Left Flank

The Economist explores the role of A.Q. Khan's in Iran's and DPRK's nuclear programs.

The network's customers for other nuclear technologies and equipment were Libya, Iran and North Korea, though suspicion has at times attached to Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Syria too. But Libya has been out of the bomb business since 2003. Jaws dropped when among the haul of equipment and documents it handed to inspectors was an Islamabad dry-cleaner's bag containing most (not all) of the drawings for a clunky Chinese-designed nuclear weapon from the 1960s, given to Pakistan before China decided that spreading the bomb was a dumb idea.

Unlike the Maoist model, the modern, computerised bomb design would fit easily on Pakistan's Ghauri missiles. Pakistan denies it, but these are a knock-off of North Korea's 1,300km-range Nodong rockets. Pakistan appears to have paid for its Ghauris with some nuclear assistance. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, denies this too. But in his autobiography he admitted that the Khan network had supplied Kim Jong Il's regime with some 20 uranium-enriching centrifuges.

Whatever the truth behind their missile deal, Pakistani officials were genuinely shocked to be told recently that Mr Khan was selling their most closely guarded weapons secrets too, according to Mr Albright. North Korea did test a nuclear device, in 2006. But its bomb used home-produced plutonium from Mr Kim's Yongbyon nuclear reactor for its fissile core; the Pakistani design touted by Mr Khan and his partners uses uranium.

Despite other evidence to the contrary, North Korea insists it got no uranium help from Pakistan or anywhere else. Recently (or so America and Israel say) it was caught out helping Syria to build a nuclear reactor (which Israel later flattened) that could produce plutonium for weapons, just like Yongbyon did. America seems ready to let both these matters go for now, so long as Mr Kim furnishes an accurate and verifiable inventory of his plutonium production. The gamble is that this would be a big step towards a six-party deal, to include South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, that could lead eventually to the dismantling of all North Korea's nuclear programmes.

Unlike Libya and North Korea, Iran flatly denies any weapons intent. It bought uranium-spinning equipment from Mr Khan, but says its nuclear work is entirely peaceful. Yet it has defied a string of UN Security Council resolutions demanding that the work be halted until inspectors can be sure of that. The trouble is that uranium enriched a little can be used in nuclear-power reactors, but when enriched a lot can be abused for bomb-building.

Iran's determination to enrich on regardless looks like dooming the latest offer of negotiations from America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The six have promised Iran assistance with other, less proliferation-prone nuclear technology, and direct talks on a whole range of economic, trade and security issues that Iran itself raised in a set of counter-proposals last month. A crucial difference between the two offers is that Iran wants to enrich on regardless, on its own territory, whereas the six insist the work be suspended before negotiations start.

Unless Iran shows willing, says Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, European governments are prepared to extend their sanctions on Iran, for example by freezing the overseas assets of Bank Melli, Iran's largest commercial bank. (That move is not quite a done deal, but Mr Brown is confident it soon will be.) Despite record world energy prices, the Europeans may consider blocking investment in Iran's oil and gas industries too. America already has tough sanctions in place, though Russia and China do not.

Iran's insistence on enriching, whatever the cost, deepens suspicion of its motives. Now there are more worries. Like Pakistan's Ghauri missiles, Iran's Shahab-3 rockets are clones of Mr Kim's Nodongs. So the Khan network's modern warhead design would fit them just as nicely.

There is no evidence of any such transaction, but American and other intelligence agencies recently showed nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear guardian, evidence pointing to Iranian weapons work which America thinks may have stopped in 2003—though others believe it continues. This includes both high-explosive testing for possible nuclear triggers and work on a Shahab-3 missile cone to accommodate a nuclear warhead. Iran has dismissed the material as fabricated. But it has yet to give a convincing explanation of why it had a document, supplied by Mr Khan and his associates, on shaping uranium into spheres—a technique useful only in weapons building.

ACW's jeffrey offers technical observations: «What does seem likely is that the device is small enough for the Nodong family, which includes Pakistan's Ghauri and Iran's Shahab.»

Yet, again, it's the politics that worries and infuriates me. The Bush administration is still coddling Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, an approach CFR's Charles D. Ferguson would prefer to see replaced with a different diplomatic process. Ferguson rightly admits there are Washington officials, notwithstanding how the Tinners allegedly fooled the CIA after 2003 (via Danger Room's «Nuke Smuggler Peddled Missile-Ready Bomb Designs (Updated Again)», who have known about Khan's illicit activities for decades.

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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.

I share ACW's dismay, that "the Swiss shredded the evidence" of Urs Tinner's involvement with A.Q. Khan.

Investigative journalist Douglas Frantz claims that Urs Tinner and his family, who are at the center of a Swiss government decision to shred documents implicating all three men in A.Q. Khan's nuclear Wal-Mart, is a CIA stooge. Listen to Frantz discuss the case on WRS.

I've read about four chapters of The Nuclear Jihadist, mostly about A.Q. Khan's early life in India, Pakistan, and Europe. The author spices the tale of Khan's remarkable turn from the charming man with a Dutch wife to a patriotic Pakistani spy with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's nuclear ambitions, Pakistan's early attempts to manufacture a plutonium-based nuclear device, and Khan's early work on centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.

Not only did Khan keep copies of his own work, but, after contacting Pakistani intelligence, he acquired access to other projects vital to Pakistan's uranium program. Khan also ordered equipment identical in specification to equipment he himself developed for Dutch laboratories, which tipped off Dutch authorities. Before that, no one suspected that Khan was spying, and security conditions were negligent. A Dutch friend, who had tutored Khan on photography (which Khan used to copy documents, along with his ability to translate Dutch and German into Urdu), failed to intervene earlier, because he wanted to retain Khan's friendship. But, finally, in 1975, on the eve of Khan's final departure for Pakistan (of which no one knew), there was a real opportunity to stop him.

In 1975, the Dutch national security agency, BVD, and FDO, a Dutch company where A.Q. Khan worked on centrifuges, sought his arrest for espionage.  Then economics minister (later, prime minister), Ruud Lubbers, did not want to undermine the reputation of burgeoning Dutch companies with a scandal. Enter the CIA:

Lubbers and a former CIA division chief who monitored the Pakistani nuclear program at the time said the solution met the Dutch goal of maintaining the economic status quo and satisfying the Americans. In fact, the CIA was exultant because the Khan episode opened a new window onto Pakistan's procurement operation at a critical moment. A few weeks earlier, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who had been providing the CIA with intelligence from inside the [Pakistan Atomic Energy Comission] PAEC had been exposed and arrested. The CIA feared that its spotlight on Pakistani nuclear work would go dark at a critical moment. Said the former CIA official, "We were nervous about rebuilding our espionage networks, so it makes sense that the agency would not have asked the Dutch to arrest Khan. We were rebuilding, and we would have wanted to see a lot more."

The decision to recommend against arresting Khan marked the first time that American intelligence agencies could have stopped Khan. The decision was understandable in light of the agency's culture and worldview - the CIA is not a law enforcement agency, and its responsibility is to gather intelligence and pass it on the American policymakers. Looking back, however, current and former proliferation experts and intelligence officers questioned the decision. What if Khan had been stopped before he really got started? He had kept the centrifuge designs to himself to ensure a triumphal return, and his arrest would almost certainly have stopped the transfer of key information to Pakistan and delayed its nuclear program for years, perhaps decades.

Now that the ROK's NIS has outed the KCIA for the kidnapping of former ROK President Kim Dae-jung in Tokyo in 1973, how many governments (and, non-state actors) will have to apologize? This sordid tale is hardly new, except perhaps for a little bit about hiring Japanese criminals to assassinate KDJ.

But, really, this is the annoying part of this revelation:

Kim's spokesman said in a statement he was disappointed Park was not directly implicated in the plot despite ample evidence. A panel of Kim's associates called on the South Korean and Japanese governments to apologies.

The NIS report said the government of Japan also bore some responsibility for the case for conspiring in a cover up.

Japan on Wednesday rejected the NIS claim.

«We have expressed our displeasure, so I hope that the South Korean government would deal with that appropriately.» Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference.

«If South Korea were to say the responsibility lies with Japan, then we cannot accept that.»

And, for what should Tokyo apologize?

After losing the 1971 presidential election to Park Chung Hee by a thin margin, Kim was injured during an assassination attempt that later turned out to be a KCIA plot, and went into exile overseas. He visited Tokyo at the invitation of Japanese lawmakers to raise support for his prodemocracy movement.

The fingerprints of Kim Dong Woon, the first secretary of the South Korean Embassy, were then found by Japanese police in Kim's hotel room, raising suspicion that the intelligence agency was involved in his disappearance. The police demanded the right to question the secretary, but he used his diplomatic immunity to avoid police questioning.

Although the Japanese public was surprised by the possibility Seoul was involved in the abduction, Japanese police failed to delve deeper into the case. In November 1973, then Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka struck a secret deal with South Korean counterpart Kim Jong Pil to have Seoul issue an apology and promise to fire the secretary.

Perhaps, by this logic, the US needs to apologize:

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Japanese officials learned of the plot and the United States sent what is believed to have been an aircraft to find the boat and buzz the kidnappers, intelligence officials and Kim himself have said.

With the kidnappers caught in the act, Kim's life was spared. He was later taken to South Korea and placed under house arrest by Park's pro-U.S. government.

But, let's not ask Park Chung-hee's daughter for an apology! That's unfair!