March 3, 2004
WHO WOULDN'T TAKE THAT DEAL?:
THE DEAL: Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan’s nuclear black marketers? (SEYMOUR M. HERSH, 2004-03-01, The New Yorker)
A Bush Administration intelligence officer with years of experience in nonproliferation issues told me last month, “One thing we do know is that this was not a rogue operation. Suppose Edward Teller had suddenly decided to spread nuclear technology and equipment around the world. Do you really think he could do that without the government knowing? How do you get missiles from North Korea to Pakistan? Do you think A.Q. shipped all the centrifuges by Federal Express? The military has to be involved, at high levels.” The intelligence officer went on, “We had every opportunity to put a stop to the A. Q. Khan network fifteen years ago. Some of those involved today in the smuggling are the children of those we knew about in the eighties. It’s the second generation now.”In public, the Bush Administration accepted the pardon at face value. Within hours of Musharraf’s television appearance, Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State, praised him as “the right man at the right time.” Armitage added that Pakistan had been “very forthright in the last several years with us about proliferation.” A White House spokesman said that the Administration valued Musharraf’s assurances that “Pakistan was not involved in any of the proliferation activity.” A State Department spokesman said that how to deal with Khan was “a matter for Pakistan to decide.”
Musharraf, who seized power in a coup d’état in 1999, has been a major ally of the Bush Administration in the war on terrorism. According to past and present military and intelligence officials, however, Washington’s support for the pardon of Khan was predicated on what Musharraf has agreed to do next: look the other way as the U.S. hunts for Osama bin Laden in a tribal area of northwest Pakistan dominated by the forbidding Hindu Kush mountain range, where he is believed to be operating. American commanders have been eager for permission to conduct major sweeps in the Hindu Kush for some time, and Musharraf has repeatedly refused them. Now, with Musharraf’s agreement, the Administration has authorized a major spring offensive that will involve the movement of thousands of American troops.
Musharraf has proffered other help as well. A former senior intelligence official said to me, “Musharraf told us, ‘We’ve got guys inside. The people who provide fresh fruits and vegetables and herd the goats’” for bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers. “It’s a quid pro quo: we’re going to get our troops inside Pakistan in return for not forcing Musharraf to deal with Khan.
Yeah, imagine if the scientists at Los Alamos had been providing the Soviets with information on everything they did... Posted by Orrin Judd at March 3, 2004 8:40 PM
For what it's worth, the USAF does practice flights of B-1 and B-52 bombers in my neck of Texas, and last year in late Feburary and early March, the number of flights spikes upward just before the start of the Iraq conflict. And there have been a lot of flights overhead during the past several days...
Posted by: John at March 3, 2004 10:19 PMDoes Musharraf really have a motive to see the WOT come to some sort of an end? If I were him, I'd be pretty worried that not too long after catching/killing OBL (who I believe is likely dead already), Washington won't be nearly as attached to the notion of a general in charge in Islamabad.
Posted by: brian at March 3, 2004 11:30 PMIsn't this 'diplomacy'? And multi-lateral to boot? Dare Kerry complain?
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at March 3, 2004 11:34 PMI wonder if it would help to quietly inform each of these blackmarket nuclear proliferators, from Khan on down, that the moment one of their nukes goes off anywhere in the U.S. they are dead men walking. We've got their files and the rubber stamp from the movie "Top Secret!": "Find him and kill him."
Posted by: PapayaSF at March 4, 2004 12:26 AM"Nice doggie...."
Posted by: Rick T. at March 4, 2004 11:04 AMReports from a year ago said that Khan was an active supporter of the Taliban. He would probably not be all that deterred by the prospect of "martyrdom". It might be necessary to include all of his male descendents in the kill order, as well as new jobs for all his grandaughters scrubbing floors in Bill Clinton's house .
Posted by: Jason Johnson at March 4, 2004 11:28 AMthe Los Alamos info was being fed to Communist China, that was just as bad as feeding it to Soviet Russia, and it was met with a collective yawn by the press. Then again it was a Democrat President neglecting security back then.
Posted by: MarkD at March 4, 2004 6:20 PMMarkD:
I think Orrin is refferring to scientists at Los Alamos some forty years before Wen Ho Lee.
Posted by: Jason Johnson at March 4, 2004 6:50 PMre: Why is Washington going easy...
The policy is probably, "Pakistan is a quite tough nut to crack. American actions will be based upon what seems possible to implement. Remember to not make a bad situation worse. Pakistan is a quite tough nut to crack."
The even tougher plan to set up: what will be done by the USA, Britain(maybe Russia or France) if a coup or fundamentalist uprising increases the risk of Pakistani nuclear material(bombs) getting into the hands of the bad guys? (If the people of Nagasaki had been presented with the choice of a "dirty" bomb versus an atomic bomb, is there any doubt what they woulda settled for?)
The plan might be an IMMEDIATE special-operations military entry, to guard nuclear weapons, then remove various stockpiles, then destroy the nuclear-support facilities. - - and all the while stopping India from advancing beyond hair-trigger alert. What would Israel do?
Instability is a bitch. There definitely are hazards worse than Al Qaeda's conventional explosives. The challenge is to keep priorities in order.