Josh Marshall's Big Story--now we know...

[DrBB]

So it's going to be about the Niger Yellowcake forgeries--the who and why. His first real post-vacation post makes that clear. And also that the Financial Times story just coming out about new evidence that countries (including Iraq) were in fact trying to lay their hands on the stuff is a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters in advance of the story the "bad actors" know is "coming right at them."

Well there's certainly room for some shocking, CIA-informed, very-bad-for-Bush/Cheney stuff here. But damn, I hate waiting! Come on Josh, let's at least know when it's gonna break big, okay, pleeeeeeeeeease??? </whine>

Link.

[remfan]

1. Patience, Doc

:-)

I've been waiting for this one to break since I first heard those documents were forged. :bounce:

[Sweetpea]

2. I understand the impatience

But it has taken how many scandals for the public to get this far plus a blockbuster documentary.

[NewEmanuelGoldstein]

4. yet

people still won't fight the system. They want the system to elect their guy, and if it happens that's all they care about. Being on the winning side and being able to say "I told you so" and "we won" is more important then fixing the problem.

[DrBB]

3. Yeah, me too.

I've even posted a couple of guesses as to the identity of the forger-"businessman." I've got a buck down on Manucher Ghorbonifar--an old Bush pal from Iraq-gate and before whose name has turned up in this context.

[seemslikeadream]

10. DrBB you were throwing me off a bit

Now I've got some stuff

Manichur Ghorbanifar - Manucher Ghorbonifar

[Octafish]

5. Hey, Doc! Were you still looking for this?

On a DU thread from long ago, you mentioned you were searching for this:

On the Nuclear Edge

by Seymour M. Hersh
Issue of 1993-03-29
Posted 2004-01-12

In the past few weeks, news reports have revealed troubling information about the possible export of Pakistani nuclear technology to countries such as Iran and Libya, and about the role played in the transfers by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is known as the father of the Pakistani bomb. There have long been questions about Dr. Khan, who has, whenever possible, avoided the public eye. In this piece from 1993, Seymour M. Hersh takes a prescient look at Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation, and at Dr. Khan.

On May 30, 1990, President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union arrived in Washington for his second summit meeting with President George Bush. The Cold War was over, and the publicly announced agenda reflected that fact: the two world leaders would concentrate their talks on the future of unified Germany and on renewed negotiations to reduce long-range nuclear weapons. Most Americans were increasingly upbeat about the prospects for world peace. A Times/CBS public-opinion poll of more than eleven hundred Americans taken a week before the summit showed that fewer than one in five believed nuclear war to be likely by the year 2000—far fewer than those interviewed in earlier polls.

There was a fearful irony in the poll, because in the days before Gorbachev’s visit the Bush Administration became convinced that the world was on the edge of a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, as both nations continued their tug-of-war over control of the state of Kashmir, on India’s northern border, whose status has been in dispute since the collapse of the British Empire in India, in 1947. During months of increasing tension, India had massed two hundred thousand troops, including paramilitary forces, in Kashmir, and had deployed five brigades of its most sophisticated attack unit, the Indian Army Strike Corps, fifty miles from the Pakistani border in the south. Pakistan, against which the much larger India had fought—and won—three wars since 1947, openly deployed its main armored tank units along the Indian border and, in secret, placed its nuclear-weapons arsenal on alert. There would be no repeat of the disastrous two-week war of December, 1971, when Pakistan, outgunned and outgeneraled, was dismembered by an Indian blitzkrieg and lost what is now Bangladesh.

The American intelligence community, also operating in secret, had concluded by late May that Pakistan had put together at least six and perhaps as many as ten nuclear weapons, and a number of senior analysts were convinced that some of those warheads had been deployed on Pakistan’s American-made F-16 fighter planes. The analysts also suspected that Benazir Bhutto, the populist Prime Minister of Pakistan, had been cut out of—or had chosen to remove herself from—the nuclear planning. Her absence meant that the nation’s avowedly pro-nuclear President, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and the Pakistani military, headed by Army General Mirza Aslam Beg, had their hands, unfettered, on the button. There was little doubt that India, with its far more extensive nuclear arsenal, stood ready to retaliate in kind.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?040119fr_archive02

Hope this helps, as it shows the BFEE is more interested in entrenching their financial and political interests over the public good. It's also posted at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x646002#648980

[seemslikeadream]

6. I'm still waiting for that sandwich!

BCCI and Pakistani Nuclear Hero

Edited on Fri Jun-25-04 12:53 PM by seemslikeadream
seemslikeadream
BCCI and Pakistani Nuclear Hero
Pakistan's Nuclear Hero Defended
by Jefferson Morley

"Washington and Islamabad," says the Delhi-based daily, are "holding their breath" to see if Khan "will spill the beans about Pakistan's offical complicity in the spread of nuclear weapons technology."

Pakistan proceeded to spend some $10 billion developing a nuclear arsenal, say the editors of the Times of India. The money came from Libya, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and the depositors of the BCCI. The bank, says the editors of the Times of India, was founded by a Pakistani and operated freely in the Persian Gulf oil enclave of Dubai. It is inconceivable, they argue, that Western intelligence agencies didn't know all about this black market.

In other words, was the United States totally clueless while a Pakistani scientist supplied nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8262-2004Feb3_2.html

cosmicdot
I get the impression that the reporter's last sentence should be the first
or even the article's title: "In other words, was the United States totally clueless."
and, perhaps the rather generic "depositors of the BCCI" examined in more detail ???
Perhaps some might think it vital to get someone elected who has in the past or will in the future 'protect' those who brought BCCI's corruption to our shores. Despite Senate "investigations", I don't think the BCCI scandal was punished ... I don't recall the likes of Jackson Stephens; Harvard Management, i.e., Pug Winokur; James Bath; etc., serving time. The BCCI trial in the UK and such must have some heart's racing ... It might pay to play both sides of the fence in the presidential contest ... just in case Diebold fails to deliver or re-deliver the ideal candidate.

Or, am I off-base?

1986

George W. Bush and partners receive more than $2 million of Harken Energy stock in exchange for a failing oil well operation, which had lost $400,000 in the prior six months. After Bush joined Harken, the largest stock position and a seat on its board were acquired by Harvard Management Company. The Harken board gave Bush $600,000 worth of the company's publicly traded stock, plus a seat on the board plus a consultancy that paid him up to $120,000 a year. When Harken runs short of cash it hooks up with investment banker Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas, who arranges a $25 million stock purchase by Union Bank of Switzerland. Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh, who joins the board as a part of the deal, is connected to the infamous BCCI.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0203/S00035.htm


IMRadioactive
Did We Ever Really Get Down To The Bottom Of BCCI?
The scandals are foggy in my mind, but the connections to things going on today are getting clearer and clearer the more I read. I hope someone can connect all the dots from then and now in a simple way...if it's possible.

There's a lot of co-incidents here that should raise major red flags...most notably BCCI's base being in Islamabad...the financial money pit for Al Queda...and a virtual black hole in the financial world. Money flows in and out of that city and the country like water...and BCCI developed the conduits that are surely still being used today.

60 Minutes came touching on the fringes recently on their expose on Haliburton's economic connections with Iran, Libya and Hussein-era Iraq, and now we're starting to learn how Pakistan's top scientist played let's make a deal for nuclear secrets between other "rogue" states and surely with our own "friends" to build his bomb and feather his nest. I'm sure where the interests of our "friends" like Haliburton or KBR run ahead of the "national security" aspect you know who wins every time.

I'd love to see more about this connection and see others get on it as well.

Thanks for the post.

seemslikeadream
I would like to read this from the Financial Times
Jan. 27, 2004
...According to bankers, some of worked with BCCI before it collapsed in 1991, Pakistani investigators have sought the help of former BCCI employees to try...
but I don't have a subscription.

9215
Quid pro Quo
In the early 80's there was also something about Poppy cutting a deal to exchange nuke technology for Pakistan purchasing US Bell helicopters.

DrBB
Whoa--simultaneous posting
See mine, below, too. I've been trying to run this down for a while now, but haven't had any luck. Do you remember any more about this?

Stuck here outa gas
Out here on the Gaza strip
From driving in too fast
Let’s ride the tiger down river euphrates


DrBB
PLEASE help me remember...
I distinctly recall reading an article related to all this in the New Yorker, well before 9/11. Pre-Bush II, also. Might have been by Sy Hersh. Might have been published in the first Clinton admin--that far back.

The occasion of the article was to bring out that, near the end of the Bush I administration, there had been an exceedingly narrowly-averted nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent. This was largely thanks to right-wing stupidity of some kind on the part of Bush I's foreign policy team. The article had a lot of evidence that we'd gone on high alert, and that India had come very close to nuking Pakistan. At that point, Pakistan did not have the Bomb, and my memory is hazy on the details of this, but what keeps bringing it to mind is this:

The article also went into some detail, IIRC, about US complicity in Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear technology. I seem to remember the article having been published before Pakistan tested its weapon, but I could be wrong about that, given the subject matter. Because the point was that the US not only looked the other way, but may have indirectly facilitated Pakistan's acquisition of necessary precursor technologies, in return for Pakistan's complicity in our operations in Afghanistan. That there was a quid pro quo: in return for allowing us to stage support for the anti-Soviet Afghan rebels through Pakistan, Pakistan required us to look the other way as they developed nuclear capability.
In other words, al Qaeda isn't the only blowback from our long and misguided involvement over there.
Anyone remember reading this, or seeing anything along these lines?

seemslikeadream
Is this it?
I haven't read it yet.
http://www.pepeace.org/current_reprints/03/The_Nuclear_Arsenal.htm


DrBB
Not the one I'm looking for, but on the right track
Hersh does mention the incident, and helps fix the chronology, but this one doesn't deal with US complicity very much. But it fills in a lot of the holes--a big help, thanks! The relevant paragraph:

India has had a tactical atomic bomb since the nineteen-seventies, and Pakistan's became operational in the late nineteen-eighties, although Pakistani leaders denied this fact for years. The Kashmiri dispute first veered close to nuclear confrontation in 1990. That spring, the American National Security Agency was monitoring what seemed to be yet another slowly escalating series of Pakistani and Indian attacks, when intercepts revealed that the Pakistani leadership had "panicked," as a senior intelligence official put it, at the prospect of a preëmptive Indian strike and had readied its small arsenal of nuclear warheads. (The previous fall, the Bush Administration had assured Congress that Pakistan did not possess such weapons—although it knew better—in order to gain continued approval for military aid to the country.)

Helps to clear up when this happened, and why I was confused about Pakistan's having nuclear weapons even though their big publically-acknowledged bomb testing hadn't occured yet.

I believe the earlier article must have been published around 91-93 sometime, as I recall it being not long after the incidents in question. New Yorker doesn't archive their stuff that far back--guess I'll have to make a trip to the library. I'm pretty sure it was a Hersh piece....

9215
here is another link
I posted "The case of the Nuclear Triggers" years ago at Smirking Chimp. It looks like author Robert Parry put some of this material on his website:
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/kissingeriraq.htm


DrBB
Here's the title: "On the Nuclear Edge," Sy Hersh, New Yorker, 1993
So far I've found a bunch of references TO the article, but no copies of the thing itself. Anybody runs across it, please let me know.

And thanks, seemslikeadream.


9215
Some other stuff
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/04NUKE.html?hp >
The Pakistani leaders who denied for years that scientists at the country's secret A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories were peddling advanced nuclear technology must have been averting their eyes from a most conspicuous piece of evidence: the laboratory's own sales brochure, quietly circulated to aspiring nuclear weapons states and a network of nuclear middlemen around the world.
The cover bears an official-looking seal that says "Government of Pakistan" and a photograph of the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. It promotes components that were spinoffs from Pakistan's three-decade-long project to build a nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium, set in a drawing that bears a striking resemblance to a mushroom cloud.
In other nations, such sales would be strictly controlled. But Pakistan has always played by its own rules.
As investigators unravel the mysteries of the North Korean, Iranian and now the Libyan nuclear projects, Pakistan - and those it empowered with knowledge and technology they are now selling on their own - has emerged as the intellectual and trading hub of a loose network of hidden nuclear proliferators.
Brochure pictured on NYTimes;

seemslikeadream
On the day of the Indian nuclear tests, Henry Kissinger,
on his own accord, went to the CNN studios and justified the Indian tests on the ground that India was living in a tough neighourhood. He obviously knew what he was talking about.

In the light of Pakistan's state of industrial development, Islamabad will continue to need foreign black market imports for a long time to come to sustain its nuclear arsenal. There were recent reports of 800 spark gaps needed for triggers being bought in the US by a South African Jew, shipped to Dubai and then on to Pakistan.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/468709.cms

seemslikeadream
The secret empire of Dr. Khan
The incontrovertible truth is that Pakistan's nuclear programme in every aspect has been, and remains, under the firm and total control of its army at least since 1977; even its navy and air force have little role in it. Its clandestine nature relied on building a black market largely managed by trusted senior army (and ISI) officers and senior scientists in the nuclear establishment. Such people have undoubtedly been under a strong security and intelligence cover as much for their safety as to keep an eye on them. With a flourishing $2 billion-plus annual narcotics trade, and banks like the former Dubai-based Pakistani-owned "Outlaw Bank", the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International), and the Mehran Bank to manage the black market in narcotics, nuclear trade and tools for terrorism, there was obviously no dearth of unaccounted funds for the purpose. General Aslam Beg, the army chief in the late 1980's who controlled the nuclear programme, later publicly acknowledged receipt of hundreds of crores of unaccounted funds which he passed on to the ISI and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=40361


varun
Libya got its nuke blueprints from Pakistan...
..wonder who else has the blueprints...in this black market.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/04/politics/04NUKE.html

Warhead Blueprints Link Libya Project to Pakistan Figure
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: February 4, 2004
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — Twelve days ago, a 747 aircraft chartered by the United States government landed at Dulles Airport here carrying a single piece of precious cargo: a small box containing warhead designs that American officials believe were sold to Libya by the underground network linked to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the creator of the Pakistani bomb.

The warhead designs were the first hard evidence that the secret network provided its customers with far more than just the technology to turn uranium into bomb fuel. Libyan officials have told investigators that they bought the blueprints from dealers who are part of that network, apparently for more than $50 million. Those blueprints, along with the capability to make enriched uranium, could have given the Libyans all the elements they needed to make a nuclear bomb. What the Libyans purchased, in the words of an American weapons expert who has reviewed the program in detail, was both the kitchen equipment "and the recipes."....
also...
"...The last shipment of those parts to Libya was intercepted in October, which was several years after Washington began pressuring Mr. Musharraf's government to shut down the scientists at the Khan lab...."
OCTOBER??? 2 years after Pakistan became a "frontline ally" of USA in the war against terrorism?
Something is seriously wrong here...

varun
BCCI funded Pakistan's nuclear bomb
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
"...the Pakistani BCCI Foundation was created as a means of sheltering BCCI profits from taxation. In 1981, it received tax-free status while Ishaq Khan was Pakistan's minister of finance. In turn, the foundation received BCCI's profits from Pakistani operations, and then used some of those profits to finance projects the Pakistani government wanted and could not pay for itself. For example, BCCI provided $10 million in grants in the late 1980's to finance an officially "private" science and technology institute named for Pakistani President Ishaq Khan, whose director, A. Qadir Khan, has been closely associated with Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb. The institute is believed by some experts to be the headquarters for Pakistan's efforts to build an Islamic bomb. In the same period, other BCCI officials were assisting Pakistanis in purchasing nuclear technologies paid for by Pakistani-front companies through BCCI-Canada.(94).."

RainDog
And Bush knew and lied about it
a few quotes...not the article you want, though.
From Outlaw Bank by Beatty and Gwynne.
They include this statement from Sheikh Kamal Adham, former head of Saudi intelligence, bro-in-law of late King Faisal, and shareholder in BCCI and First American Bank, who was speaking to an Arabic audience when admitted, in 1992, that "Pakistan had their own atomic bomb and that Abedi/BCCI had helped them get it.

...Kamal Adham was anticipating...indictment in the U.S. over BCCI fraud.

"So why would he want to call attention to all of this? The Western press aside, the wily old spy master certainly knew the intelligence agencies of the U.S. would pick up his remarks...He may have been sending a message directly to George Bush, reminding the president that Kamal Adham knew far too much to be trifled with.

in perspective...9-91. Morganthau was going after the powerful Saudi as one of the main culprits of the BCCI scandal. Morganthau kept quiet about his intentions to indict Adham AND SHEIKH KHALID BIN MAHFOUZ (in hopes to avoid state department inverventions.)

but when Kamal found out what was happening, he hired the former executive assistant of then White House Chief of Staff John Sununu...who had just (surprise...not) quit to go "private."

This publically brought the Bush administration into the BCCI scandal for the first time.

Beatty and Gwynne learned that Bush's White House was closely monitoring the BCCI investigation, insisting that a administration official sit in on congressional and justice dept. interviews with BCCI witnesses (does this sound familiar to anyone else?? ...the investigation into whistleblowing with Dubya).

some in the FBI complained the FBI probe was spinning its wheels because it was "too political" (again, sound familiar as an excuse to investigate the Bush lies to go to war with Iraq???)...and decisions were being held up in Washington.

A justice dept official complained Washington didn't really want the Atty Gen.'s office to actually return indictments. Washington (Bush) wanted to do an overall package deal, "'where we cut off the hands of a few Pakistanis and paint it as if they were really all the big folks.'"

Beatty and Gwynne go on to note that Bush Sr, lied and claimed he didn't know Adham. (who had been director of the CIA in 1976, WHEN GEORGE BUSH HEADED THE CIA).

The American agency had been "helping to modernize Saudi intelligence during Bush's tenure (oh, no conflict of interest there, huh, Zapata Oil?)

The authors also note that Bush was known as "the Saudi vice president" throughout the middle east. State dept said it was impossible for Bush not to have known Adham because he was the main man in S.A. when you making BIZ DEALS, as well as policy.

when asked about Bush's statement, Adham did not directly deny it, though Saudi's knew Adham's newphew, Sultan bin-Bandar was ambassador to the U.S. and was a frequent guest of Bush.

...but what about the nuclear weapons issue? Reagan, "intent on continuing military aid to Pakistan during the Afghanistan (mujahadeen/Osama bin Laden as Reagan's allies) war, turned a blind eye b/c U.S. law prohibited military aid or sale to nonnuclear countries known to be developing nuclear weapons.

In 88 and 89, Bush danced on the edge of truth about Pakistan, saying it did not "possess a nuclear explosive device" to justify continuing MASSIVE support for Pakistan, b/c Pak, bush said, only had "unassembled components."

As soon as Russia pulled out of Afghanistan, Bush said unassembled components violated the rules and cut off aid.

Beatty and Gwynne, in Time Magazine, were "the first to assert that BCCI was instrumental in Pakistan achieving unofficial Nuclear Club membership.

Via BCCI, Pakistan had received sophisticated American military technology that Congress NEVER AUTHORIZED. Adham's remarks re: an atmomic bomb may have been suggesting that it wouldn't be in the Bush administration's self-interest to probe too deeply into how Pakistan, and BCCI, came to possess such military capacity.

The Sheikh knew that BCCI was "the creation of a real life Dr. No, whose empire brokered ballistic missiles, illicit pharmaceuticals, stolen military secrets, heroin, and hot money, leaving a trail of corruption across two decades and seventy countries. And of all people, Adham had reason to know that the (Bush) White House knew it too, and had known about it for years."

pp 272-77

seemslikeadream
Why no trial for the world's biggest criminal?
Pardon for scientist who sold atom bomb secrets
By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore and Robin Gedye

Pakistan is likely to pardon without trial the father of the country's atomic bomb even though he has confessed to selling nuclear technology to rogue states, a senior government official told the Telegraph yesterday.

Another promised international indignation in the event of pardon. "He is the world's biggest criminal, involved for 27 years in selling nuclear technology. If you let him off with a slap on the wrist, then what kind of message are you sending to others?" he said.

Mr. Khan has let it be known that he is prepared to blow the whistle on the army's involvement. A cabinet minister revealed that Mr. Khan's daughter, a British citizen, had traveled to London with papers that could incriminate generals and other Pakistani leaders, including the former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/04/wpak04 ...

varun
Pakistani nuclear sicentist offers public apology...
...and gets a slap on the wrist..
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=2&u=/nm/20040204 ...
Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Takes the Rap for Leaks
57 minutes ago Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Mike Collett-White
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Top Pakistani scientist and national hero Abdul Qadeer Khan made a dramatic personal apology Wednesday for leaking atomic secrets, the latest twist in a proliferation scandal stretching from Libya to North Korea (news - web sites).
In a somber address on state television, Khan, revered at home as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, absolved the government and fellow scientists of any blame in an apparent bid by all concerned to draw a line under the damaging affair.
Commentators said his confession smacked of a cover-up, possibly part of a wider agreement to spare the powerful military unwanted scrutiny in any trial and allow President Pervez Musharraf to avoid pressure from Islamists and nationalists.


seemslikeadream
Nuclear betrayal apology
But his claim to have arranged it all himself has been met with widespread skepticism.
Western diplomats said the middlemen operated in Germany, Netherlands, Malaysia and United Arab Emirates.
As a direct result of the Pakistani revelations, it was revealed yesterday a Malaysian company controlled by the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was being investigated for possibly supplying machine parts for Libya's nuclear weapons programs.
Malaysian special branch police began the investigation after the CIA in the US and Britain's M16 informed them in November that boxes of machine parts bearing SCOPE's name were found in five containers seized in a ship off Italy in October.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,8592971%255E ...

Pakistan pardons rogue nuke scientist
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has pardoned a scientist who confessed to leaking nuclear weapons secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea and says the country will not allow international supervision of its nuclear programme.
Musharraf also said Pakistan would not hand over any documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency, submit to an independent inquiry or allow the United Nations to supervise Pakistan's nuclear programme.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&story ... §ion=news

ElBaradei says A.Q.Khan just tip of nuclear iceberg
"Dr.Khan was not working alone," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters, adding he had help from people in many countries.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/CHA530199.htm


seemslikeadream
all roads lead back to BCCI
don't they Octafish?

Octafish
Really seems that way, seemslikeadream.
The bank was used to funnel petrodollars and cocaine cash and arms business monies back to where it would do the most "good" as defined by the BFEE: bribe politicos around the world, arm despots, further enrich the rich, and speed the spread of the nuclear genie. My guess is they plan to hide out in underground kommandbunkers for the bosses and its Armageddon for the rest of us.
Here's the story that ran the other day in India. The thing is full of BFEE Hall of Fame names:
The secret empire of Dr Khan
Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation poses a tricky challenge

JASJIT SINGH
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme and the man who relentlessly pursued it through clandestine means and methods for decades, has finally admitted in a written statement that he oversaw its further clandestine spread to at least three other countries. Official Pakistan, which for years insisted that its nuclear weapons programme is tightly controlled and completely secure, is now claiming that nuclear trade has been made into a private enterprise by some of its national heroes! Extensive evidence has emerged in the public domain about detailed plans for enrichment of uranium for bomb making having been transferred from Pakistan to a number of countries along with a new version of a “yellow pages” directory of networks from Malaysia to Europe and North America for supply of materials and components.

What is of critical importance is not only the world’s most adventurous multinational nuclear proliferation but the reason Khan has put forward for his activities. Pakistani officials are saying that, contrary to earlier assumptions, he did not do so for money, but that he “was motivated enough to make other Islamic countries nuclear powers also” and reduce pressure on Pakistan. This may be an effort to garner public support from Islamic parties and countries. It also harks back to Bhutto’s notion of the “Islamic Bomb” for its Um’mah. The only exception known so far is the supply of nuclear weapon making technology to North Korea for strategic reasons in exchange for long-range ballistic missiles for nuclear weapon delivery.

Islamism has been deepening in Pakistan for three decades. Its concept of “strategic depth”, especially to its west, led to intervention in Afghanistan to control Kabul through covert Mujahideen operations. Strategic depth made no sense in modern conventional military terms. But in the context of Islamic jihad, as an instrument of politics by other means in Clausewitzean terms, it incorporated deadly logic, especially when the Holy Quran was invoked under General Zia ul-Haq to justify terrorism. To this has been added the strategic depth of an “Islamic Bomb” whose wherewithal is controlled by Pakistan. One look at the map would show that Pakistan’s Islamic nuclear mushroom covers the whole of West Asia with what Mansoor Ijaz terms as the “North Korean-made missiles armed with a Chinese-made nuclear device assembled in Islamabad’s nuclear labs whose fuel came from gas centrifuges sold by Pakistan’s rogue Islamists.” Small wonder Al-Qaeda, which received extensive support from Pakistan and its most radical surrogate, the Taliban, boasted it could make a “dirty” nuclear bomb.

The incontrovertible truth is that Pakistan’s nuclear programme in every aspect has been, and remains, under the firm and total control of its army at least since 1977; even its navy and air force have little role in it. Its clandestine nature relied on building a black market largely managed by trusted senior army (and ISI) officers and senior scientists in the nuclear establishment. Such people have undoubtedly been under a strong security and intelligence cover as much for their safety as to keep an eye on them. With a flourishing $2 billion-plus annual narcotics trade, and banks like the former Dubai-based Pakistani-owned “Outlaw Bank”, the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International), and the Mehran Bank to manage the black market in narcotics, nuclear trade and tools for terrorism, there was obviously no dearth of unaccounted funds for the purpose. General Aslam Beg, the army chief in late 1980s who controlled the nuclear programme, later publicly acknowledged receipt of hundreds of crores of unaccounted funds which he passed on to the ISI and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.

CONTINUED...

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=40361


Octafish

BFEE Loves Nuclear Proliferation...
... as it gives them an excuse to continue as war party. That enables the ruling elites -- thugs and commies alike -- to lord it over their populatons. And it is truly Big Business -- the biggest there is.
Pakistan investigates BCCI role in sale of nuclear knowhow
Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 06:11 PM CST
Stephen Fidler and Farhan Bokhari
The Pakistani government is examining records of the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International in its investigation into the role Pakistani scientists may have played in selling nuclear knowhow to Iran, North Korea and Libya. According to bankers, some of whom worked with BCCI before it collapsed in 1991, Pakistani investigators have sought the help of former BCCI employees to try to uncover payments made to scientists connected with Pakistan's nuclear programme. BCCI's role in financing Pakistan's own nuclear efforts has long been the subject of scrutiny. In 1992, a report into BCCI from a US Congressional sub-committee headed by Senator John Kerry, now a leading Democratic presidential contender, said "there is good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear programme". Though it said the issue deserved further investigation, there was little public follow-through.

This year, however, as evidence has mounted that Pakistani scientists helped the uranium enrichment programmes of Iran, North Korea and Libya, the Pakistani government has launched an investigation. A government spokesman in Islamabad said that anybody found to have passed on secrets would be punished, but denied that the government approved any transfers. At least 11 Pakistani scientists and officials - as well as the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan - have been questioned.

BCCI helped the Pakistani government under General Zia ul Haq, the military dictator killed in a 1988 plane crash, to channel payments from the US Central Intelligence Agency to fighters seeking to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 but former BCCI officials said the relationship for organising undocumented payments for influential Pakistanis continued until the bank's collapse. One former BCCI banker who said he organised funds transfers on behalf of senior military officers in the Zia regime commented: "I'm not surprised that the Pakistanis are now looking to put together dossiers on some of their scientists receiving payments through BCCI." He said that over the past two months, Pakistani officials had travelled to the Middle East, looking for evidence of nuclear scientists receiving payments through BCCI.

Another former BCCI banker said that establishing payments to Pakistani nuclear scientists through the bank could provide evidence about the so far undocumented role of senior former Pakistani military officers in overseeing the transfer of nuclear knowhow to other countries. The investigation has prompted speculation among western intelligence officials and diplomats over the extent to which General Zia, leader of a frontline anti-communist state, in fact sanctioned the transfer of nuclear knowhow to Iran. In the past four to eight weeks, he said the Pakistani investigators have been seeking evidence of payments made to Mohammad Farooq, one of the nuclear scientists at the centre of the investigation. Pakistani officials are said to have focused on Mr Farooq as a possible contact between the Iranians and Mr Khan.

Continued to source (with loads o' links-n-stuff Pakistani nuclear)...FT archives require $...blm warned me...

http://www.pakistan-facts.com/index.php?topic=wmd-proliferation

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic...

[hedda_foil]

7. Thanks, seemslikeadream. This is a stunning thread!

Does anyone have a clue as to who this personage (referred to above) is?:

The Sheikh knew that BCCI was "the creation of a real life Dr. No, whose empire brokered ballistic missiles, illicit pharmaceuticals, stolen military secrets, heroin, and hot money, leaving a trail of corruption across two decades and seventy countries.

[seemslikeadream]

8. from Forbidden Truth

"After dominating the financial news throughout the 1990s, the BCCI is now at the center of the financial network put in place by Osama bin Laden's main supporters." p117

also-

"BCCI facilitated financial operations for Iraqi arms dealer Samir Najmadeen, as well as for Adnan Kashoggi, one of Kamal Adham's close contacts. Kashoggi was secretly selling arms to Iran, and at the same time was in contact with an Iraqi intermediary, Manucher Ghorbanifar." p122

also-

p 121- Ghaith Pharon sold a part in his stake to BCCI to Khalid bin Mahfhouz and his brothers, who became 20% shareholders in the bank.

BCCI also had ties with Abu Nidal, with drug lord Pablo Esobar, Noreiga.

In addition to BCCI, Islamic Charities have been and are used to finance terrorist networks, including Hamas. Khalid bin Mahfouz's son, Abdul Rahman, is the Sudanese branch manager of Muwafaq, supspected of helping to organize the assassination attempt of Hosni Mubarak, and also accused by the CIA of having received funds via the Saudi National Commercial Bank, headed at the time by Khalid. p127

[seemslikeadream]

9. Middle East Iran-Contra, amplified

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH12Ak03.html

Middle East
Iran-Contra, amplified
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - A specter of the Iran-Contra affair is haunting Washington. Even some of the people and countries are the same. And the methods - particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy - are definitely the same.

==snip==

Item: Iran-Contra alumnus Michael Ledeen (and close Perle associate) has renewed ties with his old acquaintance, Manichur Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant who became the key link between the NSC's Oliver North, the operational head of Iran-Contra, and the so-called "moderates" in the Islamic Republic.

To what end? It appears that certain elements in the Pentagon leadership, specifically Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, are trying to sabotage sensitive talks between Tehran and the State Department on cooperation over al-Qaeda and other pressing issues affecting Afghanistan and Iraq.

They think that Ledeen's old friend Ghorbanifar can help, according to Newsday, which reported on Friday that two of Feith's senior aides - without notice to the other agencies - have held several meetings with the Iranian, whom the CIA has long considered "an intelligence fabricator and nuisance". <more>




The last four paragraphs

(snip)
Newsday's disclosure that Feith's office has been used for secret contacts with Ghorbanifar suggests that its work goes well beyond assessing intelligence and making policy recommendations.

According to one career military officer who worked for eight months in the Near East/South Asia bureau in that office, the political appointees assigned there and their contacts at the State Department, the NSC and Cheney's office tended to work as a "network" and often deliberately cut out, ignored or circumvented normal channels of communication both within the Pentagon and with other agencies.

"I personally witnessed several cases of staff officers being told not to contact their counterparts at the State or the because that particular decision would be processed through a different channel," wrote retired Lieutenant-Colonel Karen Kwiatkowsky. "What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline."

In an interview with Inter Press Service, she insisted that her views of Feith's appointees and operations were widely shared by other professional staff, and quoted one veteran career officer "who was in a position to know what he was talking about" as telling her before the Iraq war: "What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra look like amateur hour."

(snip)

[seemslikeadream]

11. A BIGGER, BADDER SEQUEL TO IRAN-CONTRA

A BIGGER, BADDER SEQUEL TO IRAN-CONTRA

Jim Lobe, AlterNet

Just like Ollie North and his cohorts, a small network of officials are pursuing a covert foreign policy agenda -- except their aims are vastly more ambitious.

Item One: Iran-Contra alumnus and close Perle associate Michael Ledeen has renewed ties with his old acquaintance, Manichur Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant who became the key link between the NSC's Oliver North, the operational head of Iran-Contra, and the so-called "moderates" in the Islamic Republic. But to what end?
<snip>

Item Two: U.S. aircraft and Special Operations Forces (SOF) intercepted and destroyed a residential compound and two small convoys that were heading from Iraq into Syria in mid-June, killing as many as 80 civilians. They then subdued and arrested five Syrian guards across the border, taking them back to Iraq, where they were held and interrogated for five days, despite strong objections from the State Department.
<snip>

Item Three: The rightwing Washington Times reported on Friday that certain "high-level circles within the administration" are hoping to persuade Chinese military officers to co-sponsor a coup to overthrow North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. While it is not clear whether concrete action has been taken, the paper noted that the Pentagon leadership disagrees strongly with the State Department's efforts to use diplomacy and the promise of a non-aggression pledge to persuade Kim to abandon his nuclear-weapons program.
snip>

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16597

[DrBB]

12. Bookmark that sucker!

Thanks Octafish--I had in fact tracked it down back when, but lost it again when I got a new laptop and lost a lot of my old bookmarks. Thanks!

And dig that pic of the Magic Band, too--very nice!

on edit:

And in any case well worth posting again for the benefit of the public at large. Hersh rocks, from of old.

Rockette Morton takes off again, into the wind!

[seemslikeadream]

13. That's what the FT says - I hear something different.

Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war'
By Mark Huband
Published: June 27 2004 21:56 | Last Updated: June 27 2004 21:56


When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions.


The identity of the thieves has not been established. But one theory is that they planned to steal headed notepaper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines.

The break-in is one of the murkier elements surrounding the claim - made by the US and UK governments in the lead-up to the Iraq war - that Iraq sought to buy uranium illicitly from Niger.

The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in its controversial September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. It still claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

But the US intelligence community, officials and politicians, are publicly sceptical, and the public differences between the two allies on the issue have obscured the evidence that lies behind the UK claim.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373295039&p=1012571727088



That's what the FT says.

I hear something different.

In fact, I know something different.

My colleagues and I have reported on this matter extensively, spoken to key players involved in the drama, and put together a detailed picture of what happened. And that picture looks remarkably different from this account which is out today -- specifically on the matter of the origins of those forged documents and who was involved.

I cannot begin to describe how much I would like to say more than that. And at some later point in some later post I will do my best to explain the hows and whys of why I can't. But, for the moment, I can't.

Let me, however, offer a hypothetical that might help make sense of all this.

Let's say that certain individuals or organizations are responsible for some rather unfortunate misdeeds. And let's further postulate that such hypothetical individuals or organizations find out that some folks are on to them, that a story is in the works -- perhaps more than one -- and that it's coming right at them. Those individuals or organizations -- as shorthand, let's call them 'the bad actors' -- might well start trying to fight back, trying to gin up an alternative storyline to exculpate themselves and inculpate others. If that story made its way into the news, at a minimum, it might help the bad actors muddy the waters for when the real story comes out. You can see how such a regrettable turn of events might come to pass.

This is of course only a hypothetical. But I thought it might provide a clarifying context.
www.talkingpointsmemo.com





article in the FT makes two points ...

First, that there is much more information than the forged 'Niger-uranium' documents backing up the claim that Iraq (and other countries) sought to clandestinely purchase 'yellowcake' uranium from Niger.

(I think point two is the real point of the FT story, not point one. But we'll get to that in another post.)

The second assertion requires a touch more explanation.

If you're up on the arcana of the 'Niger-uranium' story you'll remember that they first came to light when a source -- an unnamed Italian businessman and security consultant -- gave copies of them to an Italian journalist named Elisabetta Burba.

(For more on the tick-tock of what Burba did with them and how they eventually got into US hands, see this piece by Sy Hersh from last year in The New Yorker.)

There has been endless speculation about who this mystery man was and who actually did the forging. Was he the forger? And if so, what were his motives? If not, who put them into his hands? And what were their motives?

According to the Financial Times article, that business man is likely himself the forger of the documents and he has a long history of bad acts which, they say, discredit him as a source of information. That last tidbit plays a key part in the FT story because, in their words, the provider of the documents is "understood to be planning to reveal selected aspects of his story to a US television channel."

www.talkingpointsmemo.com


THE STOVEPIPE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons.
Issue of 2003-10-27
Posted 2003-10-20
Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered.

The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went on, was that the intelligence reports about Iraq provided by the United Nations inspection teams and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitored Iraq’s nuclear-weapons programs, were far more accurate than the C.I.A. estimates. “Some of the old-timers in the community are appalled by how bad the analysis was,” the official said. “If you look at them side by side, C.I.A. versus United Nations, the U.N. agencies come out ahead across the board.”

There were, of course, good reasons to worry about Saddam Hussein’s possession of W.M.D.s. He had manufactured and used chemical weapons in the past, and had experimented with biological weapons; before the first Gulf War, he maintained a multibillion-dollar nuclear-weapons program. In addition, there were widespread doubts about the efficacy of the U.N. inspection teams, whose operations in Iraq were repeatedly challenged and disrupted by Saddam Hussein. Iraq was thought to have manufactured at least six thousand more chemical weapons than the U.N. could account for. And yet, as some former U.N. inspectors often predicted, the tons of chemical and biological weapons that the American public was led to expect have thus far proved illusory. As long as that remains the case, one question will be asked more and more insistently: How did the American intelligence community get it so wrong?

Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence.

more
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact