For Sale: Nuclear Expertise

Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan presided over a nuclear smuggling operation so brazen that the government weapons laboratory he ran distributed a glossy sales brochure offering sophisticated technology and shipped some of its most sensitive equipment directly from Pakistan to countries such as Libya and North Korea.

The brochure, with photos of Khan and an array of weapons on the cover, listed a complete range of equipment for separating nuclear fuel from uranium. Also for sale were Khan’s “consultancy and advisory services,” and conventional weapons such as missiles, according to a copy of the brochure provided to the Los Angeles Times.

Although Pakistan has stopped Khan, the brochure is among the emerging details of the scope of his enterprise. They raise new questions about how far Khan’s network spread nuclear know-how and why authorities didn’t move against it sooner.

The extent of the ring remains unknown, and even some of Khan’s suppliers might not have known they were involved. Inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, and intelligence and law enforcement authorities on three continents are trying to reconstruct what they consider the worst nuclear proliferation network in history, and to dismantle it.

Top diplomats in Vienna and senior U.S. officials say they are urgently trying to determine whether blueprints for a nuclear warhead and designs to build the device, which were sold to Libya, and highly sensitive data and equipment shipped to Iran and North Korea, might have spread beyond those countries. In addition, investigators have not been able to account for much of the equipment the network bought.

“Who knows where it has gone?” said a senior U.S. intelligence official, who described the Bush administration as deeply worried. “How many other people are there? How widespread was it, and how much information has spread?”

Questions also are being asked about whether the U.S. missed opportunities to stop Khan. The Pakistani scientist’s full-service nuclear trafficking network operated for nearly two decades, often under the cover of his government lab, even as Western intelligence agencies grew more suspicious of him and senior U.S. officials repeatedly protested to Pakistan.

CIA director George J. Tenet said this month that the agency penetrated elements of the smuggling ring in recent years, but needed proof to stop it. Other administration officials and outside experts suggested, however, that at least parts of the enterprise could have been shut down.

“If you have penetrated the system, why not stop it before Libya got the weapons design?” a senior European diplomat based in Vienna asked. “There is no limitation on a copying machine.”

Diplomats and officials in Europe and Washington who are involved in the inquiry or have been briefed on it spoke mostly on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing and politically sensitive. Among the new details that have emerged:

* Sensitive equipment discovered at nuclear-related sites in Libya carried the name of Khan Research Laboratories, adding to what authorities described as irrefutable evidence that his center illicitly shared its technology with a country under United Nations sanctions for supporting terrorism.

* Evidence indicates that Khan provided Pakistan’s state-of-the-art centrifuge machines to North Korea in the late 1990s. Two Western diplomats described the information as preliminary, but they said it deepens concerns about North Korea’s progress in enriching uranium for atomic weapons.

* Authorities at the IAEA last week reopened an investigation of an alleged offer by Khan to sell nuclear technology and a weapons design to Saddam Hussein in 1990. The inquiry started in 1995 with the discovery of memos in Iraq, but it hit a roadblock when Pakistan called the offer a hoax.

U.S. intelligence officials and diplomats say they have known the broad outlines of Khan’s activities since at least 1995.

Three times from 1998 to 2000, President Clinton raised concerns about nuclear technology leaking from Pakistan to North Korea during private meetings with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Pervez Musharraf, the general who replaced him in a 1999 coup.

“In each case, President Clinton was assured that these concerns would be looked into and would be dealt with appropriately,” recalls Karl Inderfurth, who as assistant secretary of State was Clinton’s chief South Asia troubleshooter. “To my knowledge, we did not receive any satisfactory responses to our concerns. It is now clear the smoke we saw at the time was indeed the fires being set by A.Q. Khan.”

The U.S. concerns were inherited by the Bush administration, and fears escalated after disclosures in late 2001 that two Pakistani nuclear scientists had met twice that year with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

In response to U.S. pressure, Musharraf removed Khan in March 2001 as head of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons laboratory, where he had developed fissile material for atomic weapons as well as long-range missiles. Musharraf continued to deny that nuclear secrets had leaked, and Khan continued to hold international nuclear conferences and to travel widely.

The denials finally collapsed late last year after Iran was forced to open portions of its nuclear program to IAEA inspectors and Libya voluntarily renounced its weapons program.

Although the Iranian disclosures provided strong hints, reams of documents and nuclear hardware turned over to the U.S. and IAEA by Libya pointed the finger squarely at Khan.

The most alarming documents were blueprints for the nuclear warhead, said diplomats and U.S. officials involved in the process. The plans were for a warhead developed in the 1960s by China, which provided early help to Pakistan’s nuclear program. Two diplomats in Vienna said Khan sold the blueprints to Libya in late 2001 or early 2002 for as much as $20 million.

Inspectors in Libya also found the equipment from Khan’s laboratory and components for two generations of Pakistani centrifuges. Diplomats in Vienna said complete versions of the earliest type of centrifuge, known as the P1, were obtained directly from Pakistan and components for the next generation P2, which was faster and more efficient, were manufactured for the network at a Malaysian plant.

Centrifuges are used to purify uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or to enrich it to high levels for use in bombs. Experts say obtaining highly enriched uranium or other fissile material is the most crucial step in building an atomic weapon.

Weeks before Libya gave up its secrets, Iran had made a more limited disclosure to the IAEA of how it obtained drawings and components for 500 P1 machines through middlemen associated with Khan’s network. Iran acknowledged this month that it also had received plans for the more advanced P2 from Pakistan. Diplomats said Tehran had taken halting steps to develop those machines.

“What the Iranian and Libyan cases did was produce actual items so that you can’t deny them,” said another diplomat in Vienna. “Until this breakthrough, I don’t think anyone had real hard evidence.”

By the time Pakistan was forced to move against Khan, however, Iran had used his technology to develop its own uranium enrichment cycle, moving closer to what the United States says is an effort to build a nuclear bomb. And Libya had the warhead designs for more than a year.

U.S. authorities say that although the CIA, State Department and National Security Council knew the outlines of Khan’s activities, gathering proof was painstaking and difficult and they could not have moved against him sooner. They also said the CIA wanted to learn as much as possible about the ring before bringing it down.

“Certainly we had questions about A.Q. [Khan] going way back, about his predisposition to share information and technology,” said a senior Bush administration official with long involvement in nonproliferation.

But investigators can only assemble the complete picture piece by piece, the official said. “You never get the whole thing dumped in your lap. Once you get the whole picture, it’s easy to see what to do about it.”

On Feb. 4, Khan said in a televised confession that he had sold nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He said he had acted alone and was guilty of “errors in judgment.”

Musharraf, the former head of the Pakistani army, pardoned Khan the next day and later said the scientist would be allowed to keep what U.S. officials believe is a fortune in real estate and other holdings accumulated in recent years.

U.S. officials said they regard Khan’s claim that he had acted alone as a move to protect military leaders who oversaw Pakistan’s nuclear program. Some acknowledged, however, that Khan’s popularity as the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb gave him a high degree of autonomy and made it hard for any Pakistani leader to move against him.

Khan, 67, is tall and given to khaki suits. He claimed in his written confession to Pakistani authorities that he wanted to distract Western pressure from Pakistan’s nuclear program by spreading the technology, particularly to Muslim countries, but some Pakistani officials have said he was motivated by a desire for wealth.

U.S. intelligence has accused Pakistan of trading its nuclear technology for North Korean missile technology in the late 1990s, something that both Pakistani and North Korean officials continue to deny. U.S. intelligence officials also say Khan made 13 trips to the isolated country.

Two Vienna-based diplomats said evidence surfacing from participants in Khan’s network indicated that the North Koreans bought designs and components for Pakistan’s most advanced centrifuge, the P3. They cautioned, however, that the accusations had not been corroborated.

Musharraf also told the Financial Times on Tuesday that he had found no evidence that Libya had received nuclear secrets from Pakistan.

But the Pakistanis have been sharing some information about Khan’s activities with the IAEA and U.S. intelligence in what one Vienna-based diplomat involved called “a painful process for Pakistan.” Outsiders have not been permitted to interrogate Khan, increasing concerns that full details of the network may never be known, diplomats and U.S. officials said.

New branches of the network are being uncovered almost daily, but the investigators’ progress is tempered by fears about how much wider its products have spread. Not all of the nuclear equipment sold by the network got to Iran or Libya, raising questions about who else might have made purchases, said a Vienna-based diplomat involved in the investigation.

“These people have been doing business all over the world,” said Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. “It is a huge problem and it goes far beyond A.Q. Khan. Nobody paid attention to what they were doing.”

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Birth of a System

The network’s first customer was Pakistan itself.

When Pakistan embarked on its nuclear weapons effort after India’s first atomic test in 1974, Khan returned from the Netherlands, where he had been working with plans for a centrifuge that he was later convicted of stealing. Pakistan could not manufacture the equipment, so he developed a network of European suppliers. His scheme was not secret for long.

“The Pakistanis have been actively purchasing parts and equipment for their centrifuge program in various countries, sometimes disguising their activities by providing false end-use statements,” said a 1983 State Department paper that recently was declassified.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, companies in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland were linked to sales of nuclear technology to Pakistan. A few individuals were convicted of violating export laws, but most eluded charges because sales involved equipment that had civilian as well as military applications.

In unraveling the more recent sales to Iran and Libya, IAEA inspectors turned up equipment and transactions traceable to some of the same people and companies.

A Dutch businessman, Henk Slebos, a college friend of Khan who was convicted in 1985 of trying to ship high-tech equipment to Khan’s laboratory, is suspected of providing equipment to Libya in the late 1990s, diplomats in Vienna and U.S. authorities said. He could not be reached for comment.

Two generations of two families from Britain and Germany also appear to have been involved, said U.S. officials and diplomats.

In both cases, the fathers helped provide equipment to Pakistan and the sons played roles in sales to Iran and Libya.

“Pakistan itself created the network by purchasing from it, then they reversed the flow and started selling,” said a senior diplomat in Vienna working on the inquiry.

Iran apparently was the first outside customer. Khan told Pakistani authorities that he sold drawings for the P1 centrifuge to Tehran in 1987. By then, Pakistan had abandoned the earlier design in favor of a more advanced machine.

The Iranians wanted to produce all of the components and equipment for a huge centrifuge operation themselves, but found it impossible even with Khan’s drawings.

A centrifuge requires about 100 components, many manufactured from special material to precise tolerances. The machines spin at enormous speeds to separate the enriched uranium, and the slightest deviation can lead to catastrophic failure.

“When they realized how difficult it was, they went back and bought components for 500 centrifuges from Pakistan to learn more about their behavior and create their own indigenous industry,” one diplomat said. The equipment was shipped by freighter to Iran in 1994 or 1995, diplomats said. Khan also provided what one diplomat called “a shopping list” of where to go for other equipment.

A report released Friday by Malaysian police said one of the participants in the network, a Sri Lankan named Buhary Syed abu Tahir, told them that Iran paid about $3 million for centrifuge units and delivered the money in cash to an apartment in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, used by Khan when he was in the city.

By 2002, Iran had succeeded in perfecting the centrifuges, even improving on the P1 design. It also had secretly started work on an underground plant capable of holding 50,000 of the centrifuges to start an enrichment program.

Tehran maintained that its nuclear program was aimed at generating electricity, but the U.S. said the discovery of the underground plant and a string of other once-hidden activities indicated that Iran intended to build an atomic bomb. In an effort to prove that its program was peaceful, Tehran provided fuller access and extensive documentation to the IAEA last fall. Among the disclosures were links to middlemen from Khan’s network.

There is no evidence that Iran acquired plans for a nuclear weapon from the Khan network, but U.S. officials and diplomats in Vienna said they still were pressing the Iranians, the Pakistanis and elements of the network for a definitive answer. So far, they haven’t gotten it.

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Suspicious Memos

In autumn 1990, a Greek approached Iraq’s secret intelligence service with a putative offer from Khan to provide help building centrifuges and designs for a nuclear bomb, according to documents and two diplomats.

“We have enclosed for you the following proposal from Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan regarding the possibility of helping Iraq establish a project to enrich uranium and manufacture a nuclear weapon,” said a memo dated Oct. 6, 1990, which was written by Iraq’s intelligence service to a contact in its nuclear weapons program.

Another document said the initial cost would be $5 million, plus a 10% commission for Khan on everything purchased. Iraq already had spent billions of dollars trying to enrich uranium for an atomic bomb, with mixed results.

Four pages of memos about the offer were discovered in August 1995 by IAEA inspectors who were dismantling Iraq’s nuclear program in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. Iraqi officials initially denied getting an offer from Khan, and then said they rejected it because they feared it was a U.S. sting operation. A more likely reason, said one diplomat, was the timing. Iraq had invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and by October was on the verge of war with a U.S.-led coalition.

IAEA officials turned to Pakistan for help, but were told that the offer was a hoax. Requests for assistance from U.S. intelligence turned up no other information. Inspectors also approached a former Iraqi security officer who had been involved in the talks, but he had defected to another country and refused to talk to them.

The diplomats said the IAEA has reopened its inquiry because of the striking similarities between what Iraq was offered and what Libya bought from Khan.

The Iraq memo was not the only red flag that Pakistan was exporting nuclear secrets. In May 1995, the Washington Post reported that Pakistan had helped Iran with a “blueprint” for acquiring nuclear weapons at least four years earlier. The State Department dismissed the story.

David Albright, a former IAEA weapons inspector, said there were plenty of indications that year that Iran was working on a nuclear program and getting help from Pakistan and other countries.

The U.S. persuaded Russia and China to stop some nuclear transfers to Iran during the mid-1990s, but Albright said Washington was unable to get the proof it needed to act.

“They missed a lot,” said Albright, now head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

Khan was not shy about advertising his wares, even if he did not advertise his deals. Starting in 1987, he published articles in European journals that disclosed what experts said then was classified information about centrifuges. He held conferences and distributed brochures from his government laboratory offering to sell nuclear-related products, and he operated a website boasting about his expertise.

A reporter for Jane’s Defense Weekly picked up some brochures at a conference in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2001 and mentioned them in an article. The cover of one bears a photograph of Khan and the seal of the Pakistani government.

The previously undisclosed brochure provided to The Times appears to have been published in 1999. A nuclear expert who examined it said the key elements were the ultracentrifuges for sale and the offer to provide the expertise to set up the centrifuge lines, though there was no mention of nuclear weapons.

Khan also was willing to “enter into contracts/agreements with national and international agencies for undertaking developmental projects relevant to our expertise,” the brochure said.

A senior U.S. official who is closely involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation efforts was unfamiliar with the brochure but said it sounded like something Khan would do.

“He’s the promoter type,” the official said, “interested in packaging himself and his abilities.”

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Libyan Evidence

Definitive proof that Khan’s trafficking involved atomic weapons, too, arrived in late December. After months of secret talks with the United States and Britain, Libya announced that it was giving up its nuclear program and chemical and biological weapons.

When IAEA inspectors were allowed into Libya’s 12 nuclear sites, they discovered Pakistani-designed centrifuges still in their crates and the equipment bearing the stamp of Khan’s laboratory, a diplomat who saw the material said.

In his speech this month, the CIA’s Tenet said Khan’s “network was shaving years off the nuclear weapons development timelines of several states, including Libya.”

Libyan officials told the IAEA that they had worked from 1982 to 1992 on a nuclear program before giving up in frustration, two diplomats in Vienna said.

A German flight engineer named Emil Stachli ran the program, using his own centrifuge design. Libya bought equipment overseas, including a specialized furnace from Japan in 1985 and vacuum pumps from Europe, but Stachli made no real progress before he returned to Germany, the diplomats said.

In 1997, Libya, a potential gold mine for suppliers because of its oil wealth, connected with Khan and his network. A diplomat who reviewed Libya’s paperwork and talked with its officials said Libya intended to purchase a “turnkey” process that would allow it to build a nuclear weapon.

Khan initially sold Libya 20 assembled P1 centrifuges, which were flown directly to Libya from Pakistan, diplomats said. With technical help provided by the network, the Libyans set up a single array of centrifuges, called a cascade, and had their first successful test in late 2000.

But diplomats said Khan did not have enough P1 components to equip an enrichment plant, so he persuaded Libya to switch to the more advanced P2 machines with the promise of better prices in September 2000. By this time, Pakistan had moved on to a more efficient centrifuge, the P3.

“The Libyans told us, ‘We got a deal and grabbed it,’ ” a diplomat in Vienna said.

They also bought plans for the Chinese-designed warhead and drawings for fabricating the weapon, according to two diplomats and an IAEA report issued Friday.

Khan made arrangements through two Dubai-based companies to manufacture components for 10,000 P2 centrifuges at a plant in Malaysia. Hussein Haniff, Malaysia’s ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna, said the company, in which the son of the Malaysian prime minister is a major shareholder, did not know that it was making parts for a centrifuge. Diplomats familiar with Khan’s network find that plausible.

“Very often sellers did not know where the equipment was ending up,” said one of the diplomats. “A Swedish firm sold vacuum pumps to a man in Switzerland that it thought were for Coca-Cola. Then the Swiss sent them to Dubai, which sent them on to Libya.”

On the other hand, the IAEA report said that some of Libya’s suppliers removed serial numbers from equipment to disguise its origins before shipping it.

The tactics were almost identical to Khan’s use of front companies and deception to help build Pakistan’s atomic bomb, but the network was expanded to a one-stop operation that provided a complete package of centrifuges, technical expertise and bomb designs.

Investigators said they had identified suppliers in Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, South Africa, Russia and Japan.

People reviewing both the Libyan and Iranian purchases said they couldn’t determine how much money the two countries paid Khan and members of his network. Not everything was written down, prices were marked up numerous times and many payments were made in cash. One diplomat estimated that Libya paid $50 million to $100 million.

The flow was huge. From 2001 to late last year, several thousand components arrived in Libya along with a shipment from Pakistan of uranium hexafluoride, the gas used as feedstock for centrifuges, diplomats involved in reviewing the material said.

None of the centrifuges had been assembled because the company providing rotors made from super-hard steel had not delivered them by October, when U.S. intelligence intercepted a shipment of five containers of centrifuge components from the Malaysian firm.

Secret negotiations to persuade the Libyans to give up their program had been underway since the previous spring, but U.S. intelligence officials said intercepting the ship prompted Libya’s final decision to abandon its effort and to persuade Musharraf to act against Khan.

What remains unclear and alarming, said U.S. officials and diplomats, is who else got help.

“Names are floating around,” said a diplomat involved in the inquiry. “It’s only a question of time until we find them.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Arms for sale

A sales brochure with a picture of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan on the cover and bearing the name of his Khan Research Laboratories advertises sophisticated and sensitive technology. Some excerpts:

Nuclear-related products:

* Complete ultracentrifuge machines

* High-frequency inverters

* UF collection bottles/containers & desublimers of capacities up to 1,000 kg

* UF flowmeters

* UF pressure/vacuum gauges

* Process/control valves of various sizes

Defense-related products:

* Intermediate-range ballistic missiles (Ghauri I and Ghauri II)

* Surface-to-air antiaircraft guided missiles (Anza MK-I, Anza MK-II)

* “Baktar Shikan” antitank guided missile weapon system

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Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories also provide consultancy and advisory services to government and private organizations in various fields including electrical and mechanical engineering, chemical and vacuum technology, metallurgy and materials science, computer science, electronics, electromagnetism, power generation and air conditioning.

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Iraqi memo

In 1990, Iraq’s secret intelligence service was approached with a putative offer from Abdul Qadeer Khan of help in building centrifuges and a nuclear bomb. Here is an excerpt from a related memo from Iraqi intelligence to its nuclear weapons program:

We have enclosed for you the following proposal from Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan regarding the possibility of helping Iraq establish a project to enrich uranium and manufacture a nuclear weapon. The above-mentioned expressed it as follows:

1. He is prepared to give us project designs for a nuclear bomb.

2. Ensure any requirements or materials from Western European countries via a company he owns in Dubai.

3. Request a preliminary technical meeting to consult on the documents that he will present to us. However, the current circumstances do not allow for an immediate meeting with the above-mentioned. There is the possibility of a meeting with the intermediary that we have connections and good relations with in Greece.

4. The motive behind this proposal is gaining profits for him and the intermediary.

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Source: Institute for Science and International Security

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Frantz reported from Vienna and Meyer from Washington.