The Nuclear Jihadist

by Douglas Frantz

  CHAPTER 12. CRIMES AND COVER-UPS

  The best account of Pakistan’s procurement in Canada is by John J. Fialka, “How Pakistan Secured U.S. Devices in Canada to Make Atomic Arms,” Wall Street Journal, November 26, 1984. Additional material came from CBC-TV’s Fifth Estate broadcast on December 9, 1980. Additional details were derived from Khan’s personal correspondence with Aziz Khan and others, and from interviews with Richard Barlow, the former CIA and Pentagon analyst.

  The Vaid case was documented extensively in a fine article by Seymour Hersh, “Pakistani in U.S. Sought to Ship A-Bomb Trigger,” New York Times, February 25, 1985. Hersh reprised some of the details in “The Deal,” The New Yorker, March 8, 2004. The Vaid case was also discussed by Fialka in his Wall Street Journal article. On July 22, 1987, the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs delved into the Vaid case and other examples of Pakistani proliferation in a public hearing, which provided authoritative testimony concerning the procurement operation.

  Deane Hinton’s classified evaluation was from Coll’s Ghost Wars.

  Descriptions of the lack of security at FDO and Almelo, and Khan’s activities there, were drawn primarily from the interviews with Veerman and two reports by the Dutch government, a draft issued in 1979 and the final version a year later, February 29, 1980; quotations about the assumptions regarding Khan’s work were from the final declassified version. The best account of Khan’s reaction to the Dutch charges against him in 1983 is contained in the Malik biography. Henny Khan also described her husband’s anger over the accusations in her Humrat interview.

  Gallucci recalled the top-secret memo in an interview; the later memo prepared by his staff in 1983, “The Pakistani Nuclear Program,” June 6, 1983, was obtained from the National Security Archives. Khan’s interview and Zia’s response were from “Zia Chastises Western Media for Accounts of Khan’s Remarks on Weapons Capability,” Nuclear Fuel, February 27, 1984; “Zia Denies Pakistan Building Atom Bomb,” Japan Economic Newswire, February 14, 1984; “Pakistani Nuclear Program,” Washington Post, February 14, 1984.

  Weiss described his reaction to the Cranston speech and legislation in an interview, augmented by a memo that he wrote to Glenn on August 7, 1984. The quotation from Barlow’s senior honors thesis came from a copy of the thesis provided by Barlow.

  CHAPTER 13. NUCLEAR AMBIGUITY

  Richard Barlow’s story has been recounted several times over the years. The first lengthy account was provided by Seymour Hersh, “On the Nuclear Edge,” The New Yorker, March 29, 1993. We interviewed Barlow more than a dozen times, often over several days. He also provided us with hundreds of pages of court records and other documents that corroborated his version of events. The Kerr quote about Barlow was from the Hersh article, “On the Nuclear Edge.”

  The quotation “We knew more about that bomb than any other bomb in the world except the Brits’” came from an interview with a former CIA officer who monitored Pakistan’s nuclear program for many years and asked not to be identified because some of the information remains classified. Milt Bearden told us the story about the lonely woodsman who found the strange stone and provided the quotation about Pakistan being almost finished with the bomb.

  Former congressman Stephen Solarz and former senator Larry Pressler were both interviewed, and their recollections were augmented by transcripts of numerous congressional hearings and newspaper accounts.

  Barlow talked about the discovery of the information that led to the Mandel case in an interview. Additional information about the case and its outcome came from Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. Indicts 3 in the Export of Equipment to Pakistan,” New York Times, July 18, 1987.

  Similarly, Barlow described previously undisclosed details of the Arshad Pervez case in interviews, which were augmented by published accounts; the most extensive was Hedrick Smith, “A Bomb Ticks in Pakistan,” New York Times Magazine, March 6, 1988. Additional material came from “Pakistani Seized by U.S. in a Plot on A-Arms Alloy,” New York Times, July 15, 1987; and “An Arrest Spurs New Debate over Pakistan and the Bomb,” Insight Magazine, August 17, 1987.

  The connection between BCCI and Khan was mentioned in a report to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “The BCCI Affair,” compiled by Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown in 1992. The tie to the Pervez smuggling case was provided by Barlow in an interview and confirmed by a former BCCI officer in an interview. Background on the bank was from James Ring Adams and Douglas Frantz, A Full-Service Bank: How BCCI Stole Billions Around the World (New York: Pocket Books, 1992).

  Barlow’s testimony before Congress and his confrontation with his supervisors at the CIA afterward came from interviews with Barlow and Solarz and published accounts, reports, and documents. Among the most helpful documents was a memo prepared by Louis Fisher, for the Congressional Research Service, “National Security Whistleblowers,” December 30, 2005. Additional background information came from the transcript of the hearing conducted in July 1987 by the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs.

  Most of the conversations quoted in this section of the book relied on Barlow’s recollections. In every case possible, we tried to obtain corroborating documents or to talk with others involved in the incidents. In the end, after reviewing hundreds of pages of hearing transcripts, court records, and other material, and talking with his supporters and critics, we concluded that Richard Barlow is a credible person whose account stands up.

  CHAPTER 14. MAN OF THE YEAR

  The promotional videotape of KRL was played for us by a senior official at the IAEA. Additional descriptions of KRL and its workings came from interviews with two former workers there and various published accounts.

  The account of the Khan interview intended as a warning to India during Operation Brass Tacks was based on interviews with two former ISI officers, both of whom demanded anonymity; an interview with Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani diplomat and journalist; and the article published in the London Observer based on the interview by Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar.

  The quotation by Khan about the need for a delivery system for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons came from an interview with the former colleague to whom Khan made the remark. The episode involving the distribution of The Islamic Bomb and the subsequent discovery of the changes made by ISI came from an interview with Pervez Hoodbhoy and our review of the two versions of the book. The former government official who said the ISI considered the changes a significant success requested anonymity to avoid antagonizing the intelligence service.

  CHAPTER 15. ONE-STOP SHOPPING

  Lerch’s early involvement with Khan was chronicled in testimony at his criminal trial in 2006 in Mannheim, Germany, and numerous articles; among the most informative and authoritative of this is a two-part piece by Juergen Dahlkamp, Georg Mascolo, and Holger Stark, “Network of Death on Trial,” Der Spiegel, March 13, 2006; and a series of articles by Mark Hibbs in Nuclear Fuel, an industry newsletter, on February 28, 2005, August 28, 2006, and September 25, 2006.

  Lerch’s initial meeting in Zurich with the two Iranians was described in interviews with two senior diplomats who saw the notes taken by the Iranians listing the four sections of the offer. The same diplomats provided information from their conversations with Iranian nuclear officials about the specifics of the first transaction between the Khan network and Iran. Among the new elements they disclosed was that Iran paid the network $10 million for the first components and plans, twice the amount used in most publications. They also provided the first breakdown in the allocation of the money, based on bank records.

  Khan’s justifications for his involvement in the transfers to Iran came from interviews with friends and former associates of the scientist. Although Pakistan’s Strategic Regional Consensus plan by Zia has been written about previously, Bearden described to us how Gul boasted about it and provided him with a copy, which he sent back to
CIA headquarters.

  Tahir provided a description of the 1987 deal in an interview with Olli Heinonen and other IAEA officials, and the results of that interrogation were provided to us. The network’s first transaction with Iran was mentioned briefly in a twelve-page statement released on February 4, 2004, by the Malaysian police after the arrest of B.S.A. Tahir in Kuala Lumpur. The statement, available at www.iranwatch.org/goverment;Malaysia/malaysia-police-libyareport-02204.htm, is devoted primarily to describing the ring’s later dealings with Iran and Libya, but it provides a primer on how things worked and names many of Khan’s associates.

  CHAPTER 16. WISHFUL THINKING

  The telephone call regarding Zia’s aircraft crash was recounted by Bearden in an interview in which he also described other aspects of his time as Islamabad station chief. George Shultz’s comments were from an interview with Robert Oakley; the scene was also described by Coll in Ghost Wars. Benazir Bhutto’s rise to power and political and economic conditions in Pakistan at the time were drawn from Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan; Haqqani, Pakistan; and Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism. Benazir Bhutto was interviewed several times between December 2001 and July 2005.

  Barlow’s tenure at the Pentagon was described by him in a series of interviews; we also relied on numerous documents from the various investigations that concluded he had done nothing wrong, including Report of Investigation, Inspector General, Department of Defense, December 24, 1991; Hersh, “On the Nuclear Edge”; Ken Silverstein and David Isenberg, “What happens when U.S. spies get the goods – and the government won’t listen?” Mother Jones, January/February 2002; and Lyndsey Layton, “Whistle-Blower’s Fight for Pension Drags On,” Washington Post, July 7, 2007.

  The quotation about President Bush’s knowledge of Pakistan’s bomb came from a former senior CIA official who insisted on anonymity because details of briefings to the president remain classified. Bhutto described her briefing from William Webster, and details of the encounter were also drawn from William Burrows, Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World (Los Angeles: Reed Business Information, 1994).

  The hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee came from a transcript of the session; Barlow’s reaction was described in an interview. Gerald Brubaker’s involvement was described by Barlow and in testimony by Victor Rostow, a former Pentagon official, in a civil case brought by Barlow. The conversation between Leonard Weiss and Barlow was described by Weiss; Barlow’s recollection of the meeting differed slightly because he does not regard himself as a whistleblower since he never took his complaints outside the government.

  The exchange between Bhutto and Hashemi Rafsanjani was recounted by Bhutto in an interview and later confirmed by the aide who attended the meeting with her. Henry Rowen was interviewed by us. General Aslam Beg was interviewed twice, once in person in Islamabad and a second time by telephone; he acknowledged engaging in exchanges of conventional weapons and training with Iran, but he disputed advocating transferring nuclear technology or weapons to Tehran or threatening to do so. Oakley discussed his exchange with Beg in his interview. A good rundown on the exchanges between Beg and Rowen was published by the Associated Press, “Pakistan threatened to give nukes to Iran, ex-officials say,” on February 28, 2004.

  CHAPTER 17. SADDAM’S GAMBIT

  Bhutto remembered her encounter with Khan in interviews. The background about Khan’s construction project on Rawal Lake and general information about his rising influence came from interviews with current and former Pakistani officials and journalists, most of whom declined to be named because of the risk of retaliation by Khan’s supporters or by the government. Information from Malik’s biography of Khan was augmented by an interview with Malik in Islamabad in 2005. The switch of Khan’s allegiance to Beg was described by a former senior Pakistani government official and by a former colleague of Khan’s at KRL.

  The quotation from Khan to the senior CIA official and the quotations from Dick Kerr and Robert Gates, as well as general background on Operation Brass Tacks, came from Hersh, “On the Nuclear Edge.” The broad outlines were confirmed in interviews with former CIA and Pakistani officials. The confrontation was also described by Lawrence Lifschultz, “Doom Thy Neighbor: After Hiroshima and Nagasaki . . . Lahore and Bombay?” Alicia Patterson Foundation, volume 19, no. 1.

  The exchange between Cheney and the counterproliferation expert was described by the latter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

  Khan’s offer to Iraq was described in Iranian documents and secret memos provided to us by Western diplomats. Weiss told us about his conversation with John Jennekens. A similar comment by Jennekens is contained in “The Bomb in Iran’s Future,” by Henry Sokolski, published in Middle East Quarterly, June 1994.

  Khidhir Hamza’s account of Iraq’s nuclear program came from various news articles about him and his book, Saddam’s Bombmaker (New York: Scribner, 2000), coauthored with Jeff Stein. Hamza’s accounts have been disputed over the years, but the information here was in line with information from other sources, including IAEA officials.

  Jacques Baute was interviewed many times about the discoveries in Iraq by international weapons inspectors. His recollections were corroborated by inspection reports and other files at the IAEA and United Nations.

  Cheney’s presentation of the Osirak photograph to General David Ivry was described by an American diplomat who was present during the ceremony and spoke on condition of anonymity.

  CHAPTER 18. MISSED SIGNALS

  We interviewed both Hans Blix and Laura Rockwood. David Kay’s recollection was from Michael Dobbs and Walter Pincus, “Persistent or Pushover: Views of Blix’s Record Vary,” Washington Post, December 5, 2002.

  The sharing of American spy satellite photos with the IAEA was described by an IAEA official and a former United States official, both of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information. Blix also described the episode.

  Robert Alvarez described the inspection visit to North Korea in an interview, in which he also described his interaction with Li Sang Gun.

  The involvement of Mohammed Farooq and Gotthard Lerch in South Africa’s nuclear program is contained in documents that we obtained from the court case in Pretoria, South Africa, against Gerhard Wisser and Daniel Geiges.

  Khan’s visits to Iran to help the nuclear program were described in interviews with Ali Akbar Omid Mehr and Hamid Reza Zakeri. The visits were also described in newspaper articles, including Douglas Frantz, “Iran Closes In on Ability to Build a Nuclear Bomb,” Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2003. After Khan confessed to helping Iran and other countries, the Pakistani government continued to deny that he had traveled to Iran. Mehr also described his flight from Pakistan in interviews conducted at the safe house in Denmark where he lives under an assumed name.

  CHAPTER 19. NUCLEAR NATIONALISM

  Robert Gates’s testimony before Congress about Iran’s nuclear program was from Steve Coll, “U.S. Halted Nuclear Bid By Iran; China, Argentina, Agreed to Cancel Technology Transfers,” Washington Post, November 17, 1992. Additional background information came from John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006). Einhorn acknowledged that the American intelligence and counterproliferation agencies had underestimated Khan in an interview.

  The description of the clandestine work at Tehran Nuclear Research Center came from interviews with current and former IAEA inspectors and officials and from IAEA reports based on later disclosures by the Iranian government. The visit to Khan by Iran’s defense minister in 1994 was described by an IAEA official who based his knowledge on debriefings of senior Iranian officials. Khan’s role in setting up the second round of sales to Iran was corroborated by Tahir under questioning by Western diplomats and government officials, the results of which were shared with us by the officials and diplomats.

  Khan’s brochures were obtained by us from an IAEA official. His long feud with Munir Khan was
described in the Malik biography, various writings by A. Q. Khan, and former colleagues of both men. George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace described the late Munir Khan’s reaction to Khan in an interview with us.

  Simon Henderson’s interview with Khan appeared in the September 1993 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, under the title “We Can Do It Ourselves.”

  Bhutto recounted the changes in Khan’s personality and her agreement to obtain the missile plans from North Korea in one of our interviews. Her recollections of the trip to North Korea were corroborated by an aide who accompanied her; the episode is also contained in newspaper and magazine articles. What remains in dispute is whether Bhutto paid cash for the plans or was aware of a barter arrangement in which North Korea received nuclear technology and assistance from Khan in return for the missile know-how. Bhutto is adamant that her government paid for the plans, something that several former American intelligence officials doubted in interviews.

  Lt. General Talat Masood spoke of Khan’s motives in an interview with us in Islamabad. Pervez Hoodbhoy also discussed Khan’s personality in an interview.

  The progress at KRL on building the missile was monitored by CIA assets and described in interviews with former CIA officials and in some published accounts.

  Feroz Khan spoke of the relationship between the military and Khan in interviews, and Einhorn described American knowledge of the cooperation between Pakistan and North Korea in an interview.

  Khan’s relationship with Tahir was described in interviews with IAEA officials and others who interrogated Tahir after his detention by the Malaysian police; they provided the most detailed rundown of how the two men operated. It was also the subject of numerous newspaper articles, including William J. Broad, David E. Sanger and Raymond Bonner, “A Tale of Nuclear Proliferation,” New York Times, February 2, 2004; David E. Sanger, “In Face of Report, Iran Acknowledges Buying Nuclear Components,” New York Times, February 23, 2004; Alan Sipress and Ellen Nakashima, “Sri Lankan Accused of Helping Pakistani Sell Arms Components to Libya, Iran,” Washington Post, May 29, 2004; and Douglas Frantz and William C. Rempel, “New Find in a Nuclear Network: Pakistani Scientist Used South African Affiliates in an Effort to Outfit Libya with a Uranium Enrichment Plant,” Los Angeles Times, November 28, 2004.