Intrigue, Western involvement in nuclear proliferation network

Nuclear proliferation: No AQ Khan network, only western suppliers – The Express Tribune, Shahidure Rehman 6 Jan 2011,

ISLAMABAD: There was no AQ Khan nuclear proliferation network, there were only Western suppliers of nuclear wares, said a report submitted recently by a Swiss Magistrate inquiring into the affairs of three members of the Tinner family.

The report has spelt out that there was as such no AQ Khan network but several members of the so-called network (actually suppliers) were collaborating with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and MI6.

It has been established beyond doubt that three Tinners – father Frederick Tinner and his two sons Marco and Urs Tinners – were working for the CIA since at least the year 2000 until Dr Khan’s fall from the high pedestal in February 4, 2004, on charges of proliferation to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

Swiss magistrate Andreas Muller has recommended that charges be brought against three Tinners for violation of Swiss laws and obstructing justice. “They massively interfered in the wheels of justice,” the judge said.

Muller had investigated proliferation activities of Tinners for four years and reports that a huge drove of documents and electronic files including allegedly “a highly sophisticated Pakistani bomb design” were destroyed by the Swiss authorities on pressure from CIA.

In February 2008, when the Swiss president had acknowledged that document and files relating to Tinners have been destroyed by Swiss authorities, Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson had regretted that while the design is being stated to be of Pakistani origin, the Pakistan government was never taken into confidence.

Dr Khan had told Kyodo News Agency that the destruction of the documents had wiped out some evidence that would have proved that he was innocent of the wrongdoing heaped on his doorstep.

The whole story of how CIA carried out several sting operations to bring down Dr Khan and who played a role in it would be brought out once the Tinners go on trial.

More facts about the family and the CIA have been promised by David Albright of Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), who has promised to shortly release a preliminary assessment of CIA’s recruitment of the Tinners.

The recruitment of Tinners by the CIA to spy on Dr Khan is not surprising because without his double deals, Frederick Tinner would not have managed to proliferate for nearly three decades.

Frederick Tinner was manager of Cora Engineering Company in Switzerland from whom Khan had bought a key component for the enrichment plant at Kahuta in 1976.

In 2004, when Khan’s saga broke out, Frederick Tinner was operating a workshop and a company in Dubai and his son Urs Tinner was manager of the factory in Malaysia, which was manufacturing the components for centrifuge meant for the Libyan programme.

The factory in Malaysia was owned by a Sri Lankan national B S A Tahir, who has been dubbed Khan’s deputy and chief financial officer of the so-called Khan network.

The components of centrifuge that were seized on a ship BBC-China on October 4, 2003, was the turning point in the Dr Khan saga. The components were sent by Urs Tinner in four consignments to Dubai from where they were to be dispatched to Libya.

After sending the last consignment to Dubai, Urs Tinner removed information about himself and drawings of the component from his computer and disappeared. He was finally arrested in Switzerland with two other Tinners, who were released in 2008 under US pressure.

According to The New York Times on April 25, 2008, the CIA paid up to $10 million to the Tinner family, “some of it was delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash.”

In 2004, when the CIA and MI6 agents had visited Malaysia they could not find Urs Tinner and only interviewed Tahir.

According to Tahir, his company had manufactured the components on an order from a Dubai-based company owned by a British national Peter Griffin – dubbed another member of the so-called network. Dr Khan has accused Peter Griffin of working for MI6.

Another member of the so-called network, whose name has been mentioned only in passing was Chacha (Uncle) Mohammad Farooq, paternal uncle of BSA Tahir – chief financial officer of the network and Khan’s deputy.

Farooq is known to have cashed a $3 million check paid by the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran to the network in 1987, but surprisingly no effort has been made by the western authors of Khan’s saga and a number of inquiry commissions to locate him.

The latest report by David Albright about Libya has only mentioned erroneously that he is living in Singapore.

“Chacha Farooq was a CIA agent,” a 2-star general said during a rare interview granted for my book. Dr Khan concurred.

The then foreign office spokesperson Masood Khan had told a briefing on December 2003 that Iran and IAEA had provided details of two Pakistani scientists who received money for supplying used centrifuge.

Let us assume that the first beneficiary was Khan, but who was the second Pakistani scientist receiving money from Iran? The books about Khan’s story have reported that Chacha Farooq was a major beneficiary of the money received from Iran.

A book by David Armstrong about Khan, ‘America and the Islamic Bomb’ have highlighted that the CIA could have made Khan’s network to fold in 2000 when a British customs agent had tracked possible proliferation exports to Tahir in Dubai.

However, the MI6 station chief in Dubai forced the then British Customs agent there back to London.

“There was no proliferation network. The term was given currency by western intelligence and western media and our media also jumped on the western media bandwagon,” Tasneem Aslam, former spokesperson of the Foreign Office, who handled media query in the wake of the Khan saga, told me in her farewell meeting.

“Dr Khan was brought down as a result of a sting operation, one big sting operation having several smaller sting operations within,” a former aide of Khan believed. He pointed out that it has been established beyond doubt by people like Seymour Hersh and Ron Suskind that BBC-China was a sting operation by several western intelligence agencies.

There was no network. There were only western suppliers. At some point in time, they also started supplying the same ware that they were supplying to Pakistan, Iran and Libya, Khan has maintained.

However, he has conceded that he was aware that the western suppliers were fuelling the Iranian and Libyan nuclear programmes.

Dr Khan said that the design of P-1 centrifuge and the so-called Pakistani device that he is alleged to have delivered to Iran and Libya, could have been collected by CIA-MI6 from western suppliers and their agents and portrayed to be the result of his proliferation activities. The complete version of this story can be found on The Express Tribune website http://tribune.com.pk/

Shahidur Rehman has authored a book about Pakistan’s nuclear program “Long Road to Chaghai’ in 1999 and another book “Horrible examples- Z.A. Bhutto. A Q Khan and Iranian Nuclear program” is being published…….

Nuclear proliferation: No AQ Khan network, only western suppliers – The Express Tribune