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

  At some point, Lerch or Mebus ran the Iranian deal past Khan, who had access to the centrifuges and components that were a key part of the transaction. As a fellow Muslim who was well-known for his role in building the Islamic bomb, Khan’s involvement also served to quell any worries the Iranians still had about a sting operation. Although the Pakistani scientist was willing to participate, he did not want to travel to Dubai for the meeting. Instead, he agreed to provide two centrifuges and some components. At the time, Kahuta was developing a more advanced centrifuge, known as the P-2, so all Khan had to do was to dip into his stockpile of used P-1s waiting to be melted down and ship them to Dubai. He still operated with complete immunity, without any real oversight, so the goods could be sent out of the country merely on his signature.

  Later Khan would rationalize his participation in the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran in a variety of ways. Chiefly, he would argue that providing an atomic weapon to another Muslim country was a way to shift some of the West’s scrutiny away from Pakistan. In private, he told friends that he had been encouraged to assist Iran by Pakistani military leaders who were interested in expanding ties with Tehran against the West and Israel. At the time of the first deal, President Zia did not trust the Americans despite the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid, any more than he trusted the Soviets occupying the country next door. The secure future that Zia envisioned for Pakistan rested on a new alliance stretching west to unite the region’s non-Arab Muslims in Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. This was, in Zia’s mind, a formation capable of resisting outsiders and posing a formidable counterweight to India. He had ordered his plan put down in writing and called it the Strategic Regional Consensus.

  Milt Bearden learned about the plan from the ISI boss, Hamid Gul, who boasted about the alliance as something that would make the Americans expendable. “This is the dream,” Gul told Bearden one day, handing him a copy of the plan to underscore his seriousness. “It’s a strategic-depth concept that links Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan in an alliance. It would be a jeweled Mughal dagger pointed at the Hindu heart.” The CIA station chief recognized the potential danger and immediately sent a copy of the plan to CIA headquarters.

  Pakistan and Iran were already working on joint defense projects involving conventional weapons, and Pakistan had signed a formal agreement in 1986 to help Iran’s civilian nuclear industry. The evidence that Khan made the initial shipment to Iran with government approval is circumstantial, though in later years the volume of material sent out of Pakistan to network customers was so large that it had to have required the complicity of the military at the highest levels.

  A few days before the Iranians were due to arrive in Dubai, Khan shipped two used P-1 centrifuges and components for several others to Farooq. The equipment was accompanied by a small library of drawings and technical plans for setting up an enrichment plant and a list of potential suppliers in Europe. Farooq was afraid to store the nuclear items at his business, so he kept them in his eighth-floor apartment in central Dubai.

  On the day of the meeting, Farooq was waiting at the apartment with Lerch and Mebus when the Iranians arrived. Naraghi and Allahdad were accompanied by a third official, Hormoz Azodi, from the Iranian nuclear agency. When they entered the apartment, they saw the centrifuge components standing in a corner of the living room and the engineering schematics and drawings arranged on the dining-room table. Farooq’s young nephew, Buhari Sayed abu Tahir, served tea to the guests and listened to the conversation, which was conducted in English. Lerch and Mebus did the dog-and-pony show, explaining that the plans were for a huge centrifuge plant that could produce enough enriched uranium to equip up to thirty nuclear weapons per year. They sweetened the deal by showing the Iranians a fifteen-page document portraying an elaborate process for the manufacture of uranium metal, which could be cast into the precise hemispheres used to form the core of a nuclear device. The plans were unmistakably for a weapons project because uranium metal plays no role in a civilian program.

  The Iranians seemed pleased. Tahir took the stacks of plans to another room to begin copying them and listened as the negotiations came to a close. Unfortunately for the network, the Iranians said they would be unable to buy more material and technology for a while because almost every penny of government money was going to the war with Iraq. They said they needed to proceed slowly, buying what they needed on their own and in small increments until the war was over. While Tahir finished, his uncle accompanied the Europeans and Iranians to the Dubai branch of the BCCI. There, the Iranians arranged to transfer ten million dollars to Farooq’s account.

  When the group returned to the apartment, Tahir had packed the components into two large suitcases and the papers into two briefcases. The Iranians hefted the suitcases and headed for the airport, leaving the conspirators behind to celebrate and divvy up the millions. Three million went to Lerch because he had originated the deal. Farooq and Khan received two million dollars each, and Mebus was paid one million. Friedrich Tinner, the Swiss engineer—who like Khan, had not attended the meeting—was paid $500,000, and another million went into the BCCI account of an Islamabad dentist. The involvement of the dentist remains a mystery, but some intelligence officials have speculated that he passed on the money to Pakistani government and military officials. The distribution of the final $500,000 remains unclear, though it may have gone to Tahir, whose role would eventually expand from tea boy to financial manager. Despite the Iranian desire to proceed on their own, the network participants did not think the Iranians could succeed without them, and they looked forward to tens of millions more in the future.

  Within months of the Dubai deal, the Iran-Iraq war ended in a cease-fire, and customs officials in Europe and American intelligence agencies began picking up signs that Iran was on a covert shopping spree for nuclear-related technology. Front companies traced to the government were working quietly to acquire large quantities of high-strength aluminum and a range of other items that could be used in a uranium-enrichment program. At the time, there was no sign that Lerch, Mebus, or other members of the Khan network were helping Iran, but Khan had taken on an advisory role and made several trips to Tehran on his own.

  CHAPTER 16

  WISHFUL THINKING

  THE TELEPHONE IN MILT BEARDEN’S HOME in Islamabad rang early on the morning of August 17, 1988. The caller was from the American embassy, informing the CIA station chief that there were reports that the ambassador, Arnold Raphel, President Zia, and at least ten American and Pakistani military officers had been killed in the crash of Zia’s aircraft in eastern Pakistan. The deaths were confirmed the following day: Zia and Raphel had been returning from a demonstration of a new American tank, and Zia’s plane lost power and crashed soon after takeoff. Beyond the immediate tragedy of the deaths, the incident threatened to have repercussions beyond Pakistan because Zia had remained a strong ally against the Soviets, who were on the verge of withdrawing from Afghanistan. His death presented the Americans with the challenge of enlisting the assistance of his successor in the fight against the Soviets and the opportunity to persuade a new leader to put the brakes on the nuclear program, which was approaching the point of no return, if it had not passed it already.

  Within hours of the plane crash, Secretary of State George Shultz telephoned Robert Oakley, a career foreign-service officer assigned to the National Security Council. “I’m leading the funeral delegation tomorrow,” Shultz said. “The plane is leaving at twelve. Bring two suitcases because you’re not coming back. You’re the new ambassador.” As he packed for the trip, Oakley was well aware of the challenges.

  Zia had been both Pakistan’s president and chief of the armed forces. No contingency plans had been made for his sudden death. Although the constitution specified that the head of the senate would be a temporary successor, the army ignored that provision and stepped in. General Mirza Aslam Beg, the vice chief of the army, took over command of the military and invited the leader of th
e senate, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, to his headquarters. Both men were veterans of the musical chairs that marked Pakistani politics and knew how to play the game. Ishaq Khan, who was seventy-three years old, agreed to be acting president, but Beg, as the new commander of the armed forces, would hold the real power.

  The faces changed, but the policies remained the same. For a decade, Zia had increased the role of Islam in government and tried to reduce Pakistan’s dependence on the Americans through both alliances with other Islamic countries and his own nuclear-weapons program. Beg was more secular and lacked an Islamic agenda, giving the Americans some hope that he could be persuaded to freeze the nuclear program. From the outset, however, Beg rebuffed the American overtures, making it clear that a nuclear arsenal was Pakistan’s greatest strategic asset and that he had no intention of backing away from it. On the contrary, he defied the Americans by ordering an acceleration of the program. Beg was a political realist and knew that the Americans would have less use for Pakistan once the Afghan war ended, so he rushed to finish the bomb because he thought Washington might be less likely to abandon a nuclear-armed Pakistan.

  Eleven years of Zia’s iron-fisted rule had eroded the popularity of the military, so Beg decided it was in the army’s interest to conduct national elections in the fall of 1988. The task of rigging the election to install a compliant civilian government was assigned to General Hamid Gul, the chief of the ISI. Under Gul’s direction, the intelligence agency created and financed a coalition of Islamic and promilitary parties to field a slate of candidates who would serve as the military’s stalking horse. Not long into the campaign, however, it was obvious that the plan was in jeopardy. Benazir Bhutto, the Harvard-educated daughter of the prime minister executed by Zia in 1979, had taken over her father’s Pakistan Peoples Party and was proving enormously popular. When Bhutto and her party swept the elections, Beg and the other generals were forced to strike a deal with her. They agreed not to interfere with the results so long as Bhutto retained Ishaq Khan as president and Beg as chief of the armed forces. She knew it was a necessary compromise in a country where the military held the real power.

  Bhutto was sworn in on December 1, 1988. She was thirty-five years old and the first woman to head a Muslim nation in modern times. In a tacit acknowledgment of the backroom deals that allowed her elevation, Bhutto gave credit in her inaugural speech to Ishaq Khan and the generals for accepting her as prime minister. From the outset, there were limits to Bhutto’s power, and she was barred from interfering with the sacrosanct nuclear program started by her father, though she was allowed to visit Kahuta and received an overview of the status of the weapons development. “They were keeping Benazir Bhutto at arm’s length,” said retired Brigadier General Feroz Khan, who was involved in Pakistan’s nuclear security. “She was in the picture of what was going on with the bomb, but only to an extent. The fact is that Aslam Beg and Ishaq Khan never trusted her.”

  Bhutto said as much, years later, recalling that soon after taking office she tried to involve herself in discussions over the future of the nuclear program and was rebuffed. “I asked the army chief and he said, ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. It’s the president.’ I asked Ishaq Khan, and he said, ‘There’s no need for you to know.’” At various points, she said she argued that Pakistan should go slow on its nuclear development to avoid angering the Americans and possibly prompting an attack on its nuclear installations. But each time, her advice was rejected and in fact only deepened the military’s distrust of her.

  From the third floor of the American embassy, Bearden kept watch over the new prime minister and worked to cultivate a good relationship with her. Her father’s execution never far from her mind, Bhutto worried about her security and welcomed Bearden’s support. Her understanding of the precariousness of her position was underscored when she asked him if he could find body armor that could be concealed beneath her clothing. Bearden queried Langley and, in the best of bureaucratic responses, was asked to get her measurements. This seemed a bit untoward, so Bearden guessed. When the vest arrived, it must have fit because the CIA man never heard a complaint from Bhutto.

  With the Afghan war winding down, Bearden’s attention was beginning to shift toward Pakistan’s nuclear program. He and the other CIA officers monitoring the program were not certain of Bhutto’s attitudes toward the weapons effort, and there were early hopes that she might put the brakes on it. In public, Bhutto made the right sounds, suggesting that she did not favor developing nuclear weapons and parroting the long-standing lie that Pakistan was not making an atomic bomb. In private discussions with members of her administration, the prime minister took a different line, talking about extending her late father’s nuclear legacy. Eventually the talk got back to Bearden, raising doubts that she would cut back the weapons program. Those doubts were reflected in a classified analysis prepared in May to set the stage for Bhutto’s visit to Washington the next month. The CIA analysis said Bhutto had agreed not to interfere in Pakistan’s nuclear policies as one of several conditions imposed by the army before she was allowed to take office and predicted the situation would not change. “Although Bhutto’s access and leverage on nuclear issues have increased since she assumed office last December, she is unlikely to gain control over nuclear decision-making anytime soon,” the CIA concluded. “Even if she were to gain the upper hand, we do not believe she would try to stop Pakistan’s nuclear weapons effort or significantly reduce existing capabilities.” The CIA concluded that the neophyte prime minister faced a difficult and potentially fatal dilemma: She wanted to avoid a cutoff of American aid without risking her own future.

  The CIA was not the only part of the American government preparing for Bhutto’s visit to Washington. Bhutto represented an important opportunity for democracy in a Muslim country, as she was someone who understood Western values. While the United States no longer required Pakistan’s assistance against the Soviets, who had left Afghanistan, it wanted to retain influence in Islamabad. One way to do that was to resume large-scale military and economic assistance, including more F-16 fighter jets. Pentagon and State Department officials also argued that building up Pakistan’s conventional forces was the most effective way to avoid a nuclear-arms race on the subcontinent. On the other side were counterproliferation experts within the government who argued that assistance should be withheld until there was proof that Pakistan had abandoned its goal of developing a nuclear weapon. They underscored their position by saying that U.S. law should forbid renewing or expanding assistance to Pakistan until it complied with congressional amendments that prohibited aid to countries pursuing nuclear weapons. With Bhutto’s arrival less than a month away, the Bush administration remained undecided about whether to greet her with a carrot or a stick.

  RICH BARLOW was struggling to rebuild his career and personal life when the debate over how to deal with Pakistan landed on his desk. By this time, his desk was not at CIA headquarters but fewer than ten miles away, at the Pentagon. In the aftermath of his testimony before Congress over the concealment of Pakistan’s procurement attempts, Barlow finally left the CIA, angered by what he viewed as harassment by some of the cold warriors within the agency. Barlow’s faith in government had been shaken by the lies told to Congress and by what he viewed as his own gross mistreatment. He was angry and depressed, but he still wanted to work for the government. Through contacts developed during the Pervez case and other criminal investigations, Barlow landed a job with the criminal-investigations division of the Customs Service. Criminal investigations seemed to offer a respite from the shadowy, gray world of the CIA, but it wasn’t long before Barlow grew restless and started looking for something more intellectually challenging. In January 1989, he was hired as a proliferation analyst in the office of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

  But Barlow’s past followed him to the new job. When the Pentagon submitted Barlow’s name for clearance to see highly classified nuclear-proliferation intelligence held by the CIA, someone at the ag
ency blocked the request and insinuated that Barlow was a security risk. The access was critical for Barlow to be able to perform his new job, and he and his superiors at the Pentagon spent weeks fighting the denial.

  The depth of the CIA’s antipathy toward Barlow surfaced that spring when he tried to attend intelligence and policy meetings on Pakistan’s nuclear progress with British officials in London. The CIA officer who was refusing to renew Barlow’s top-secret security clearance happened to be there, and he stopped Barlow from attending the intelligence briefing because his clearance had not been renewed. Barlow’s colleagues from the Pentagon protested, so he was allowed to attend the second session, which dealt with nuclear policy. When Barlow asked a British intelligence officer whether Benazir Bhutto was truly in control of Pakistan’s nuclear program and the Brit said Bhutto did not appear to be, Barlow’s nemesis jumped to his feet. He yelled at the British contingent not to say anything further, claiming that Barlow was a security risk who was not cleared for such sensitive information. A CIA agent escorted Barlow from the room and took him by taxi to the CIA station at the American embassy on Grosvenor Square, where he was locked in a room and forced to sign an agreement not to disclose anything he had heard at the meeting.

  Barlow was angered by his treatment, but he decided to stay on in London. He had several meetings scheduled for the following two days with British officials to discuss Iraq’s nuclear program, and then Cindy, his wife, was arriving for a vacation. The next morning, however, Barlow got a call at his hotel informing him that his meetings had been canceled. “I was in a wonderful mood,” Barlow said sarcastically later. “I had the CIA running operations against me like a foreign government.”