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New book details murky history of CIA and nuclear weapons proliferation

“What’s needed is a new multilateral legal regime that puts trafficking in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on a par with crimes against humanity. This won’t be easy, but blind adherence to narrow national objectives increases the risk to all of us.”

Authors: CIA waited years to stop nuclear proliferation | Raw Story, 6 Jan 2011, The US government is guilty of allowing nuclear materials and intelligence to proliferate among some of the most dangerous regimes in the world for more than 30 years, a new book alleges.

In Fallout, authors Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins charge that the CIA waited until it was too late to stop the A.Q. Kahn network from disseminating nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.”They could literally have stopped him in his trackshe 1970s],” Franz told NPR’s Fresh Air Tuesday. “It would have done an enormous amount to delay Pakistan building its own nuclear weapon, to delay the arms race on the South Asian continent and to stop Iran from getting where it is on the nuclear front.”

“You know, so this is something that the CIA has been, in our view, guilty of for more than 30 years now,” he added.

In 1974, Kahn, who was working at a centrifuge production facility in the Netherlands, approached Pakistani officials with offers to help them with their nuclear program…………

Fallout details the way the CIA recruited the Tinners, a family of Swiss engineers, to spy on Kahn beginning in the 1970s. The Tinners supplied Kahn with the techniques and materials to make gas centrifuges, which were later sold to Libya and Iran.

The CIA has spent the last seven years trying cover up their role in recruiting the Tinners, and halting a Swiss attempt to prosecute the family.

“Senior CIA and Bush administration officials argued that stopping the Tinner inquiry and destroying the evidence was necessary to protect US intelligence operations and keep nuclear information away from terrorists. But our research uncovered more sinister motives,” Franz and Collins wrote in an article the Los Angeles Times………..

“The lesson here is clear: Leaders must set aside national interests and work cooperatively to stay ahead of nuclear traffickers,” Franz and Collins concluded. “What’s needed is a new multilateral legal regime that puts trafficking in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on a par with crimes against humanity. This won’t be easy, but blind adherence to narrow national objectives increases the risk to all of us.”

Authors: CIA waited years to stop nuclear proliferation | Raw Story

January 6, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA