Journalist R. Jeffrey Smith has a piece in today's Washington Post which publicizes a letter released by Abdul Quadeer Khan, Pakistani proliferation raconteur, and imaginary nuke trader (the West made it up, you see) to former British Journalist Simon Henderson which ” support(s) his claim that he personally transferred more than $3 million in payments by North Korea to senior officers in the Pakistani military, which he says subsequently approved his sharing of technical know-how and equipment with North Korean scientists.” According to Smith, Khan also released a copy of a North Korean official's 1998 letter to him, written in English, that spells out details of the clandestine deal.”
First off, Khan needs to make up his bloody mind. In the interview I posted a couple of weeks ago from Der Spiegel, Khan insists that there was no Khan proliferation network. Now, as he has been known to do in the past, he says, okay, maybe I did some stuff, but the Pakistani government not only knew about it, but they helped out!
Obviously, the Pakistani officials called out in the memo all deny its authenticity. But, Smith quotes Olli Heinonen, former DDG of the Safeguards Department at the IAEA, as saying the memo looks like others he has seen in his former capacity, when he was investigating the infamous proliferation network.
Over at Arms Control Wonk, another Jeffrey, Lewis, asked a buddy to have a look at the document and Khan’s account of DPRK cash for nukes and came up with this assessment.
Here’s my thinking: whether the Pakistani government is formally and incontrovertibly implicated in the A.Q. Khan proliferation network or not is immaterial at this point: I think its fairly certain that rather high-ranking folks, at a minimum, turns a blind eye to what Khan was doing, if not outright abetted him. U.S.-Pakistani relations are already in the crapper – Bin Laden hiding essentially in plain sight in the ‘burbs anyone? – but this obviously adds insult to injury. As the U.S. approaches the tenth anniversary/commemoration of the September 11th attacks, we are reminded that other governments must be part of the global effort to quash terrorism in all of its forms or we all fail.
The bigger lesson is ongoing and enduring: that the Khan network uncovered critical gaps in efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear materials and technologies and exposed weaknesses in their implementation. And, until ALL countries, including the IAEA’s newest member, Fiji (I know, I’m relieved too!), put nonproliferation ahead of their own nationalistic egos and poor arguments about Article IV “rights”, I’m afraid that history is simply doomed to repeat itself.
