Warhead Blueprints Link Libya Project to Pakistan Figure
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: February 4, 2004
ASHINGTON, 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."
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Experts familiar with the contents of the box say the designs closely resemble the warheads that China tested in the late 1960's and passed on to Pakistan decades ago. </color>
American officials are still studying the designs flown out of Libya to determine whether, in fact, they are complete. There is no evidence, the officials say, that the Libyans actually produced the warheads, much less sufficient nuclear fuel. The Libyan nuclear program was just getting started, although Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said recently, "It was simply a matter of time."
American officials emphasize that they have no evidence that the Pakistani government itself was aware of the sales, and they wave aside recent accusations by Mr. Khan's allies that President Pervez Musharraf was himself aware of the transactions. But some experts inside and outside the government say it is difficult to believe that Pakistan's nuclear secrets could have been exported without the knowledge of some in the military and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, especially since some shipments were made on Pakistani military aircraft.
Whoever was responsible, the warhead design appears now to have been a sought-after prize of the network of nuclear middlemen and parts producers that American officials say is being broken up, from Germany to Malaysia, and from Dubai to the Netherlands.
"Ever since the Libya revelations last month, there have been a lot of detentions, and some arrests," one American official said Tuesday.
The documents were hurried out of Libya on the first flight that could be arranged — a Jan. 22 charter that had arrived in Libya with equipment for the C.I.A. and others dismantling the Libyan nuclear complex. The documents are being held by the Department of Energy, which oversees America's nuclear arsenal. A second flight, a few days later, took thousands of parts for centrifuges to a site in Tennessee.
Inside the White House and across the Potomac at the Central Intelligence Agency, the documents from Libya have raised as many urgent questions as they have answered.
American intelligence officials say they are uncertain who else possesses copies of the design, but they assume there are others. Obtaining the enriched uranium or the plutonium to make a bomb is more difficult than getting a workable bomb design, but their fear is that the network they are uncovering sold both.
Investigators are also trying to determine whether the network of suppliers and experts sold a similar weapons design to North Korea.
American and South Korean officials say North Korea traded its missile technology to Pakistan in return for nuclear weapons technology in the late 1990's. That is during the same period when Libya paid to obtain the design and the centrifuge parts, investigators say.
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 laboratory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/04/politics/04NUKE.html?th