Left Flank

Of all the harrowing revelations repeated in two reports in the WaPo and NYT concerning the relationship between the Swiss, the Tinner family, A.Q. Khan, Pakistan, the IAEA…and so many other players, there are the two sentences buried deep beneath the lede.

NYT's David E. Sanger is most concerned about Iran.

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.

WaPo's Joby Warrick highlights those rogue states, Iran and North Korea.

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.

This is the part that scares me: the CIA knew.

While some of this is well known, a series of little-publicized letters between Khan and a Canadian-Pakistani engineer, Aziz Abdul Khan, in 1978 and 1979 offer a revealing look at the degree to which globalization shaped Pakistan's nuclear program. The so-called Islamic bomb turns out not to be an indigenous product, but instead a little bit American, Canadian, Swiss, German, Dutch, British, Japanese, and even Russian.

Aziz Khan was one of dozens of Pakistani scientists living abroad whom Khan tried to recruit for what he described as a "project of national importance." According to the letters between them, while Aziz Khan declined the offer, he agreed to provide A.Q. Khan with scientific literature and to spend his vacations at A.Q. Khan's laboratory outside of Islamabad, training and mentoring young engineers.

We obtained the letters -- which cover the comings and goings of nuclear experts from nine different countries -- from an American government official, who, in turn, received them from Canadian law enforcement officers after they were taken from Aziz Khan, following his arrest in Montreal in 1980.

These exchanges provide a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into Khan's nuclear Wal-Mart in its infancy, long before he began peddling his finished wares to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. After a decade of diplomatic rhetoric about the need to stop the spread of nuclear technology, they also offer a window into the ineffectiveness of American and European export controls. By setting these letters -- often colorfully translated from Urdu by the Canadian authorities -- against the backdrop of the news coverage of the time, you can see just how disturbingly international the assistance was that Khan received.

(…)

Khan's success in obtaining nuclear material abroad did not go unnoticed. American intelligence watched his procurement operation and U.S. officials occasionally complained in public, prompting Aziz Khan to write in June 1979: "There is no doubt that you guys made people here sleepless…. These days you are famous all over the world."

In August of 1979, still struggling, Khan wrote his friend of a deal that he could not consummate in Canada, probably a reference to difficulties obtaining a specialized type of inverter essential to operating the uranium enrichment plant.

"You must be reading that your countrymen have decided to drink our blood. The way they are after us, it looks as if we have killed their mother. Their building of castles in the air has beaten the Arabian Nights. There is lots of pressure, but I have trust in God in doing my work. I am thinking, if I finish this job, then I would solve the purpose of my life."

Khan did indeed overcome the obstacles -- with plenty of help from his friends around the world. And he had learned his lesson well. When he was finished helping Pakistan build its bomb, he turned his talents to another kind of globalization -- marketing his wares, and those of his associates from Europe, Asia, and South Africa, to a new set of clients.

That's just the shorter version of a longer, more depressing tale (How Can You Mend a Broken System?, How CIA Let Khan Go, Nuclear Wal-Mart).

I hope better stories will follow, and both newspapers are just warming up, not closing their eyes.