"US, UK knew about A Q Khan but kept quiet: new book"

London, October 24: Four years before Pakistan’s Dr Abdul Qadir Khan was publicly humiliated, then pardoned and placed under house arrest, the British and US authorities were briefed about his role in selling nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

Intriguingly, in both London and Washington, however, officials were told to keep quiet about the findings which were only revealed several years later when the risk of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of so-called rogue states and terrorists is more real than it ever has been.

Bhopal-born Khan, who stole nuclear secrets from Holland, is revered in Pakistan as the Father of the Islamic Bomb. But Pakistanis pay scant regard to his parallel role where he enriched himself by setting up a nuclear supermarket that also supplied sensitive components to other aspiring nuclear powers.

Under pressure from the US, Khan was arrested on the orders of President Pervez Musharraf in 2004. Later he was pardoned and placed under indefinite house detention after he publicly admitted to selling nuclear weapons technology to Libya.

It now turns out that Libya was just the tip of the iceberg. Four years earlier, a dedicated British customs investigator uncovered a huge black market in nuclear technology, presided over by Khan, that sold items to whoever was prepared to pay for them.

The customs officer — Atif Amin — had started off by investigating one of Khan’s British-based business partners, Abu Siddiqui, who was later convicted of illegally evading British export laws by shipping key nuclear components to Khan’s laboratories (KRL) in Pakistan. These shipments included computer equipment, a 12-ton heat treatment furnace, sophisticated measuring devices, and high-quality aluminum bars.

Amin’s investigations led him to Dubai where he discovered that sensitive technology illegally exported from the West to Pakistan was returning from KRL Labs to Dubai for onward shipping to other countries. Amin’s astonishing detective work is painstakingly covered in a new book published this week, entitled America and the Islamic Bomb, written by Washington DC-based authors David Armstrong and Joe Trento who say the customs investigator’s findings were duly passed on to both Ml6 and the CIA.

“He found ring magnets coming back from Khan’s labs and going on to Libya and he told Ml6. The next night they stuck him on a plane and sent him back home. They did it for political considerations,” Armstrong told The Indian Express in an exclusive interview prior to the book’s release.

“They were monitoring it and they say it was going to jeopardise their monitoring operation, which is just absolute nonsense. Why should it jeopardise anything if a separate investigation comes in and finds this stuff? You should use it to your own advantage. What’s the point of monitoring if you’re not going to do anything?” he pointed out.

Armstrong argues that the US and Britain effectively connived in Islamabad’s nuclear programme as “Pakistan has a get-out-of-jail free card because they were always doing favours for everybody. If it’s not Afghanistan, it’s the Taliban, if it’s not the Taliban it’s always something. They always have some excuse so they can argue that we are too indispensable to you guys to shut down our nuclear smuggling. It’s been one case after another.”

To support his case, Armstrong cites a memorandum from former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski sent to President Jimmy Carter on the eve of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In his memo, Brzezinski encourages Carter to support the Afghan resistance and to use Pakistan as a conduit. In order to do this, he adds, US policy should not be dictated by non-proliferation concerns.

But Armstrong and Trento’s work also raises the intriguing possibility that after the US and British authorities discovered Khan was making money selling nuclear technology, they used his network to monitor clandestine nuclear purchases by other countries.

Two out of three countries contacted by the Khan network, North Korea and Libya, have since renounced their nuclear weapons programmes. Iran, which is also identified as a recipient of nuclear transfers from the Khan network, denies it is seeking nuclear weapons capability.

Circumstantial evidence that the Khan network subsequently acted as a cat’s paw for Western intelligence can be deduced from what later happened to some of Khan’s closest business associates. One of them is a Pakistani businessman, formerly based in Dubai, who used his company to help equip the KRL complex outside Islamabad with high quality equipment for uranium centrifuges.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has recently been granted US citizenship and has set up a multi-million dollar finance company operating out of Florida. The US authorities have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the man’s identity, even to the extent of issuing him with a false social security number that actually belongs to a convicted drugs smuggler.

In his research, Armstrong said he also uncovered some new personal details about Khan himself, including some 41 trips he made to Dubai and five other trips he made to Timbuktu in Africa where he and his South African wife, Henny, purchased a hotel.

One request, do not argue with me on this subject.

Pakistan acquired advanced level of weapon grade uranium enrichment capability in the mid-late eighties. Clinton came to power in 1993. Pakistan was publicly acknowledged to be in possession of nuclear weapons before Clinton came to power.

I suggest you READ up on chronology of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. You can start here at fas.org:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/chron.htm

What you are talking about is A Q Khan’s nuclear gunrunning AFTER Pakistan has already acquired the bomb and is supplying it to others. That happened under Clinton administration.

Look, you want to play this Republic-Democract slinging match, you can gladly carry on but keep your facts to yourself, Indians know too well who in the American administration is responsible.

My point is Pakistan had accomplished construction of a complete nuclear bomb by late 80s and began cooperation with Iran and Iraq by 1990. Clinton came to power in 1993.

Are you saying Clinton was responsible for everything that happened before he was elected into office?

What part of the time line you are having trouble reading or understanding?

Early 1980’s—Multiple reports that Pakistan obtained a pre-tested, atomic bomb design from China.
Early 1980’s—Multiple reports that Pakistan obtained bomb-grade enriched uranium from China.

1980—U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: Reexport via Canada (components of inverters used in gas centrifuge enrichment activities).

1981—U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: New York, zirconium (nuclear fuel cladding material).

1982/3—Several European press reports indicate that Pakistan was using Middle Eastern intermediaries to acquire bomb parts (13-inch `steel spheres’ and `steel petal shapes’).

1983—Declassified US government assessment concludes that `There is unambiguous evidence that Pakistan is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons development program * * * We believe the ultimate application of the enriched uranium produced at Kahuta, which is unsafeguarded, is clearly nuclear weapons.’

1984—President Zia states that Pakistan has acquired a `very modest’ uranium enrichment capability for `nothing but peaceful purposes.’

1984—President Reagan reportedly warns Pakistan of `grave consequences’ if it enriches uranium above 5%.

1985—ABC News reports that US believes Pakistan has `successfully tested’ a `firing mechanism’ of an atomic bomb by means of a non-nuclear explosion, and that US krytrons `have been acquired’ by Pakistan.

1985—U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: Texas, krytrons (nuclear weapon triggers).

1985/6—Media cites production of highly enriched, bomb-grade uranium in violation of a commitment to the US.

1986—Bob Woodward article in Washington Post cites alleged DIA report saying Pakistan `detonated a high explosive test device between Sept. 18 and Sept. 21 as part of its continuing efforts to build an implosion-type nuclear weapon;’ says Pakistan has produced uranium enriched to a 93.5% level.

1986—Press reports cite U.S. `Special National Intelligence Estimate’ concluding that Pakistan had produced weapons-grade material.

1987—London Financial Times reports US spy satellites have observed construction of second uranium enrichment plant in Pakistan.

1987—Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan states in published interview that `what the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct.’

1987—According to photocopy of a reported German foreign ministry memo published in Paris in 1990, UK government official tells German counterpart on European nonproliferation working group that he was `convinced that Pakistan had `a few small’ nuclear weapons.’

1988—Hedrick Smith article in New York Times reports US government sources believe Pakistan has produced enough highly enriched uranium for 4-6 bombs.

1988—President Zia tells Carnegie Endowment delegation in interview that Pakistan has attained a nuclear capability `that is good enough to create an impression of deterrence.’

1989—UK press cites nuclear cooperation between Pakistan and Iraq.

1989—Article in Defense & Foreign Affairs Weekly states `sources close to the Pakistani nuclear program have revealed that Pakistani scientists have now perfected detonation mechanisms for a nuclear device.’

1990—US News cites `western intelligence sources’ claiming Pakistan recently `cold-tested’ a nuclear device and is now building a plutonium production reactor; article says Pakistan is engaged in nuclear cooperation with Iran.

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