U.S. Knew of Khan's Nuclear Deals

DR A.Q. KHAN, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who confessed in public on the TV to having proliferated nuclear weapon technology to Iran and Libya and was pardoned by Gen Pervez Musharraf, has now spoken out. He has disclosed that his confession was made under coercion. President Musharraf had promised him full freedom but reneged on his assurance by putting him under house arrest. Today he asserts that nuclear weapon proliferation to other countries was done under full knowledge of the Pakistan Army. He cites a particular instance of Pakistan’s centrifuges being dispatched to North Korea on board a North Korean military aircraft in 2000 and points out that this could not have been done without the knowledge of the Pakistani military authorities and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

At that time General Musharraf was the Army Chief and Chief Executive of the Pakistani government. Dr Khan’s account of Pakistan-North Korea transactions causes embarrassment not only to General Musharraf and his predecessor army chiefs but also to the US Administration which professed to accept General Musharraf’s version that Dr Khan acted alone. The version tends to give credence to the recent account of journalist Shyam Bhatia that Benazir Bhutto carried CDs of uranium enrichment technology when she visited North Korea in 1994.

Dr Khan has revealed that he visited North Korea in 1994. These disclosures may explain why Pakistan has been refusing to permit Dr Khan being interviewed either by the US authorities or by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Such access to Dr Khan might have brought out that his proliferation activities had full backing of successive Pakistani Army Chiefs.

The more important question is: how much did the Americans know? The US has not explained to the world the allegations of the former Dutch Prime Minister, Dr Ruud Lubbers, in his TV and radio interviews in September 2005 that on two occasions — in 1975 and 1986 — when Dr Khan was arrested by the Dutch authorities the CIA interceded with them to let the Pakistani nuclear scientist go free. In other words, the CIA had an interest in Dr Khan.

Former CIA Director George Tenet in his book, At the centre of the Storm, writes, “For many years, there were rumours and bits of intelligence that Khan was sharing his deadly expertise beyond Pakistan’s borders. His range of international contacts was broad — in China, North Korea and throughout the Muslim world. In some cases, there were indications that he was trading nuclear expertise and material for other military equipment — for example, aiding North Korea with the uranium enrichment efforts in exchange for ballistic missile technology. It was extremely difficult to know exactly what he was up to or to what extent his efforts were conducted at the behest and with the support of the Pakistani government. Khan was supposedly a simple government employee with only a modest salary. Yet he lived a lavish lifestyle and had an empire that kept expanding.”

Then he comes out with his apologia. He says, “Although CIA struggled to penetrate proliferation operations and learn about the depth of their dealings, there is a tension when investigating these kinds of networks. The natural instinct when you find some shred of intelligence about nuclear proliferation is to act immediately. But you must control that urge and be patient to follow the links where they take you, so that when action is launched you can hope to remove the network both root and branch and not just pull off the top, allowing it to regenerate and grow again.”

But he has no explanation to offer on Ruud Lubbers’ disclosure on CIA interest in Dr Khan going back to 1975. The question now raised by Dr Khan that such transactions could not have taken place without the approval of the Pakistani Army should have occurred to the CIA as well. Yet the US decided to accept the Pakistani story of Dr Khan acting alone.

There is a book, Deception. Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy, by Adiran Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark which charges that the US was privy to the Chinese proliferation to Pakistan and Pakistani proliferation activities. At the end of six and a half years of war on terror, the US has not been able to get hold of the Al-Qaeda leadership, which, according to US intelligence, is in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Over the last six years, instead of winning the war on terrorism, the US and its Western allies are facing a reinforced and better equipped Taliban all over Afghanistan, a much larger poppy crop being exported to the world through Pakistan and a resurgent Pakistani Taliban attacking US forces across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

For any competent administration this should call for a total reappraisal of its past policies and assessments and a review to find out where they went wrong. It is quite obvious that the US policy of relying entirely on President Musharraf, the Pakistani ISI and the Army has not worked to their advantage. The present disclosures of Dr Khan would tend to suggest that his confession, Musharraf’s pardon and the US acceptance of the Pakistani version are probably an agreed charade between Pakistan and the US to wind up the Libyan proliferation, apply pressure on Iran and North Korea and, at the same time, to absolve Musharraf and the Pakistani Army of all blame.

Such a charade could only have encouraged Musharraf and the Pakistanis to take the Americans for a longer ride on their alleged commitment to fight the war against terrorism while using the US aid to buy military equipment intended to confront Indian forces and having large sums (in billions of dollars) of aid unaccounted for.

Pakistan has cultivated the US intelligence, armed forces and diplomatic establishment at lower and middle levels over decades. There is a case of Richard Barlow, a CIA operative who brought out the Pakistani assembly of nuclear weapons as early 1987 and Pakistani attempts at modifying US F-16 aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. He was hounded out of the CIA and, though finally exonerated, is still to receive his dues. Pakistani officials have taken credit that they were able to influence the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and had them diluted from their original strong adverse recommendations against Pakistan.

This long-term nexus between Pakistan and sections of the US establishment at lower and middle levels has hurt US national interests very deeply. If and when there are more disclosures by Dr Khan it is bound to expose not only Musharraf and the Pakistani military establishment but the US as well. Quite a few observers have expressed concern over the future safety and health of Dr A.Q. Khan.