Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, is among the top 55 most wanted members of Saddam Hussein's fallen regime. She was taken into custody on Sunday.
US intelligence officials say Ammash, 49, is believed to have played a key role in rebuilding Baghdad's biological weapons capability since the Gulf War in 1991.
In one of several videos of Saddam released during the war, Ammash was the only woman among about a half-dozen men seated around a table.
American officials say Ammash is among a new generation of leaders named by Saddam to leading posts within Iraq's Baath party.
On the Pentagon's list of the 55 most wanted, she is number 53 and referred to as the party's Youth and Trade Bureau Chairman.
The US officials say she was trained by Nassir al-Hindawi, described by United Nations inspectors as the father of Iraq's biological weapons program.
Ammash received a master of science in microbiology from Texas Woman's University, in Denton, Texas, and received an undergraduate degree from the University of Baghdad.
Ammash, 49, later spent four years at the University of Missouri-Columbia in pursuit of her doctorate in microbiology, which she received in December 1983.
PA