London: Senior US officials helped Pakistan steal atomic weapons secrets through Turkish agents in exchange for money and other benefits, with ISI passing on the sensitive information to the now disgraced nuclear scientist AQ Khan, a media report claimed here on Sunday.
Intercepted communications showed that former ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attaches in the Turkish embassy, according to 'The Sunday Times'.
The paper reported the account of whistle blower Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, who listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency's Washington field office.
She approached the newspaper last month after reading about an al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.
Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
According to Edmonds, she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
Intelligence analysts said that members of the ISI were close to al-Qaeda before and after the 9/11 attacks on the US. Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a 100,000 dollars wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks, the report said.
Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation
US officials helped Pak steal N-weapons secret: Report
-
Nayak
- BRF Oldie
- Posts: 2552
- Joined: 11 Jun 2006 03:48
- Location: Vote for Savita Bhabhi as the next BRF admin.
FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft
[quote]
THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.
The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.
Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.
She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.
Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lieâ€
[quote]
THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.
The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.
Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.
She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.
Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lieâ€
..........This article is related to Pakistan’s attempt to smuggle triggered spark gaps :
WMD smuggling accused cracks
April 11 2008 at 09:05AM
By Caryn Dolley
A United States citizen suspected of smuggling components of weapons of mass destruction between South Africa and Pakistan broke down in court on Thursday and cried as she said the case had ruined her business, leaving her with no money for legal representation. ……………
LINK
Deutsche Presse Agentur report :
Nuclear arms suspect extradited
Earlier (July 2007) possibly related story of the extradition from the UK to Germany of Pakistani national Iqtidar Mahmood Dara. Possibly related as I see mention of alpha-gamma spectrometry in this article as well :German exporter denies helping Pakistan bomb project
11.04.08 19:48
(dpa) - An exporter in Germany who is accused of helping Pakistan make nuclear weapons told a court Friday he was not guilty, because the equipment he sold was for university use.
In an hour of submissions to the court in Marburg, central Germany, the 60-year-old chemistry expert argued that the sale in 2003 did not breach German laws against unauthorized exports of militarily useful items to zones of conflict.
The alpha-gamma spectrometry device, valued at about 100,000 euros (157,000 dollars) was typical of those used in medical, physics, chemistry and environmental research laboratories to investigate nuclear particles and radiation, he said.
It had been intended for research use at a Pakistan university.
Prosecutors charged that he must have known it could help Pakistan develop its nuclear arsenal, but the defendant argued that the device was utterly unsuitable for nuclear-weapons manufacture.
He told the court the device was imported into Pakistan by a Pakistani firm and he was not able to say what had become of it.
Police had evidence that the purchaser was a chemicals company, but conceded that they could not prove that the device really had been used in nuclear-weapons research in Pakistan.
LINK
Nuclear arms suspect extradited
Here's old newsramana wrote:Something is odd. we are getting a lot of info in bits and pieces and need to put it together. The Karni case off 66 spark gap switches, when was the prolif supposed to have taken place? After 9/11?
Khan was the owner and chief executive officer of an Islamabad, Pakistan, business known as Pakland PME Corporation (“Paklandâ€
This further supports the hypothesis that on 9-11 US sized Pukistanis vital assets but Pukis managed to hide some weapons and Uranium pits from unkill. So post 9-11 Pukis are in scavanging mode again (from having enough being a net exporter of Nuclear weapons parts) to re-build nukes outside USA control.
What is amazing is that post 9-11 USA continues to nod and wink at Pukistani buying Nuke part from European, US and South-Afrikan/South-Amreican black market. Lends credence to nod-and wink at continued Pukistani attempt to be a net exporter building on what was left of AQKhan's Nuclear Black market WalMart. @ 32 triggers for a simple bomb that 200 trigger shipment correspond to 6 or fewer bombs.
A repeat of what USA and Pakistan did after dismantling BCCI bank, only to re-emerge & reborn as a 4 headed monster, namely:
What is amazing is that post 9-11 USA continues to nod and wink at Pukistani buying Nuke part from European, US and South-Afrikan/South-Amreican black market. Lends credence to nod-and wink at continued Pukistani attempt to be a net exporter building on what was left of AQKhan's Nuclear Black market WalMart. @ 32 triggers for a simple bomb that 200 trigger shipment correspond to 6 or fewer bombs.
A repeat of what USA and Pakistan did after dismantling BCCI bank, only to re-emerge & reborn as a 4 headed monster, namely:
- Habib Bank,
United Bank,
National Bank,
IGI investment bank, An investment bank whose dealings and operations are extremely shady. This also has a presence in India!!!
Benazir personally gave N-technology to N Korea: Book
9 May, 2008, 1648 hrs IST, PTI
NEW DELHI: In a significant revelation, a new book has said North Korea had got nuclear technology from Pakistan in 1993, with the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto personally carrying the sensitive material in her overcoat during a visit to Pyongyang.
Pakistan gave uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in return for missiles, says the biography of the slain PPP leader authored by her close friend Shyam Bhatia.
The 'enrichment for missiles' barter took place in 1993, says the book "Goodbye Shahzadi" whose author cites the information revealed by Bhutto herself during a conversation with him.
As secret services of India, Russia and some western countries were closely monitoring every move on Pakistan's military research, Bhutto had decided to herself carry the sensitive material to Pyongyang to avoid detection, the book says.
"As she (Bhutto) was due to visit North Korea at the end of 1993, she was asked and readily agreed to carry critical nuclear data on her person and hand it over on arrival in Pyongyang," the book claims.
"...before leaving Islamabad, she shopped for an overcoat with the 'deepest possible pockets' into which she transferred CDs containing the scientific data about uranium enrichment that the North Koreans wanted," it says.
ET
Donnerstag, 22. Mai 2008
The Swiss CIA - Nuke Connection
Wayne Madsen - Plame leak damaged a major CIA investigation linking senior Bush administration officials to WMD proliferation. U.S. intelligence insiders have pointed out that the White House is using "Rovegate" and "Who in the White House said what to whom?" as a smoke screen to divert attention away from the actual counter-proliferation work Mrs. Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates team were engaged in.
The arrival of Timothy Flanigan as Patrick J. Fitzgerald's boss is likely related to the mountains of evidence Fitzgerald has now collected to indict senior White House officials, particularly, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for criminal conspiracy in exposing a sensitive U.S. intelligence operation that was targeting some of their closest political and business associates. Libby, it will be recalled, was the attorney for fugitive global smuggler and Clinton-pardoned multi-billionaire Marc Rich, someone who has close ties to the Sharon government and Israeli intelligence.
It is no coincidence that FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds uncovered nuclear material and narcotics trafficking involving Turkish intermediaries with ties to Israel at the same time Brewster Jennings and the CIA's Counter Proliferation Division was hot on the trail of nuclear proliferators tied to the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon and the A. Q. Khan network of Pakistan.
Feith and Libby: Ultimate targets of CIA counter-proliferation team?
An arrest in early 2004 points to the links between Israeli agents and Islamist groups bent on producing weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. According to intelligence sources, this was a network that was a major focus of Edmonds' and Valerie Plame Wilson's work.
South Africa Connection
January 2004, FBI and U.S. Customs agents arrested Asher Karni, a Hungarian-born Orthodox Jew, Israeli citizen, and resident of Cape Town, South Africa, at Denver International Airport for illegally exporting 200 electrically triggered spark gaps -- devices that send synchronized electrical pulses and are used in nuclear weapons -- to Pakistan via a New Jersey export company named Giza Technologies of Secaucus (owned by Zeki Bilmen -- whom the FBI has identified as a Turkish Jew who was already under surveillance by the CIA team). The cargo manifest listed the equipment as electronics gear [lithotripters used to break up kidney stones] for the Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa. However, the initial shipment of 66 triggers did not go to the hospital but to Karni's Top-Cape Technology of Cape Town, South Africa.
Top Cape, in turn, sent the triggers to AJKMC Lithography Aid Society in Islamabad, Pakistan through Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Top-Cape "officially" traded in military and aviation electronics equipment. It was during the summer of 2003, when Valerie Plame and her team -- at a critical stage of their investigation of the A. Q. Khan network -- were outed by White House officials Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and at least one other individual (possibly Elliot Abrams), that Karni received an e-mail from his long time Pakistani associate Humayun Khan (no relation to A. Q. Khan) asking for 200 triggers to be sent to his Islamabad-based company, Pakland PME.
After initially attempting to purchase the devices from a sale agent in France -- an attempt that proved unsuccessful when the French agent demanded a U.S. export license for the triggers because the end destination was Pakistan -- Karni managed to obtain the triggers from Perkin-Elmer's manufacturing plant in Massachusetts through Giza Technologies. Karni's e-mail traffic to and from Khan was being intercepted by a covert agent in South Africa and being forwarded to U.S. authorities.
It is not known whether the covert agent was a Brewster Jennings' asset but it would not be surprising considering Karni was an important link in the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network. By the time the initital shipment of 66 triggers were sent to Karni's Cape Town office, U.S. and South African intelligence were already closely monitoring the transaction and the key players involved. It is also noteworthy that Karni previously worked for a Cape Town electronic import firm called Eagle Technology but was fired after it was discovered by his boss that he was making secret deals to ship nuclear components to Israel, India, Pakistan, and possibly, North Korea.
Karni had been in South Africa for 20 years after arriving from Israel. His time in South Africa coincided with the apartheid government's rapid development of its own (since disestablished) nuclear weapons program and very close military ties between South Africa and Israel.
As for Humayun Khan, the Los Angeles Times discovered that the Pakistani "businessman" had been involved in nuclear weapons smuggling since 1975 when he was engaged in business with a former Nazi named Alfred Hempel, who was the kingpin in a global nuclear smuggling network active throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Hempel died in 1989. In an interview aired by PBS's Frontline on July 26, Humayun Khan said he never realized Karni was Jewish, stating that the Israeli masqueraded as a Muslim.
However, what is clear is that an Israeli-based network, involving key neo-conservatives in the Bush adminstration, were attempting to speed up the clock on the delivery by the A. Q. Khan network of prohibited nuclear material to countries like Iran, thereby justifying a pre-emptive U.S. (and Israeli-supported) attack on Iranian nuclear installations. It was this network that attracted the attention of the CIA and when it realized some of the "men behind the curtain" were in the Pentagon, they had their smoking gun evidence of double dealing by Bush administration officials and their compatriots in the Sharon government.
Although AJKMC, the Pakistani company, said it merely printed copies of the Koran, U.S. investigators pointed out the initials also stand for the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, an Islamist opposition party that supports groups allied to Al Qaeda in Kashmir. Some anti-terrorism experts believe that Osama Bin laden may be hiding in Kashmir.
Swiss Connection
Mlaysian link was also discovered in Karni's network, which is significant in light of developments involving Brewster Jennings' exposure by Rove and Libby. A Swiss citizen named Urs Tinner was arrested by German authorities in October 2004. Tinner was accused of supervising the manfucture of centrifuge components in Malaysia. The United States demanded Tinner's release, which led to speculation that Tinner was a U.S. intelligence asset who penetrated the A.Q. Khan network and may have been part of the Brewster Jennings operation.
According to FBI insiders, wiretaps of phone calls in the Giza-Bilmen-Karni smuggling ring yielded the name Douglas Feith, the Undersecretary of Defense for Plans and Policy and one of Donald Rumsfeld's chief advisers, and Turkish MIT intelligence members of the American Turkish Council, a lobbying group which represents some of America's largest defense and private military contractors.
In May 2005, Der Spiegel magazine reported that Tinner was, in fact, a CIA agent. Germany announced that Tinner would be extradited to Switzerland, something that Der Spiegel reported was the result of a "deal" cut between Germany and the United States. A February 2004 Malaysian police report named both Urs Tinner and his father, Friedrich, as principal engineers in overseeing the machining of uranium-enrichment centrifuge components at a Scomi Precision Engineering (Scope) plant in Malaysia. Friedrich Tinner, owner of a Swiss firm named PhiTec AG, was named in an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report as one of many Swiss individuals involved in shipping nuclear components to Libya and Iran.
Swiss authorities had previously cleared Friedrich Tinner of charges that he shipped centrifuges to Iraq. Friedrich Tinner's other son, Marco, owned a firm called Traco that was also reported as a supplier of equipment and services to Scomi.
If the Tinners were working for the CIA, one subject of interest for them was a Sri Lankan businessman named B.S.A. Tahir who arrived in Malaysia via Dubai in the mid-1990s. In a February 2004 speech at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, President Bush stated that Tahir was A. Q. Khan's "chief financial officer and money launderer." Investigators discovered that Tahir made several trips to Germany and Turkey, the native country of Karni's spark trigger supplier Bilmen, to meet with suppliers for the Khan network.
Israeli nuclear arms smuggler Asher Karni: His links to Bush administration and Israeli officials may have been the real reason Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings & Associates operations were exposed.
A Federal Judge in Denver said Karni could be released on $75,000 bail but the government appealed the decision to Judge Thomas Hogan of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC. Hogan is the judge who ordered New York Times reporter Judith Miller to prison for her failure to testify before the Grand Jury. The federal prosecutors' appeal failed and Karni was released on bail into the custody of Rabbi Herzel Kranz. Karni was ordered to wear an electronic monitor and was ordered to remain at the Hebrew Sheltering Home in Maryland. "
I think this is saying the REAL REASON Plame was leaked was to stop the investigation of US and Israeli complicity in selling nuclear detonators to Iran, then using that fact they had them, would be another false reason to attak Iran! Like the false WMDs of Iraq. The recent Central Asian news also points out that US Special operations are supporting Islamic extremists in order to overthrow regimes that do not wish to cooperate with US corporation oil dealings.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist, author, and syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in The Village Voice and Wired
Reprint from Wayne Madsen Report
When BBC spews love this way it means Condom is ready to be thrown in dustbin. Pakistan Army is put on docks of nuclear Walmart.
New Paki Govt says it is Trishankhu/impotent in doing anything for its Sitara E Pakistan, correct that to Sitara E Islam.
Khan: Pakistan claims 'are false'
New Paki Govt says it is Trishankhu/impotent in doing anything for its Sitara E Pakistan, correct that to Sitara E Islam.
Khan: Pakistan claims 'are false'
By Syed Shoaib Hasan
BBC News, Islamabad
Abdul Qadeer Khan
Dr Khan stunned the world with his confession
The disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist, AQ Khan, has said that allegations he passed on nuclear secrets are false.
In a rare interview, he said that there was pressure put on him to accept the charges "in the national interest".
Four years ago he admitted passing on nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
He confessed to using Pakistan as the hub of a large proliferation network. He was then put under house arrest.
'Not free'
President Pervez Musharraf granted him a full pardon, but Western countries believe he did not come clean on the scale of his nuclear activities.
"These are all false allegations," Dr Khan told the BBC Urdu service.
Dr Khan quoted politicians and a former army chief, who said the allegations against the scientist were false and there had been pressure on him to confess.
When asked why he was put under pressure, he said: "If one person takes responsibility, you save the country."
Dr Khan was speaking by telephone from his home in Islamabad.
He said, despite the government's promises, he was still not a free man.
"Freedom means I could go out and meet people."
He said that the stance of the new government was that it could not release him as it did not arrest him.
"If it keeps on like this, whenever a government comes in power and says we can't undo what the previous government did, there will be no freedom for anyone," he said.
"When a government takes power it becomes the new government's responsibility."
Asked who was preventing him from being released, his reply was unequivocal.
"There are guards outside, army guards," he said.
Dr Khan has recently been allowed to leave his residence and go out on selective trips, although officials have said he will remain under tight security with no access to foreign investigators
A ban on him talking to the media has also been removed in recent days.
These are believed to be preliminary steps before his forthcoming release.
The move is being anxiously watched by officials from Western nations, especially the United States.
They are keen to question Dr Khan over his the exact scope of his nuclear weapon leaks and are especially keen to investigate his alleged links with al-Qaeda.
He said that when the time comes, he might speak out about the circumstances surrounding his confession.
The one-rogue-scientists story was made up by the US to get pakistan off the hook. The consequences of implicating an elected govt in clandestine sales of nuclear weapon technology to so called 'rogue' states would require a global crackdown on that country.
Its shows how useless any international system to control the spread of nukes is. Its just a selectively applied half-a**ed system that is used but only when western security is threatened.
Its shows how useless any international system to control the spread of nukes is. Its just a selectively applied half-a**ed system that is used but only when western security is threatened.
Transcript of A.Q. Khan interview from Globe & Mail.
[quote]Transcript of interview
SAEED SHAH
Globe and Mail Update
June 4, 2008 at 1:21 AM EDT
Islamabad — Transcript of interview with A.Q. Khan, edited for brevity and poor sound quality.
Why do you now regret the confession you made?
At that time, promises were made and I never doubted they would be kept. Now people say that you could have refused like Iftikhar Chaudhry [the deposed chief justice]. I say, ‘look, Iftikhar Chaudhry had an example of mine in front of him, I did not have the model of Iftikhar Chaudhry in front to me at that time'.
I never believed that the promises made would be so blatantly reneged upon.
What were the promises made?
Unconditional pardon, free movement, respect, all those things.
The moment I made the confession at the TV station, and I was coming home, I said ‘okay, from tomorrow I will lead a normal life'. But as soon as I entered the house, there were guards outside. They said ‘sorry, you cannot go out, you cannot meet anybody, your children cannot come, your daughter cannot come from England'.
What did you think the confession would achieve?
I thought it was in the best national interest. Sincere friends said, ‘get it over with, it won't affect your image or anything'. I thought at least Pakistan will be safe. But today, it's in a terrible mess.
What do you say about allegations of proliferation, selling technology?
They're bullshit and concoctions. All the sellers and the suppliers were in Europe. When we started our program in 76, when I came back from Europe, all these suppliers were there. I had lived in Europe for 15 years. I was a scientist. I knew these companies. Very often I had interaction with them. When I came here [to Pakistan] I contacted them, they had all the plants and designs and everything. They started supplying us. Over the years we became good friends.
When Iran and Libya wanted to do their program, they asked our advice. We said ‘okay, these are the suppliers, who provide all'. This was very small advice. You see such plants are a huge undertaking. I said go the suppliers. These are the same suppliers who can supply to you who supply to us. I said these suppliers are reliable. Because they've supplied us, the things were good, proper, they were working.
I advised them. What's wrong with it? I became the “ringleaderâ€
[quote]Transcript of interview
SAEED SHAH
Globe and Mail Update
June 4, 2008 at 1:21 AM EDT
Islamabad — Transcript of interview with A.Q. Khan, edited for brevity and poor sound quality.
Why do you now regret the confession you made?
At that time, promises were made and I never doubted they would be kept. Now people say that you could have refused like Iftikhar Chaudhry [the deposed chief justice]. I say, ‘look, Iftikhar Chaudhry had an example of mine in front of him, I did not have the model of Iftikhar Chaudhry in front to me at that time'.
I never believed that the promises made would be so blatantly reneged upon.
What were the promises made?
Unconditional pardon, free movement, respect, all those things.
The moment I made the confession at the TV station, and I was coming home, I said ‘okay, from tomorrow I will lead a normal life'. But as soon as I entered the house, there were guards outside. They said ‘sorry, you cannot go out, you cannot meet anybody, your children cannot come, your daughter cannot come from England'.
What did you think the confession would achieve?
I thought it was in the best national interest. Sincere friends said, ‘get it over with, it won't affect your image or anything'. I thought at least Pakistan will be safe. But today, it's in a terrible mess.
What do you say about allegations of proliferation, selling technology?
They're bullshit and concoctions. All the sellers and the suppliers were in Europe. When we started our program in 76, when I came back from Europe, all these suppliers were there. I had lived in Europe for 15 years. I was a scientist. I knew these companies. Very often I had interaction with them. When I came here [to Pakistan] I contacted them, they had all the plants and designs and everything. They started supplying us. Over the years we became good friends.
When Iran and Libya wanted to do their program, they asked our advice. We said ‘okay, these are the suppliers, who provide all'. This was very small advice. You see such plants are a huge undertaking. I said go the suppliers. These are the same suppliers who can supply to you who supply to us. I said these suppliers are reliable. Because they've supplied us, the things were good, proper, they were working.
I advised them. What's wrong with it? I became the “ringleaderâ€
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
NYT brings out a follow on article :
June 16, 2008
Officials Fear Bomb Design Went to Others
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
WASHINGTON — Four years after Abdul Qadeer Khan, the leader of the world’s largest atomic black market, was put under house arrest and his operation declared over, international inspectors and Western officials are confronting a new mystery left by him, this time over who may have received blueprints for a sophisticated and compact nuclear weapon found on his network’s computers.
Working in secret for two years, investigators have tracked the digitized blueprints to Khan computers in Switzerland, Dubai, Malaysia and Thailand. The blueprints are electronic and rapidly reproducible for creating a weapon that is relatively small and easy to hide, making it potentially attractive to terrorists.
The revelation this weekend that the Khan operation even had such a bomb blueprint underscores the questions that remain about what Dr. Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist and father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, was selling and to whom. It also raises the possibility that he may still have sensitive material in his possession.
Yet even as inspectors and intelligence officials press their investigation of Dr. Khan, officials in Pakistan have declared the scandal over and have discussed the possibility of setting him free. In recent weeks, American officials have privately warned the new government in Pakistan about the dangers of doing so.
“We’ve been very direct with them that releasing Khan could cause a world of trouble,” a senior administration official who has been involved in the effort said last week. “The problem with Pakistan these days is that you never know who is making the decision — the Army, the intelligence agencies, the president or the new government.”
The illicit nuclear network run by Dr. Khan was broken up in early 2004. President Bush declared that shattering the operation was a major intelligence coup for the United States. Since then, evidence has emerged that the network sold uranium enrichment technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Investigators are still pursuing leads that he may have done business with other countries as well.
Dr. Khan is an expert in centrifuges used to produce enriched uranium for bomb fuel, and much of the technology he sold involved enrichment. But it was only in recent days that officials disclosed that they had found the electronic design for a bomb itself among material seized from some of Dr. Khan’s top lieutenants, a Swiss family, the Tinners.
The same design documents were found in computers in three other locations connected to Khan operatives, according to a senior foreign diplomat involved in the investigation. American officials and inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency say they have been unable to determine if the weapon blueprints were sold to Iran or the smuggling ring’s other customers.
The bomb blueprints bear a strong resemblance to weapons tested by Pakistan a decade ago, said two senior diplomats involved in the investigation. Pakistani officials have balked at providing much information about the newly revealed warhead design, just as they have refused to allow the C.I.A. or international atomic inspectors to directly interrogate Dr. Khan, who is still considered a national hero in Pakistan for helping it become a nuclear weapons state.
Pakistani officials insist that Dr. Khan, as leader of a uranium enrichment program, had no weapons access. But this is the second weapons design found in his smuggling network. The first was for an unwieldy but effective Chinese design from the mid-1960s that Libya acknowledged obtaining from the Khan network before it surrendered its bomb-making equipment in 2003.
Both the new and old designs exploit the principle of implosion, in which a blast wave from a sphere of conventional explosives squeezes inward with tremendous force to compress a ball of bomb fuel, starting the chain reaction and the atomic explosion. A nuclear official in Europe familiar with the Khan investigation said the new design was powerful but miniaturized — using about half the uranium fuel of the older design to produce a greater explosive force.
“Pakistan cannot put the big China design on any of its rockets,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information is classified. “It’s too big.” A smaller warhead created from the new design, he added, is “more efficient and easier to hide,” meaning that one day it might become a “terrorist issue.”
China first exploded the old design in 1966, nuclear experts say, and Pakistan fired the miniaturized version in 1998.
Nuclear experts said a warhead built from the new design is small enough to fit atop a family of medium-range missiles that derives from North Korea’s Nodong class of missiles. Those missiles include Pakistan’s Ghauri and Iran’s Shahab. All are about four feet wide, and any warhead atop them must, by definition, be smaller.
In interviews in Vienna, Islamabad and Washington, officials have said that the weapons design was far more sophisticated than the blueprints discovered in Libya in 2003, when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi gave up his country’s nuclear weapons program. The design is electronic, they said, making it easy to copy — and they have no idea how many copies, if any, are circulating.
On Sunday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said that the administration remained concerned about the possibility that additional plans had been disseminated, but he did not address any of the latest revelations, which were reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times. “We’re very concerned about the A.Q. Khan network,” he told reporters traveling with Mr. Bush from Paris to London.
The existence of the compact bomb design began to become public in recent weeks after Switzerland announced that it had destroyed a huge stockpile of documents, including weapons designs, that were found in computers belonging to Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Marco and Urs, all arrested as part of the Khan investigation.
Switzerland’s president, Pascal Couchepin, said in late May that the government destroyed the documents to keep atomic materials from “getting into the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state.”
Two former Bush administration officials said they believed the Tinners had provided information to the C.I.A. while the father and two sons were still working for Dr. Khan and that some of their information helped American and British officials intercept shipments of centrifuges en route to Libya in 2003.
When news of that interception became public and Libya turned its $100 million program over to American and atomic energy agency officials, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan forced Dr. Khan to issue a vague confession and then placed him under house arrest. Dr. Khan has since renounced that confession in Pakistani and Western news media, saying he made it only to save Pakistan greater embarrassment.
It was not until 2005 that officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is based in Vienna, finally cracked the hard drives on the Khan computers recovered around the world. And as they sifted through files and images on the hard drives, investigators found tons of material — orders for equipment, names and places where the Khan network operated, even old love letters.
“There was stuff about dealing with Iranians in 2003, about how to avoid intelligence agents,” said one official who had reviewed it. But the most important document was a digitized design for a nuclear bomb, one that investigators quickly recognized as Pakistani.
“It was plain where this came from,” a senior official of the atomic energy agency said. “But the Pakistanis want to argue that the Khan case is closed, and so they have said very little.”
In public statements, Pakistani officials have insisted that the Khan “incident,” as they call it, is now history, and they publicly declared nearly two years ago that their investigations are over.
A senior Pakistani official said in April that the information provided by the atomic energy agency was “vague and incomplete,” and he insisted that because Dr. Khan’s laboratories specialized in the manufacture of the equipment needed to enrich uranium, “He was not involved in weapons designs.”
But atomic energy agency investigators and American intelligence officials say they have little doubt that he was the source of the digitized bomb design. “Clearly, someone had tried to modernize it, to improve the electronics,” one said. “There were handwritten references to the electronics, and the question is, who was working on this?”
The officials said that parts of the design were coded so that they could be transferred quickly to an automated manufacturing system.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington and William J. Broad from New York. Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from London.
NYT
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Sanjay M,Sanjay M wrote:Khan Leaked Advanced Nuclear Design(NYT)
Have taken the liberty of posting full text of article as IIRC, NYT only make articles available free for a week:
June 15, 2008
Nuclear Ring Reportedly Had Advanced Design
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — American and international investigators say that they have found the electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers that belonged to the nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, but that they have not been able to determine whether they were sold to Iran or the smuggling ring’s other customers.
The plans appear to closely resemble a nuclear weapon that was built by Pakistan and first tested exactly a decade ago. But when confronted with the design by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, Pakistani officials insisted that Dr. Khan, who has been lobbying in recent months to be released from the loose house arrest that he has been under since 2004, did not have access to Pakistan’s weapons designs.
In interviews in Vienna, Islamabad and Washington over the past year, officials have said that the weapons design was far more sophisticated than the blueprints discovered in Libya in 2003, when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi gave up his country’s nuclear weapons program. Those blueprints were for a Chinese nuclear weapon that dated to the mid-1960s, and investigators found that Libya had obtained them from the Khan network.
But the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics, the investigators say. The design is in electronic form, they said, making it easy to copy — and they have no idea how many copies of it are now in circulation.
Investigators said the evidence that the Khan network was trafficking in a tested, compact and efficient bomb design was particularly alarming, because if a country or group obtained the bomb design, the technological information would significantly shorten the time needed to build a weapon. Among the missiles that could carry the smaller weapon, according to some weapons experts, is the Iranian Shahab III, which is based on a North Korean design.
However, in recent days top American intelligence officials, who declined to speak about the discovery on the record because the information is classified, said that they had been unable to determine whether Iran or other countries had obtained the weapons design. Pakistan has refused to allow American investigators to directly interview Dr. Khan, who is considered a hero there as the father of its nuclear program. In recent weeks the only communications about him between the United States and Pakistan’s new government have been warnings from Washington not to allow him to be released.
Dr. Khan’s illicit nuclear network was broken up in early 2004; President Bush declared that shattering the operation was a major intelligence coup for the United States. Since then, evidence has emerged that the network sold uranium enrichment technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and investigators are still pursing leads that he may have done business with other countries as well.
While Libya gave up its nuclear program, North Korea and Iran have not, despite intense international pressure, sanctions, and repeated offers of incentives to do so.
On Sunday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said that the administration remained concerned about the possibility that additional plans have been disseminated, but he did not address any of the latest revelations about the Khan network.
“We’re very concerned about the A.Q. Khan network, both in terms of what they were doing by purveying enrichment technology and also the possibility that there would be weapons-related technology associated with it,” he told reporters traveling with Mr. Bush from Paris to London on Sunday.
“That was a concern. That’s one of the reasons we rolled up the network here three years or so ago, and fairly successfully. And part of that rolling up was to roll up the network and part of it was to pursue what kind of relationship the A.Q. Khan network had to individual countries with which they are dealing.”
The existence of the compact bomb design began to become public in recent weeks after Switzerland announced that it had destroyed a huge stockpile of documents, including a weapons design, that were found in the computers of a family in Switzerland, the Tinners, who over the years played critical roles in Khan’s operation.
In May, Switzerland’s president, Pascal Couchepin, announced that more than 30,000 documents had been shredded, saying the government acted to keep them from “getting into the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state,” according to Swiss news accounts.
But American and I.A.E.A. officials say that destroying one copy of an electronic file was more satisfying to the Swiss than it was reassuring to them. It is unclear whether the Swiss knew that some of the same material had been found in other countries by I.A.E.A. investigators.
Some details of the Swiss action and the bomb design have appeared recently in Swiss newspapers and The Guardian of London and in The Washington Post on Sunday.
The Swiss have provided little information about exactly what they destroyed, but I.A.E.A. inspectors watched the destruction and American intelligence officials were deeply involved. “We were very happy they were destroyed,” one senior intelligence official said Friday. But he added that “what else is out there” remains a mystery. The Swiss destruction of the equipment came in response in the case of Urs Tinner, who has been in custody for more than four years but has not yet stood trial.
Two former Bush administration officials said they believed Mr. Tinner had provided information to the Central Intelligence Agency while he was still working for Dr. Khan, including some of the information that helped American and British officials intercept shipments of centrifuges on their way to Libya in 2003.
When news of that interception became public and Libya turned its $100 million program over to American and I.A.E.A. officials, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan forced Dr. Khan to issue a vague confession and then placed him under house arrest. Dr. Khan has since renounced that confession in Pakistani and Western media, saying he made it only to save Pakistan greater embarrassment.
It was not until 2005 that officials of the I.A.E.A., which is based in Vienna, finally cracked the hard drives on the Khan computers recovered around the world. And as they sifted through files and images on the hard drives, investigators found tons of material — orders for equipment, names and places where the Khan network operated, even old love letters. In all, they found several terabytes of data, a huge amount to sift through.
“There was stuff about dealing with Iranians in 2003, about how to avoid intelligence agents,” said one official who had reviewed it. But the most important document was a digitized design for a nuclear bomb, one that investigators quickly recognized as Pakistani. “It was plain where this came from,” one senior official of the I.A.E.A. said. “But the Pakistanis want to argue that the Khan case is closed, and so they have said very little.”
In public statements, Pakistani officials have insisted that the Khan “incident,” as the call it, is now history, and they publicly declared nearly two years ago that their investigations are over.
A senior Pakistani official, interviewed in Islamabad in April, said that the information provided by the I.A.E.A. was “vague and incomplete,” and he insisted that because Dr. Khan’s laboratories specialized in the manufacture of the equipment needed to enrich uranium, “he was not involved in weapons designs.”
But investigators have no doubt that he was the source of the digitized bomb design. “Clearly, someone had tried to modernize it, to improve the electronics,” one said. “There were handwritten references to the electronics, and the question is, who was working on this?”
The officials said that parts of the design were coded so that they could be transferred quickly to an automated manufacturing system for the production of parts.
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from London.
NYT
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
"several terabytes of data"!! 1 terabyte (TB) is a 1000GB ( and 1 GB is a 1000 MB) and a typical 20-30 page word document (bulkiest) is about a few hundred MB max. which means they must have access to tens of thousands of documents to sift through at the very least.orders for equipment, names and places where the Khan network operated, even old love letters. In all, they found several terabytes of data, a huge amount to sift through.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
The data was destroyed most likely as it shows Western complicity. Otherwise doesnt make sense. The Swiss could have handed it to US or UK and France. The PRC would have been grateful to get its design off the streets. The more worrisome part is that the fission design is now so well understood that they can hawk (peddle) it to powers who can assemble it and be reasonably confident it will go off.
I wonder how diplomats can guess its based on TSP's 1998 tests. Wonder what kind of diplomats are those for Indian ones are good only at serving tea with crumpets.
I wonder how diplomats can guess its based on TSP's 1998 tests. Wonder what kind of diplomats are those for Indian ones are good only at serving tea with crumpets.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
One wonders why they decided to leak this piece of info now.
It is obvious even to a blind man that the govt of pakistan was involved in proliferation of nuclear weapons technology and material all over the place. Attempts to reduce the blame to one guy is ridiculous.
It is obvious even to a blind man that the govt of pakistan was involved in proliferation of nuclear weapons technology and material all over the place. Attempts to reduce the blame to one guy is ridiculous.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Smugglers Had Design For Advanced Warhead
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 15, 2008; A01
An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.
The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.
The computer contents -- among more than 1,000 gigabytes of data seized -- were recently destroyed by Swiss authorities under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, which is investigating the now-defunct smuggling ring previously led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
But U.N. officials cannot rule out the possibility that the blueprints were shared with others before their discovery, said the report's author, David Albright, a prominent nuclear weapons expert who spent four years researching the smuggling network.
"These advanced nuclear weapons designs may have long ago been sold off to some of the most treacherous regimes in the world," Albright wrote in a draft report about the blueprint's discovery. A copy of the report, expected to be published later this week, was provided to The Washington Post.
The A.Q. Khan smuggling ring was previously known to have provided Libya with design information for a nuclear bomb. But the blueprints found in 2006 are far more troubling, Albright said in his report. While Libya was given plans for an older and relatively unsophisticated weapon that was bulky and difficult to deliver, the newly discovered blueprints offered instructions for building a compact device, the report said. The lethality of such a bomb would be little enhanced, but its smaller size might allow for delivery by ballistic missile.
"To many of these countries, it's all about size and weight," Albright said in an interview. "They need to be able to fit the device on the missiles they have."
The Swiss government acknowledged this month that it destroyed nuclear-related documents, including weapons-design details, under the direction of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency to keep them from falling into terrorists' hands. However, it has not been previously reported that the documents included hundreds of pages of specifications for a second, more advanced nuclear bomb.
"These would have been ideal for two of Khan's other major customers, Iran and North Korea," wrote Albright, now president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "They both faced struggles in building a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop their ballistic missiles, and these designs were for a warhead that would fit."
It is unknown whether the designs were delivered to either country, or to anyone else, Albright said.
The Pakistani government did not rebut the findings in the report but said it had cooperated extensively with U.N. investigators. "The government of Pakistan has adequately investigated allegations of nuclear proliferation by A.Q. Khan and shared the information with IAEA," Nadeem Kiani, a spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, said yesterday. "It considers the A.Q. Khan affair to be over."
A CIA official, informed of the essential details of Albright's report, said the agency would not comment because of the extreme diplomatic and security sensitivities of the matter. In his 2007 memoir, former CIA director George Tenet acknowledged the agency's extensive involvement in tracking the Khan network over more than a decade.
Albright, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq, has published detailed analyses of the nuclear programs of numerous states, including Iran and North Korea. His institute was the first to publicly identify the location of an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor that was destroyed by Israeli warplanes last September.
A design for a compact, missile-ready nuclear weapon could help an aspiring nuclear power overcome a major technical hurdle and vastly increase its options for delivery of a nuclear explosive. Such a design could theoretically help North Korea -- which detonated a nuclear device in a 2006 test -- to couple a nuclear warhead with its Nodong missile, which has a proven range of 1,300 kilometers (about 800 miles).
Iran also possesses medium-range ballistic missiles and is believed by U.S. government officials to be seeking the capability to build nuclear weapons in the future, although an assessment late last year by U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iran had discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Weapons experts have long puzzled over whether Tehran might have previously acquired a weapons design from the Khan network, which sold the Iranian government numerous other nuclear-related items, including designs for uranium-enrichment equipment.
The computers that contained the drawings were owned by three members of the Tinner family -- brothers Marco and Urs and their father, Friedrich -- all Swiss businessmen who have been identified by U.S. and IAEA officials as key participants in Khan's nuclear black market. The smuggling ring operated from the mid-1980s until 2003, when it was exposed after a years-long probe by the U.S. and British intelligence agencies.
Khan, who apologized for his role in the smuggling network in a 2004 speech broadcast in Pakistan, was officially pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf without being formally charged with crimes. The Tinner brothers are in Swiss prisons awaiting trial on charges related to their alleged involvement in the network. They and their father are the focus of an ongoing probe by Swiss authorities, who discovered the blueprints while exploring the heavily encrypted contents of the Tinners' computers, the report said. Several published reports have asserted that Urs Tinner became an informant for U.S. intelligence before the breakup of the smuggling ring, but that has not been officially confirmed.
Switzerland shared the finding with the IAEA as well as the United States, which asked for copies of the blueprints, the report states. The IAEA has acknowledged that it oversaw the destruction of nuclear-design material by Swiss authorities in November 2007. However, IAEA officials would neither confirm nor deny the existence of a second weapons design or comment on Albright's report.
Albright, citing information provided by IAEA investigators, said the designs were similar to that of a nuclear device built by Pakistan. He contends in the report that IAEA officials confronted Pakistan's government shortly after the discovery, adding that the private reaction of government officials was astonishment. The Pakistanis "were genuinely shocked; Khan may have transferred his own country's most secret and dangerous information to foreign smugglers so that they could sell it for a profit," Albright said, relating a description of the encounter given to him by IAEA officials.
Pakistan has previously denied that Khan stole the country's weapons plans. Musharraf has not allowed IAEA experts to interview Khan, an engineer who is regarded as a national hero for his role in establishing Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. Khan, in interviews last month with The Post and several other publications, asserted that the allegations of nuclear smuggling were false.
Albright said it remains critical that investigators press Khan and others for details about how the blueprints were obtained and who might have them. Because the plans were stored electronically, they may have been copied many times, he said.
Washington Post
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Pakistan: Nuclear founder 'a criminal', says expert
London, 16 June (AKI) - Pakistan's failure to prosecute the founder of the country's nuclear programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, for selling nuclear secrets was unacceptable, a leading non-proliferation expert said on Monday.
Mark Fitzpatrick, from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said media reports suggesting that Khan's weapons blueprints were found on computers in Switzerland and other countries confirmed his view that Khan was a criminal.
"I think it is incredible that some Pakistani statesmen and political parties want to excuse what Khan did," Fitzpatrick told Adnkronos International (AKI) by telephone.
"I understand he is a hero for giving Pakistan a nuclear weapon. But if it becomes understood that Khan gave away or sold some of Pakistan's top secrets, that attitude could change."
Fitzpatrick, who heads the IISS's non-proliferation programme, was at the US State Department for 26 years and spearheaded several arms control initiatives.
He said it was also unacceptable that many European businessmen with whom Khan had dealt, had never faced prosecution.
The New York Times reported at the weekend that blueprints for advanced nuclear weapons, found on the computers of an international smuggling ring, were Khan's designs.
The sensitive information was discovered on heavily encrypted computers in Switzerland and destroyed, but there are fears that the designs could have passed into the wrong hands.
It has once again raised questions about Khan who in 2004 confessed to his involvement in a clandestine network of nuclear weapons technology proliferation from Pakistan to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
"If Iran has nuclear weapons designs from AQ Khan, there is all the more concern," Fitzpatrick told AKI.
"This episode, the news about nuclear weapons designs, could concentrate the minds of key states in deterring Iran in acquiring it's nuclear capability."
Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President George W. Bush on Monday both pledged to step up sanctions against Iran if it failed to modify its nuclear ambitions.
Andreas Persbo, a senior researcher at VERTIC, a respected London-based non profit organisation, told Adnkronos International he feared Khan would soon be released.
"The discussion is how, rather than when," he told AKI.
But Persbo, a verification expert, said he did not doubt the veracity of the latest media reports suggesting the designs had ended up with a smuggling network, in places like Dubai.
"It was a good hub to meet the Libyans, Iraqis and Iranians and whoever else," Persbo told AKI.
Former UN arms inspector David Albright, an authority on the now defunct smuggling ring run by the Pakistani scientist, said the information may have been leaked some time ago.
"These advanced nuclear weapons designs may have long ago been sold off to some of the most treacherous regimes in the world," he warned.
AKI-ADN Kronos
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Is the US/UK laying the foundation for a real hot pursuit? Perhaps there is a notion that they need to get to Islamabad before the other gang does?
Interesting times.
Interesting times.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
The recent spate of articles, starting with WAPO and NYT was set off by the circulation of a draft paper by David Albright of ISIS.
David Albrights paper is now out :
Swiss Smugglers Had Advanced Nuclear Weapons Designs
No great shakes.
Meanwhile Armscontrolwonk has two posts out.
Latest Khan Revelations
And :
Pakistani Design In Switzerland
Some interesting speculation on warhead size in the second armscontrolwonk paper.
David Albrights paper is now out :
Swiss Smugglers Had Advanced Nuclear Weapons Designs
No great shakes.
Meanwhile Armscontrolwonk has two posts out.
Latest Khan Revelations
And :
Pakistani Design In Switzerland
Some interesting speculation on warhead size in the second armscontrolwonk paper.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
I am thinking that this is the update to the PRC design that was given to the TSP in 1984. Its half the size and twice the yield of PRC design as stated by the 'experts'.
I wonder if these were the ones among the tested ones in Chagai. Recall the PRC CHIC-4 was supposed to be too heavy for ding dongs.
So if you get your stuff then you can assemble this. Thats what AQK Nukemart was all about. Distributed development and processing.
I wonder if these were the ones among the tested ones in Chagai. Recall the PRC CHIC-4 was supposed to be too heavy for ding dongs.
So if you get your stuff then you can assemble this. Thats what AQK Nukemart was all about. Distributed development and processing.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
The anxiety is that TSP might release AQK and he can re-engage his network. Hence all this new info being released.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Atom expert rejects weapon 'lies'
Mr Khan labelled the claims "rubbish", saying he and his team had never worked on such advanced weapons.
He told Reuters news agency that his lab had developed a "simple, functional weapon" in 1983 and carried out no further development.
"We did not go for advancement nor did we have the facility to do that... we did not work on any improvement or so-called miniaturisation."
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Good. Ping Pong between AQK and the NPAs. So something is not right.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Musharraf sent his forces to Waziristan on the very day Colin Powell was in Islamabad to say that the Xerox Khan issue needs to be addressed.
Me thinks that this new pressure will be relieved once TSPA agrees to turn off the Taliban tap again.
Me thinks that this new pressure will be relieved once TSPA agrees to turn off the Taliban tap again.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Could be. But why the NPAs(that means Admin) claim that its more advanced then before. It makes the proliferation more egregious than the Nuke mart requiring heavy ox cart delivery system to Libya etc. Something is different.
Is the suspicion that this is what AQK also gave the Persians?
Also whats the info on that new Tinner family.Who are they and whats their raisins?
Is the suspicion that this is what AQK also gave the Persians?
Also whats the info on that new Tinner family.Who are they and whats their raisins?
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Intelligence Agencies Undermine Nuclear Smuggling Trial
Khan assembled a team of old confidants and assigned a specific task to each of them so that Gadhafi's components could be produced around the world. At the top of the hierarchy was a confidant of Khan's, Sri Lankan businessman Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, who acted as a business manager of sorts, responsible for payments and contracts. He also appointed several division managers, who may not even have known of each other's existence. They were comprised of the Swiss Tinner family of engineers, including Friedrich Tinner and his sons Urs and Marco, who were apparently responsible for centrifuge parts; Briton Peter Griffin, a specialist in the procurement of tool-making machines; and Lerch, whose job, as the prosecution claims, was to obtain the pipes that connect the centrifuges. Lerch's source for the pipes was Gerhard Wisser, a German national living in South Africa, with whom he had been doing business for decades.
The names on the roster of the global plot included Khan, Tahir, Tinner, Griffin, Lerch and Wisser. The only problem was that not everyone plotted on the same side. The Tinner family, in particular, played both sides, collecting payments from Khan and from the CIA.
The first piece of solid evidence that the Tinners, a family based in the Swiss town of Haag, had switched sides and were keeping the Americans apprised of their steps, stems from early 2003. In December 2002, Friedrich Tinner, the father, contacted the IAEA and then the United States Embassy in Vienna, telling them he wanted to speak with a nuclear scientist. Tinner, a specialist in vacuum technology suspected of engaging in unscrupulous business dealings for decades, waited a few weeks until he was eventually contacted by a man named Jim Kinsman, who claimed to be the representative of an American specialized company in Washington. This was correct, in a sense, because Kinsman's employer is a specialized business of sorts: the CIA. Given his association with the CIA, it comes as little surprise that Kinsman didn't even have a US Social Security number until 2003. Neither did his colleague, a man named Sean Mahaffey, who introduced himself as the company's "general counsel."
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Its another sting operation. But how many undiscoverd pathways are there?
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol15/152_review_hibbs.pdf
BOOK REVIEWS: PAKISTAN’S BOMB: Mission Unstoppable
By Mark Hibbs
- America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise, by David Armstrong and
Joseph Trento. Steerforth Press, 2007. 292 pages, $24.95.
- Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, by
Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark. Walker & Company, 2007. 586 pages, $28.95.
- The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous
Secrets . . . and How We Could Have Stopped Him, by Douglas Frantz and Catherine
Collins. Twelve, 2007. 413 pages, $25.
BOOK REVIEWS: PAKISTAN’S BOMB: Mission Unstoppable
By Mark Hibbs
- America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise, by David Armstrong and
Joseph Trento. Steerforth Press, 2007. 292 pages, $24.95.
- Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, by
Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark. Walker & Company, 2007. 586 pages, $28.95.
- The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous
Secrets . . . and How We Could Have Stopped Him, by Douglas Frantz and Catherine
Collins. Twelve, 2007. 413 pages, $25.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Hibbs, according to Langewiesche, was the first person in the media to really zero in on AQ Khan. He's been reporting on the civilian nuclear energy sector for 25 years.
Two other sources - one mentioned earlier in the thread (the Fitzpatrick monograph published by IISS) and Gordon Corera's book on AQ Khan - are also useful. Another shorter one is Chris Clary's MA thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School, which I believe is available electronically. It's a bit outdated now, but still has a gerat deal of detail.
Tim
Two other sources - one mentioned earlier in the thread (the Fitzpatrick monograph published by IISS) and Gordon Corera's book on AQ Khan - are also useful. Another shorter one is Chris Clary's MA thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School, which I believe is available electronically. It's a bit outdated now, but still has a gerat deal of detail.
Tim
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Even in the 1980s there were two very distinct sets of dimensions reported for the nuclear weapons designs in Pakistani hands. Pakistan also renewed its quest in the late 1980s to build a Pu fuel cycle.
The second design can not be an improvement on the uranium chic-4. Its far more likely that it was based on the Pu primary for the Chinese 3MT design.
On the other hand there are also some indications that Pakistan attempted (and failed) in the mid-to-late 1980s to improve chic-4 including by boosting yields with tritium despite significant investment.
The second design can not be an improvement on the uranium chic-4. Its far more likely that it was based on the Pu primary for the Chinese 3MT design.
On the other hand there are also some indications that Pakistan attempted (and failed) in the mid-to-late 1980s to improve chic-4 including by boosting yields with tritium despite significant investment.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
Tim wrote:Hibbs, according to Langewiesche, was the first person in the media to really zero in on AQ Khan. He's been reporting on the civilian nuclear energy sector for 25 years.
Two other sources - one mentioned earlier in the thread (the Fitzpatrick monograph published by IISS) and Gordon Corera's book on AQ Khan - are also useful. Another shorter one is Chris Clary's MA thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School, which I believe is available electronically. It's a bit outdated now, but still has a gerat deal of detail.
Tim
Tim there is a dated book about AQK called "Islamic Bomb" published in the late 70s/early 80s. I learnt about him from that book and have been following his career from news reports.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation: 10 May 2007
There seems to be an indecent hurry in burying the matter of Pakistani Nuclear Proliferation 
:
:Malaysia frees Sri Lanka nuclear suspect
By EILEEN NG 06.23.08, 8:32 AM ET
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA –
A Sri Lankan businessman jailed four years ago for allegedly supplying nuclear weapon components to Libya has been freed and is no longer a threat to Malaysia's national security, a Cabinet minister said Monday.
The case of Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir drew additional attention because he was alleged to have deceived a company partly owned by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son to procure the components.
Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Tahir will remain under police watch, and indicated that he would not be allowed to leave Malaysia. "For the time being he is here," he told reporters.
The Star daily reported Monday that Tahir, who is a Malaysian permanent resident, was released June 6. He was taken into custody in May 2004 under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial.
Confirming the report, Syed Hamid said: "He is not a (security) threat. The recommendation is for him to be released but he is a subject for us to watch over."
"I think we have investigated what we need to investigate," he said, adding that foreign governments and security agencies also conducted their probes.
"All over the world people who have been involved in this (investigation) have taken necessary action at the local level, so there is no necessity to hold him," he said without elaborating. He did not say if this meant that the investigations found Tahir innocent.
Tahir's alleged activity came to light when a ship owned by a German company was examined at the port of Taranto in Italy on Oct. 4, 2003. Authorities found five Libya-bound containers believed to contain components related to the Libyan uranium enrichment program.
The 25,000 centrifuge parts were in wooden boxes with the logo of Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn. Bhd., or SCOPE, a subsidiary of Scomi Group in which Prime Minister Abdullah's son Kamaluddin had a stake.
The discovery led to the uncovering of a secret network led by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Malaysian investigations, however, cleared SCOPE, which was subsequently closed.
Police said at the time that Tahir had in 2001 offered a contract to SCOPE for supplying the semi-finished products after falsely assuring them it was a legitimate deal and not related to nuclear technology.
SCOPE claimed it had shipped 14 semi-finished components to Dubai-based Gulf Technical Industries in four consignments from December 2002. The end-use of these components were never disclosed by GTI, it said.
The Star quoted unidentified officials as saying that Tahir, who is married to a Malaysian and has three children, is required to report to police every week and would be re-arrested if he flouts the conditions.
Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
Associated Press via Forbes