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India-Pakistan
US hopes Qadeer Khan pardon yields results
2004-02-07
He is a black-market profiteer who worked to help Iran and North Korea acquire the nuclear weapons secrets that President Bush said makes them part of an "axis of evil." Yet when mad scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan received a public pardon Thursday from Pakistan’s leader, there was nary a murmur of protest -- in fact there was praise -- from American officials. To weapons inspector David Kay and others, it was an outrage. "I can think of no one who deserves less to be pardoned," said Kay, former head of a U.S. team that searched for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said Khan was "running essentially a Sam’s Club" of weapons technology. Yet others say the public response may mask U.S. officials’ real motivation.
Oh, do you think?
What they are hoping, according to American officials speaking on condition of anonymity, is that Khan’s pardon becomes a plea bargain of sorts, with Pakistan trading leniency in exchange for Khan’s information about the still-at-large members of the worldwide nuclear black market. "We could beat our chests and be outraged," said Robert Oakley, a former ambassador to Pakistan who defended the Bush administration’s low key response. "The most important thing is to get as much information possible as to where the links (to accomplices) were," Oakley said. "We have to make sure it doesn’t happen again."
Then we kill him.
More than anything, the U.S. response shows just how solicitous American officials remain toward Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, that they’re leery of any public criticism lest it destabilize this key ally in the war on terrorism. Any push by Musharraf for a trial of Khan could have led to a political showdown with Islamist and opposition groups who regard the scientist as a hero for founding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Above all else, U.S. officials often say that if Musharraf were to be toppled, the alternatives -- in a country with strong nationalistic sentiment, powerful currents of Islamic extremism and nuclear weapons -- could only prove worse. So for now, U.S. officials seem willing to publicly accept Musharraf’s assurances that he will prevent further proliferation of nuclear secrets, even though some critics believe Pakistani military or intelligence officials might have helped Khan.

At the United Nations in New York, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he would talk to Musharraf by telephone over the weekend to make sure "there was no possibility" that remnants of the Khan network would survive. Powell did not criticize the president for pardoning the scientist but instead registered understanding. "He felt it was important for him to do," Powell said. Similarly, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, at a separate news conference, said, "Obviously, it is a difficult situation he has to deal with."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher credited Pakistani authorities with pursuing the investigation seriously ever since Iranian officials told U.N. nuclear experts more than two months ago about the leakage of secrets. "We think that Pakistan is taking serious efforts to end the activities of a dangerous network," Boucher said. Another official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "This is not about punishment. ... The Pakistanis have to use the most effective techniques to cut off this proliferation. There are others involved."

CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday that Khan’s network "was shaving years off the nuclear weapons development timelines of several states, including Libya" and "offering its wares to countries like North Korea and Iran." In the case of North Korea, however, Khan is believed to have begun providing sensitive technology only well after the country had developed the capability to produce plutonium-based nuclear bombs.
Posted by:Dan Darling

#14  Its' ironic that Hitler's persecution of the Jews almost certainly stopped him getting the A-bomb before the Americans.
Posted by: phil_b   2004-2-7 7:43:03 PM  

#13  So just who was actually running this black market and why?

I think it was probably a joint effort with the various dictators of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya and UAE providing the cash. While the actual proliferating was done under the direct orders of successive Chiefs of the Armed Services right back to General Zia.

But IMO there is a China angle that has been completely overlooked by the media, with China using the Islamic Bomb as a way of keeping the Americans offbalanced, while also keeping deniability, because all the proliferating was done by China's allies in Pakistan and Nth Korea, rather than by China herself.
Posted by: Paul Moloney   2004-2-7 6:26:07 PM  

#12  Faisal

The Yankees stole that technology from the Joooooooooos. BTW how about answering my questions when I ask you to prove you speak Arabic?
Posted by: JFM   2004-2-7 2:04:13 PM  

#11  I see Faisal musta got his room clean already and his mom is letting him use the family computer.
Now, if she can only get him to clean up his thinking.
#6 RCRN, even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.
Posted by: GK   2004-2-7 1:02:34 PM  

#10  Who was running it?

Who do you think has the free cash to build the plants and buy the ships/pay the bribes necessary to move everything around?

My cash is on the Saudis. With the exception of North Korea, all the players are Muslim. The Norks were either used as a shell or as a convenient place to do some work where the civilized world could never chance upon it.
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2004-2-7 12:20:16 PM  

#9   Paul - I guess my main question has been who exactly is the driver of this whole proliferation scheme? Is it just Khan or somebody higher up? I'll admit that I don't understand the first thing about the byzantine nature of Pakistani internal politics, but this stuff seems to predate Musharraf by years, going all the way back to Sharif and Bhutto and maybe even to General Zia. So just who was actually running this black market and why?
Posted by: Dan Darling   2004-2-7 11:52:56 AM  

#8  You got it wrong, Osama. He says NOO-KYA-LER.
Posted by: Anonymous   2004-2-7 11:18:06 AM  

#7  Hi NMM! North Carolina Tarheels making a big comeback this year... new coach is doing a damn fine job.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-2-7 11:05:38 AM  

#6  Wait, something just happened here. I think Faisal just experienced learning. Can there yet be hope?
Posted by: whitecollar redneck   2004-2-7 10:26:40 AM  

#5  #3: chill man.

#4: rkb so now what's wrong with Dr Khan being 'hired' by someone :-)....
Posted by: Faisal   2004-2-7 9:08:42 AM  

#4  There is a grain of almost-truth in "Faisal's" comment. Not a big grain, and not a truth, but a tiny grain of almost-truth.

The US didn't 'steal' "this nuclear technology" from the Germans during or after WWII because the Germans hadn't developed it as far as a working device.

What we did do was to uncover the fact that there was a nuclear bomb program under Hitler (whose scientists misled him about how far along they were - sound familiar??). And then we hired Werner von Braun to work the delivery system (missile) side after the war.

The debate within the US nuclear program about weaponizing fission (fusion was entirely a US development originally) was intense and there were what later became very public fights about it.

As a side note, my father-in-law missed being sent to Anzio when he got pulled to finish his engineering degree and was sent to work on the Manhattan project. But he wasn't privvy to the top level debates - that can be gleaned from the detailed accounts of that project and of the decision to complete a fission bomb.
Posted by: rkb   2004-2-7 7:52:22 AM  

#3  Faisal,
Either you're as dumb as a box of rocks, or ...
you are the WORST TROLL EVER.
Posted by: Scott   2004-2-7 7:28:10 AM  

#2  All countries that are nuclear or NOOKLEAR (as GWB would say), how did they get this technology? Even the yankees stole the technology from the Germans. And they act like they developed it 'in-house' with their own intelligence. Read the history guys.
Posted by: Faisal   2004-2-7 7:13:25 AM  

#1  I can't get over the fact that I have read articles and reports on Pakistan's nuke deals with North Korea and Iran years ago in various places, and yet Washington is acting as if all this came from nowhere.
If you do an internet search for Pakistan's Ghauri missile, you'll find plenty of articles from the late 90's stating that it was a repainted NoDong missile gotten in exhange for nuke assistance.
I guess that nothing could be done about it until Libya decided to play ball. It makes me wonder what the next 'open secret' in the region will be publically aired.
Posted by: Paul Moloney   2004-2-7 6:15:32 AM  

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