White House seeks credit for cracking secret weapons ring (UN disputes)

[papau]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1147246,00.html

White House seeks credit for cracking secret weapons ring

Bush boasts about uncovering arms network but observers wonder why it took so long

Ian Traynor
Friday February 13, 2004
The Guardian

<snip>In his speech on Wednesday President Bush claimed credit, along with Britain, for an intelligence triumph in cracking the Khan racket. "We've uncovered their secrets. This work involved high risk, and all Americans can be grateful for the hard work and the dedication of our fine intelligence professionals," he trumpeted, going into surprising detail.

"This picture of the Khan network was pieced together over several years by American and British intelligence officers. Our intelligence services gradually uncovered this network's reach, and identified its key experts and agents and money men. Operatives followed its transactions, mapped the extent of its operations. They monitored the travel of A Q Khan and senior associates. They shadowed members of the network around the world, they recorded their conversations, they penetrated their operations."

<snip>..."It's absurd," commented William Potter, a leading US expert in nuclear proliferation. "It's nonsense," said a senior source familiar with the IAEA investigation into the network...Two recent developments brought matters to a head in the case of Mr Khan.

First, Libyan information to MI6 and the CIA on the middlemen, the companies, and the Pakistani sources of the uranium enrichment equipment and nuclear bomb blueprint it bought. Second, a lengthy dossier on the Iranian nuclear effort supplied to the IAEA by Tehran at the end of October, which named at least five businessmen in Europe and the Middle East as being involved in the black market. Armed with such specific information, the Americans were able to demand action by the Pakistani authorities against Khan and the IAEA investigators were able to trace the network.

<snip>David Albright, a leading US analyst of the US nuclear intelligence operation, said: "They missed this stuff for a very long time. It was operating under their nose. There's a lot more going on. They have given us something to quiet us down. The IAEA is right to feel wronged."

[54anickel]

1. Some interesting info in this article

David Kay, the official commissioned by Mr Bush to locate Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, told a Senate committee a fortnight ago that Iran had been pursuing a secret nuclear enrichment programme for 18 years, unknown to western intelligence, and that Libya was now known to have been far more advanced in its clandestine nuclear effort than suspected by the spies.

"We didn't discover it," he said. "There's a long record here of being wrong."

US pressure brought the results in Islamabad leading to Mr Khan's confession: the Americans gave President Pervez Musharraf an ultimatum similar to to the choice it gave him after the September 11 attacks. Then it was: "Help us get Osama bin Laden or face the consequences." This time it was was stop Mr Khan's activities or lose US backing.

I think they are still holding out on OBL

This is rather damning, if we've know for so long, why did we do NOTHING:

"They have known about Khan for a long time. But a political decision was taken to act now. You couldn't describe this as an intelligence failure."

[pinto]

2. all decisions are political in B*shcountryWMDthoughtcrimere-electionzone

[papau]

3. the CIA/GOP Pakistan connection dates back to General Olmstead &

his service as Under Sec of Commerce (or Asst Sec of Commerce - my memory fades - but he was a number 2 running the Atoms for Peace program under Ike).

He told me that he moved $20 billion to Pakistan so they could developed the bomb (although he may of meant he started the move of that money - he explained the fake budget accounts of that era that were used to gather-up the money). In any case the only two other facts I know about this is that the dictator of Pakistan at that time in 58, who was overthrown and condemned to death a year and a half later, was on our payroll (International Bank of DC and/or its subs United Services Ins and Bankers Ins) for the next 25 years, and that we had standing orders to avoid the hiring of anything that looked like a CIA plant. The General enjoyed Thursday dinners with Reagan, which he was quite proud of, but I got the impression - and here we leave fact for the world of impression - that the CIA was not totally on board the (or "a") GOP plan to make Pakistan nuclear - blaming China of course.

Never did understand it all - but the secret financing via the Qureshi London branch that so bothered the US regulatory bodies in the American Bank scandal of the Reagan years (the press was told Arab funding) sort of locked down the thought - for me - that the Pakistan stories were truth telling.

So "Why did we do NOTHING" is one hell of an interesting question.

Plus the fact that the only International Bank expose' book/write-up came out as a Maritime paper by a fellow in Australia - with nothing written in the US (We ran a flagging service - we - International Bank - were the country of Liberia as far as getting right to raise that flag on your ship) - I don't know if we gave flags to the CIA's fleet.

So, again, "Why did we do NOTHING" is one hell of an interesting question.

:-)