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The Pakistani who peddled nuclear secrets while the world slept
Sunday, March 02, 2008ANDREW GIARELLI Special to The Oregonian
What if George W. Bush, the boy who cried "weapons of mass destruction" too often, turns out to be right about Iran? What a bummer for his opponents relying on the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 as proof of presidential perfidy; actually, what a bummer all around.
"The Nuclear Jihadist," a frightening book by two crack investigative reporters with no apparent ax to grind other than averting a holocaust, offers ample evidence that Iran continues enriching weapons-grade uranium, albeit with unclear intentions. It is one of Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins' many revelations, if dogged tracking of contradictory details that suit no single political agenda can be called such.
Their prime quarry is the 35-year rogue career of Abdul Qadeer Khan, "a scientist of mediocre skills and great ambition" still revered in Pakistan as father of its nuclear bomb, though officially disgraced and under house arrest for selling those bomb secrets to Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and possibly borderless entities such as al-Qaida. How did the International Atomic Energy Agency, Western intelligence agencies and Pakistan itself miss what the authors call Khan's "nuclear bazaar"?
They didn't, but instead repeatedly ignored the long-term threat in favor of short-term politics. President Nixon's 1971 decision to keep uranium enrichment technology from other nations, even allies, to protect America's fledgling nuclear power industry encouraged those nations to start their own programs. Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under both Nixon and Gerald Ford, ignored India's 1974 atomic bomb test as well as Israel's open-secret nuclear stash, fueling have-nots such as Pakistan with resentment atop their fear.
When Khan returned home in late 1975 with three years of photos, diagrams and plans for centrifuges and other essential parts stolen from the Amsterdam physics lab where he'd worked, he ran a step ahead of arrest by Dutch intelligence -- an arrest vetoed by the CIA. Though "actionable intelligence" that Khan was importing high-tech parts from English, German and Swiss companies triggered President Carter's 1977 sanctions against Pakistan, Carter lifted them in 1979 because the U.S. needed Pakistan to help defeat the Soviets, who'd just invaded Afghanistan.
When Khan reached outside Pakistan for the first time in 1987, offering his illicit procurement network to jump-start Iran's nuclear weapons program, blind eyes abounded: at the CIA, stung by Iran-Contra revelations and unwilling to admit it had ignored the network's buildup; in Pakistan, whose military leaders probably even encouraged Khan; and in Dubai, famously willing to look aside no matter the business, where disassembled centrifuges got traded in luxury apartments for suitcases of cash.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, purposefully defanged from inception by superpowers unwilling to have their nuke stashes inspected, was stunned to learn during post-Gulf War inspections that Saddam Hussein, aided and inspired by Khan's network, had established his own nuclear program and would likely have already developed a bomb had not Israel slowed him with a preemptive 1981 airstrike. The CIA missed that threat, too, leading then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to mistrust the agency when it finally went after Khan's network during the current Bush administration. A culture of lying, it seems, engenders a culture of mistakes.
Khan's network allegedly went rogue in 1994, smuggling centrifuges to Iran officially unbeknown to his government. That same year, though, Pakistan's then-prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, obtained plans for North Korea's No-Dong missile and North Korea obtained uranium-enrichment technology from Pakistan, both with Khan's help but not actually a trade, Bhutto insisted later. Frantz and Collins' sources can only snicker. After all, Khan didn't carry the centrifuges on his own back, one source says.
In the assassinated Bhutto's defense, however, Pakistan's military leaders, who have really ruled the country for three decades behind its democratic facade, would not let her go there. One bluntly told her nuclear weapons were nothing she need concern herself with, Frantz and Collins report.
Ironically, Bush administration lies about Iraqi WMD in 2003 made its justified claims about Iran hard to believe. Iran in 2003 was further along the nuclear weapons path than Iraq had been in 1991. Has it really stopped? That recent National Intelligence Estimate offers small comfort against an invigorated IAEA's 2006 finding that Iran was trying to double its uranium-enrichment capacity. The difference is that some Pentagon warriors want to turn Iran "into a glass-covered parking lot," while the IAEA says diplomacy and sanctions are the correct short-term response.
What about the long term? The IAEA estimates that only 75 percent to 80 percent of Khan's network was uncovered: Scary missing items include Chinese nuclear warhead plans Khan sometimes gave to countries that bought his technology, and vanished centrifuge components originally destined for Libya. Threatened by North Korea and Iran, the next likely "entrants in the atomic sweepstakes" are Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Major world powers, displaying an "absence of moral suasion and sustained diplomacy," likely will fail to stop them, the authors predict.
Andrew Giarelli recently reviewed "Gonzo" by Jann S. Wenner and Corey Seymour for The Oregonian.
Sunday, March 02, 2008ANDREW GIARELLI Special to The Oregonian
What if George W. Bush, the boy who cried "weapons of mass destruction" too often, turns out to be right about Iran? What a bummer for his opponents relying on the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 as proof of presidential perfidy; actually, what a bummer all around.
"The Nuclear Jihadist," a frightening book by two crack investigative reporters with no apparent ax to grind other than averting a holocaust, offers ample evidence that Iran continues enriching weapons-grade uranium, albeit with unclear intentions. It is one of Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins' many revelations, if dogged tracking of contradictory details that suit no single political agenda can be called such.
Their prime quarry is the 35-year rogue career of Abdul Qadeer Khan, "a scientist of mediocre skills and great ambition" still revered in Pakistan as father of its nuclear bomb, though officially disgraced and under house arrest for selling those bomb secrets to Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and possibly borderless entities such as al-Qaida. How did the International Atomic Energy Agency, Western intelligence agencies and Pakistan itself miss what the authors call Khan's "nuclear bazaar"?
They didn't, but instead repeatedly ignored the long-term threat in favor of short-term politics. President Nixon's 1971 decision to keep uranium enrichment technology from other nations, even allies, to protect America's fledgling nuclear power industry encouraged those nations to start their own programs. Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under both Nixon and Gerald Ford, ignored India's 1974 atomic bomb test as well as Israel's open-secret nuclear stash, fueling have-nots such as Pakistan with resentment atop their fear.
When Khan returned home in late 1975 with three years of photos, diagrams and plans for centrifuges and other essential parts stolen from the Amsterdam physics lab where he'd worked, he ran a step ahead of arrest by Dutch intelligence -- an arrest vetoed by the CIA. Though "actionable intelligence" that Khan was importing high-tech parts from English, German and Swiss companies triggered President Carter's 1977 sanctions against Pakistan, Carter lifted them in 1979 because the U.S. needed Pakistan to help defeat the Soviets, who'd just invaded Afghanistan.
When Khan reached outside Pakistan for the first time in 1987, offering his illicit procurement network to jump-start Iran's nuclear weapons program, blind eyes abounded: at the CIA, stung by Iran-Contra revelations and unwilling to admit it had ignored the network's buildup; in Pakistan, whose military leaders probably even encouraged Khan; and in Dubai, famously willing to look aside no matter the business, where disassembled centrifuges got traded in luxury apartments for suitcases of cash.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, purposefully defanged from inception by superpowers unwilling to have their nuke stashes inspected, was stunned to learn during post-Gulf War inspections that Saddam Hussein, aided and inspired by Khan's network, had established his own nuclear program and would likely have already developed a bomb had not Israel slowed him with a preemptive 1981 airstrike. The CIA missed that threat, too, leading then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to mistrust the agency when it finally went after Khan's network during the current Bush administration. A culture of lying, it seems, engenders a culture of mistakes.
Khan's network allegedly went rogue in 1994, smuggling centrifuges to Iran officially unbeknown to his government. That same year, though, Pakistan's then-prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, obtained plans for North Korea's No-Dong missile and North Korea obtained uranium-enrichment technology from Pakistan, both with Khan's help but not actually a trade, Bhutto insisted later. Frantz and Collins' sources can only snicker. After all, Khan didn't carry the centrifuges on his own back, one source says.
In the assassinated Bhutto's defense, however, Pakistan's military leaders, who have really ruled the country for three decades behind its democratic facade, would not let her go there. One bluntly told her nuclear weapons were nothing she need concern herself with, Frantz and Collins report.
Ironically, Bush administration lies about Iraqi WMD in 2003 made its justified claims about Iran hard to believe. Iran in 2003 was further along the nuclear weapons path than Iraq had been in 1991. Has it really stopped? That recent National Intelligence Estimate offers small comfort against an invigorated IAEA's 2006 finding that Iran was trying to double its uranium-enrichment capacity. The difference is that some Pentagon warriors want to turn Iran "into a glass-covered parking lot," while the IAEA says diplomacy and sanctions are the correct short-term response.
What about the long term? The IAEA estimates that only 75 percent to 80 percent of Khan's network was uncovered: Scary missing items include Chinese nuclear warhead plans Khan sometimes gave to countries that bought his technology, and vanished centrifuge components originally destined for Libya. Threatened by North Korea and Iran, the next likely "entrants in the atomic sweepstakes" are Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Major world powers, displaying an "absence of moral suasion and sustained diplomacy," likely will fail to stop them, the authors predict.
Andrew Giarelli recently reviewed "Gonzo" by Jann S. Wenner and Corey Seymour for The Oregonian.
