Reply #49: Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan's nuclear black marketers? [View All]

[DrDebug]

The Khan-for-Iran deal with Khadaffi. Why Iran is currently the target and Khan was sacrifized however his network continued. Please note that this story has been officially denied by officials of the governments of the US and Pakistan include George W. Bush who called it "wild speculation." ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/world/10cnd-prexy.html )

The Deal
Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan’s nuclear black marketers?
by Seymour M. Hersh

March 8, 2004

On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country’s nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan’s misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan “my hero” ). Musharraf told the Times that he had received a specific accounting of Khan’s activities in Iran, North Korea, and Malaysia from the United States only last October. “If they knew earlier, they should have told us,” he said. “Maybe a lot of things would not have happened.”

(...)

A Bush Administration intelligence officer with years of experience in nonproliferation issues told me last month, “One thing we do know is that this was not a rogue operation. Suppose Edward Teller had suddenly decided to spread nuclear technology and equipment around the world. Do you really think he could do that without the government knowing? How do you get missiles from North Korea to Pakistan? Do you think A.Q. shipped all the centrifuges by Federal Express? The military has to be involved, at high levels.” The intelligence officer went on, “We had every opportunity to put a stop to the A. Q. Khan network fifteen years ago. Some of those involved today in the smuggling are the children of those we knew about in the eighties. It’s the second generation now.”

(...)

Last December, President Bush and Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, jointly announced that Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, had decided to give up his nuclear-weapons program and would permit I.A.E.A. inspectors to enter his country. The surprise announcement, the culmination of nine months of secret talks, was followed immediately by a six-day inspection by the I.A.E.A., the first of many inspections, and the public unveiling, early this year, of the role of yet another country, Malaysia, in the nuclear black market. Libya had been able to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of nuclear parts, including advanced centrifuges designed in Pakistan, from a firm in Malaysia, with a free-trade zone in Dubai serving as the main shipping point. It was a new development in an old arms race: Malaysia, a high-tech nation with no indigenous nuclear ambitions, was retailing sophisticated nuclear gear, based on designs made available by Khan.

(...)

A high-level intelligence officer who has access to the secret Iran-Pakistan exchanges told me that he understood that “the Pakistanis were very worried that the Iranians would give their name to the I.A.E.A.” The officer, interviewed in Tel Aviv, told me that Israel remains convinced that “the Iranians do not intend to give up the bomb. What Iran did was report to the I.A.E.A. the information that was already out in the open and which they cannot protect. There is much that is not exposed.” Israeli intelligence, he added, continues to see digging and other nuclear-related underground activity in Iran. A nonproliferation official based in Vienna later explained that Iran has bored two holes near a uranium-mining operation that are “deep enough to do a test”—as deep as two hundred metres. The design of the bomb that could be tested, he added, if Iran chose to do so, came from Libya, via Pakistan and A. Q. Khan.

(...)

One Arab intelligence operative told me that Libyan intelligence, with Qaddafi’s approval, then quickly offered to give American and British intelligence details about a centrifuge deal that was already under way. The parts were due to be shipped aboard a German freighter, the B.B.C. China. In October, the freighter was seized, and the incident was proclaimed a major intelligence success. But, the operative said, it was “the Libyans who blew up the Pakistanis,” and who made the role of Khan’s black market known. The Americans, he said, asked “questions about those orders and Libya said it had them.” It was, in essence, a sting, and was perceived that way by Musharraf. He was enraged by what he called, in a nationally televised speech last month—delivered in Urdu, and not officially translated by the Pakistani government—the betrayal of Pakistan by his “Muslim brothers” in both Libya and Iran. There was little loyalty between seller and buyer. “The Pakistanis took a lot of Libya’s money and gave second-grade plans,” the Arab intelligence operative said. “It was halfhearted.”

(...)

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/03/08/040308fa_fact

04.10.2003 BBC China intercepted 
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/libya/cent_procure.html

N313P: ( http://www.statewatch.org/cia/documents/flight-log-N313P.pdf )

19.10.2003 From: RAF Northolt, England to: Tripoli, Libya
22.10.2003 From: Mitiga, Libya to: RAF Northolt, England
28.10.2003 From: RAF Northolt, England to: Mitiga, Libya 
29.10.2003 From: Mitiga Libya to: RAF Northolt, England
29.10.2003 From: RAF Northolt, England to: Shannon, Ireland

(...)

01.12.2003 From: Dulles, Washington DC, USA to: RAF Northolt, England
01.12.2003 From: RAF Northolt, England to: Mitiga, Libya 
03.12.2003 From: Mitiga, Libya to: RAF Northolt, England
06.12.2003 From: RAF Northolt, England to: Malta
10.12.2003 From: Malta to: Mitiga Libyen
12.12.2003 From: Mitiga, Libya to: Oxford, England
12.12.2003 From: Oxford, England to: Dulles, Washington DC, USA

(...)

16.12.2003 From: Dulles, Washington DC, USA (2:08 AM) to: Luton, England

16.12.2003 Talks in London between CIA/MI6 and Libyan delegation, 
headed by Musa Kusa, head of Libyan intelligence, resulting in an accord 
agreed at the Traveller’s Club, St James. ( http://www.ghostplane.net/timeline )

17.12.2003 From: London Luton, England to: Dulles, Washington DC, USA
17.12.2003 From: Dulles, Washington DC, USA to: Kinston, North Carolina, USA