, the injectors would
simply allow Iraq to increase its reliance on its arsenal of chemical weapons in both offense and defense. Bryen concluded his remarks by noting that the same company sold 400,000 injector atropine kits to the U.S. Army in early September 1990 to counteract the potential threat posed by Iraqi weapons.1
