Reply #47: Why BCCI still matters: Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan - The Father of the Islamic Bomb

[Octafish]

Thanks, Progs Rock!



Here's the BCCI Thing:

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan - The Father of the Islamic Bomb

The Risk Report
Volume 1 Number 6 (July-August 1995) Page 5

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan is the undisputed hero of Pakistan's nuclear saga. Called "the father of the Islamic bomb," Dr. Khan pioneered and led Pakistan's effort to enrich uranium with gas centrifuges. In 1976 he took charge of the secretive Engineering Research Laboratories at Kahuta, now named the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories in his honor, where he assembled the machinery and manpower it would take to produce weapon-grade uranium. Khan recruited scores of Pakistani scientists living abroad to work with him at Kahuta, boasting that "the scientists and engineers whom I recruited had never heard of a centrifuge, even though some of them were Ph.D.'s."

Khan had learned about gas centrifuges when he worked on uranium enrichment technology for a Dutch company from 1972 to 1975. Khan says he and his colleagues devised "a strategy to buy everything we needed in the open market to lay the foundation of a good infrastructure and would then switch over to indigenous production." In 1983 Khan was sentenced in absentia for trying to steal enrichment secrets from the Netherlands. He denies the charges, and his conviction was overturned in 1986.

In 1990, Pakistan President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, lauded A.Q. Khan's contributions to the nuclear field and declared: "The name of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan will be inscribed in golden letters in the annals of the national history of Pakistan." And even Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has acknowledged his "invaluable contribution not only in the nuclear field but also in other fields including defense production."

A.Q. Khan says Western governments repeatedly tried to prevent Pakistan from developing a nuclear weapon capability, but they were foiled by the greed of their own companies: "Many suppliers approached us with the details of the machinery and with figures and numbers of instruments and materials ... In the true sense of the word, they begged us to purchase their goods. And for the first time the truth of the saying, They will sell their mother for money,' dawned on me. We purchased whatever we required..."

SOURCE:

http://www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/pakistan/khan.html

Ever wonder what greedy American companies participated in selling nuclear technology?

Well one guy who wishes you wouldn't is Sneering Dick Cheney:

Cheney Covered up Pakistan's Nuclear Black Market

By Jason Leopold
Special to the South Asia Tribune
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 12, 2005 | ISSN: 1684-2057 | www.satribune.com

EXCERPT...

Bush, Vice President Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan’s proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist.

But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.

The International Atomic Energy Association launched an investigation two years ago in an attempt to uncover how Iran obtained components and parts for P-2 centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium into fuel for civilian power reactors.

Iran secured most of its supply on the black market, from the network run by Khan. The network was uncovered last year, leading to Khan's arrest in Pakistan. An ex-Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, said the CIA had asked the Netherlands in 1975 not to prosecute Khan because US intelligence wanted to find out more about Khan's contacts while he was working as an engineer at the top secret Dutch uranium enrichment plant at Almelo, the BBC reported.

SNIP...

The Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan’s sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the United States -- nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq -- but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen.

In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market, Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon, prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then working as Secretary of Defense under the first Bush administration: Pakistan had built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the United States said was sponsoring terrorism.

But Barlow’s findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in the magazine Mother Jones, were “politically inconvenient.”

CONTINUED...

http://antisystemic.org/satribune/www.satribune.com/archives/200508/P1_jason.htm

It's like they're evil, or something.