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Afghanistan/South Asia
Still more on Pak nuclear program
2004-02-09
I bet Islamabad isn’t too happy with the continued torrent of stories on their nuclear program, even after the Khan confession.
Investigators have determined that the nuclear weapon blueprints found in Libya from the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan were of his own relatively crude type of bomb — not the more advanced models that Pakistan developed and successfully tested, American and European arms experts have said in interviews. The analysis of the blueprints, which establish a new link between Dr. Khan and the underground nuclear black market now under global scrutiny, has heartened investigators in Europe and the United States because his design is seen as less threatening in terms of the spread of nuclear weapons. "If you had to have a design circulating around the world, we’d be worse off if it was a design other than Khan’s," said an American weapons expert who is familiar with the Libyan case.
So the Paks kept the good program to themselves while selling of the substandard stuff for extra cash?
Small comfort to someone who gets nuked by a substandard weapon...
Pakistani officials have focused their recent disclosures on Dr. Khan’s illicit spread of equipment to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel, and have said little or nothing of the blueprints for a nuclear warhead that went to Libya, which are considered more sensitive. To the amazement of inspectors, the blueprints discovered in Libya were wrapped in plastic bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner.
Sometimes you just can't think of anything to say. All you can do is whimper...
Dr. Khan is known in Pakistan as the father of the Pakistani bomb or the founder of its nuclear weapons program, but Western experts say the credit is not all his. A metallurgist, he is an expert at building centrifuges — hollow metal tubes that spin very fast to enrich natural uranium in its rare U-235 isotope, which is an excellent bomb fuel. His mastery of the difficult art proved vital to Pakistan’s acquiring a nuclear arsenal. But other Pakistani scientists, Western experts said, had far greater success in turning the enriched uranium into nuclear warheads. To develop the armaments, the American expert said, Pakistan ran "two parallel weapons programs, one good and one bad; Khan ran the bad one." Dr. Khan’s weapon was inferior in terms of such as things as size, power and efficiency. The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, the nation’s official authority for nuclear development, ran the more successful program. All Pakistan’s atom bombs resemble designs that China tested in the late 1960’s and passed on to Pakistan decades ago, European and American experts said.
This is interesting. I have read allegations in the Indian media that Paks nukes came from China, but I didn’t know how to reconcile that with what we know about AQ Khan stealing material from Holland and getting billions from Arab states. Is it possible the entire Khan nuclear project was one enormous con to gather billions of dollars from Libya, Iran, Saudi and put it directly into a handful of bank acounts; while the real nuclear program was run by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission using updated Chinese designs?
Analysts said the Libyan episode gave new life to the case of a middleman claiming to represent Dr. Khan who in 1990, on the eve of the Persian Gulf war, offered to have the Pakistani help Iraq build its own nuclear weapon. But the investigators made little headway, largely because Pakistan furiously denied there had been any aid to Iraq and refused to allow Dr. Khan to be questioned.
Thereby suggesting that there was...
Now, those denials have collapsed, bringing new interest. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said Iraqi documents, coupled with the Libyan developments, raised the possibility that Dr. Khan’s network operated for more than a decade to offer atomic blueprints not only to Libya and Iraq but to countries like Iran, Syria and North Korea. Global investigators must now carefully examine that possibility, he said.
Posted by:Paul Moloney

#6  Lots of disinformation being spread. D'ya think the black turbans and dear leader are going through the old packing bags to see what they got? "It's a match. We all used the same laundry!" Bwhahahahah!!!

AQK was a double agent, handled by a dry cleaner in Islamabad. Way-to-go CIA, and you wonder why we seem to know so much!
Posted by: john   2004-2-9 1:55:08 PM  

#5  Them Pakis can't be too thrilled at all this bad publicity.... :)
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2004-2-9 10:34:11 AM  

#4  
the blueprints discovered in Libya were wrapped in plastic bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner.

On the bottom of the bag was a page from a notepad:

From the Desk of Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Memo to self: Pick up dry cleaning on the way from the laboratory to the Libyan embassy.

Posted by: Mike Sylwester   2004-2-9 9:00:12 AM  

#3  Sounds like Khan picked up the German method of gas-centrifuge distillation of uraniun while in Holland. Until the run up to the Iraq invasion I, like many other Americans, thought that a reactor was required to produce a nuclear bomb.

Obviously, Sadaam turned down Khan's proposal because he had already purchased the centrifuge technology directly from Germany.

Even today, I think that many Americans fail to realize that the proliferation of cetrifuge technology has made the world vastly more dangerous. Where before we could follow a containment strategy and bomb the reactor before it goes operational, now we are forced into preemption. Khan has done Ummah no service.
Posted by: Super Hose   2004-2-9 7:52:31 AM  

#2  Looks like Khan left an expensive upgrade path for his customers.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-2-9 7:26:00 AM  

#1  BTW The nuclear scientists who went to Afghanistan to hang with Osama, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed, were from Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), and not AQ Khan's organisation.
Hopefully PAEC will receive as much scrutiny as the Khan Research Laboratory has.
Posted by: Paul Moloney   2004-2-9 12:50:10 AM  

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