Nuclear Terrorism

**Jay** · 08 Sep 04,, 22:24

Nuclear Terrorism
By GRAHAM ALLISON
Published: September 5, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/bo...t-allison.html

WHY DO YOU use an axe when you can use a bulldozer?" That was Osama bin Laden's question in 1996 to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of what grew into the most deadly attack on the American homeland in the nation's history. Mohammed is now in American custody, the highest-ranking Al Qaeda leader captured to date in the war on terrorism. He has told interrogators that the "axe" to which bin Laden referred was his proposal to charter a small plane, fill it with explosives, and crash it into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Bin Laden sent him back to the drawing board with a charge to devise a more dramatic, devastating blow against the "hated enemy."

In the months that followed, Mohammed proposed a number of "bulldozer" options for bin Laden's review. As he explained in an Al Jazeera interview in April 2002, just before he was seized, he and his colleagues "first thought of striking a couple of nuclear facilities." But with regret, he noted, "it was eventually decided to leave out the nuclear targets-for now." When the interviewer asked: "What do you mean 'for now'?" he replied sharply: "For now means for now."

AL QAEDA'S "MANHATTAN PROJECT"

In August 2001, during the final countdown to what Al Qaeda calls the "Holy Tuesday" attack, bin Laden received two key former officials from Pakistan's nuclear weapons program at his secret headquarters near Kabul. Over the course of three days of intense conversation, he and his second-in-command, the Egyptian surgeon and organizational mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri, quizzed Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed about chemical, biological, and, especially, nuclear weapons. Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and two other as yet unidentified top-level Al Qaeda operatives who participated in these conversations had clearly moved beyond the impending assault on the World Trade Center to visions of grander attacks to follow.

Mahmood and Majeed's meeting with the leaders of Al Qaeda came at the end of months of prior meetings with subordinates. Al Qaeda had sought out Mahmood, one of Pakistan's leading specialists in uranium enrichment, for his capabilities, his convictions, and his connections. Mahmood's career spanned thirty years at the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission, and he had been a key figure at the Kahuta plant, which had produced the enriched uranium for Pakistan's first nuclear bomb test. Thereafter, he headed the Khosib reactor in the Punjab that produces weapons-grade plutonium. In 1999, however, he was forced to resign abruptly for describing Pakistan's nuclear capability as "the property of a whole Muslim community" and for publicly advocating that Pakistan provide enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium to arm other Muslim states. But even though the government of Pakistan vehemently denounced Mahmood's views, it had been surreptitiously following a similar policy, having offered or supplied uranium enrichment technology and know-how to Iraq, Libya, Iran, and even North Korea.

Mahmood is representative of a significant faction of Pakistani "nuclear hawks" who through the 1990s grew increasingly estranged from the country's more moderate leadership. Under the leadership of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the revered "father of the Islamic bomb," these scientists had thrust Pakistan into the ranks of the declared nuclear powers, and through their work they became some of the most respected members of Pakistani society. But for many of them, the mission was not only to overcome India's conventional superiority but to stand up for the Muslim world. As Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto revealed in his memoir (written from prison just before his execution in 1979), these scientists were ordered in January 1972 to "achieve a full nuclear capability" in order to demonstrate that "Islamic Civilization" was the full equal of "Christian, Jewish, and Hindu Civilizations."

Mahmood was-and is today-an Islamic extremist. In the late 1980s, Mahmood published an essay titled "Mechanics of Doomsday and Life after Death," in which he argued that natural catastrophes are inevitable in countries that succumb to moral decay. In contrast, he later praised the virtues of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which he called the vanguard of the "renaissance of Islam." His spiritual leader, the Lahore-based Islamic radical cleric Israr Ahmad, declared in the fall of 2001 that the U.S. attack on Afghanistan was the beginning of "the final war between Islam and the infidels." Ahmad condemned the U.S. war on terrorism as a "materialistic jihad," in contrast to the Muslims' jihad, which he characterized as being for "the sole purpose to gain the pleasure of Allah and for the preservation of justice and equality." Ominously, Ahmad's student Mahmood predicted in an essay that, "by 2002, millions may die through mass destruction weapons, terrorist attacks, and suicide."

After his forced departure from Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission in 1999, Mahmood founded a "charitable agency" that he named Ummah Tamer-e-Nau (Reconstruction of the Muslim Community) to support projects in Afghanistan. Majeed also retired in 1999 and joined Mahmood's organization. Under this cover, they traveled frequently to Afghanistan to develop projects, one of which called for mining uranium from rich deposits in that country. Other members of the board of Mahmood's foundation included a fellow nuclear scientist knowledgeable about weapons construction, two Pakistani Air Force generals, one Army general, and an industrialist who owned Pakistan's largest foundry.

At the time of Mahmood and Majeed's visit to bin Laden in the summer of 2001, relations between the United States and Pakistan were still in a deep freeze, in response to Pakistan's test of a nuclear weapon in 1998. The United States had immediately imposed economic sanctions on the country, and President Bill Clinton denounced the Pakistani government for its decision, saying, "I cannot believe that we are about to start the 21st century by having the Indian subcontinent repeat the worst mistakes of the 20th century when we know it is not necessary to peace, to security, to prosperity, to national greatness or personal fulfillment." In 1999, relations deteriorated further when General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a coup d'état that ousted the democratically elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

When reports about the August 2001 meeting reached CIA headquarters at Langley after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, alarm bells sounded. Analysts at the Counterterrorism Center recognized the story line. In 1997, Pakistani nuclear scientists had made secret trips to North Korea, the result of which was that Pakistan would provide North Korea with technical assistance for its nuclear weapons program in exchange for North Korean assistance in Pakistan's development of long-range missiles. The CIA had additional information about a third Pakistani nuclear scientist, who had been negotiating with Libyan intelligence agents over the price for which he would sell nuclear bomb designs. CIA director George Tenet was so alarmed by the report of Mahmood's meeting with bin Laden that he flew directly to Islamabad to confront President Musharraf.

On October 23, Mahmood and Majeed were arrested by Pakistani authorities and questioned by joint Pakistani-CIA teams. Mahmood claimed that he had never met bin Laden, but repeatedly failed polygraph tests in which he was asked about his trips to Afghanistan. His memory improved, however, after his son Asim told authorities that bin Laden had asked his father about "how to make a nuclear bomb and things like that." According to Mahmood, bin Laden was particularly interested in nuclear weapons. Bin Laden's colleagues told the Pakistani scientists that Al Qaeda had succeeded in acquiring nuclear material for a bomb from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Mahmood explained to his hosts that the material in question could be used in a dirty bomb but could not produce a nuclear explosion. Al-Zawahiri and the others then sought Mahmood's help in recruiting other Pakistani nuclear experts who could provide uranium of the required purity, as well as assistance in constructing a nuclear weapon. Though Mahmood characterized the discussions as "academic," Pakistani officials indicated that Mahmood and Majeed "spoke extensively about weapons of mass destruction," and provided detailed responses to bin Laden's questions about the manufacture of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

After their arrest and interrogation, Mahmood and Majeed were found to have violated Pakistan's official secrets act. Their passports were lifted and they remain, in effect, under house arrest. Nonetheless, the Pakistani government refused to bring the two to trial for fear of what they might reveal about Pakistan's other secret nuclear activities. This was not an idle fear. In a prescient article published less than a month before he was kidnapped and executed while investigating the "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal revealed that Pakistani military authorities found it "inconceivable that a nuclear scientist would travel to Afghanistan without getting clearance from Pakistani officials," because Pakistan "maintains a strict watch on many of its nuclear scientists, using a special arm of the Army's general headquarters to monitor them even after retirement."

In the end, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Mahmood and Majeed had provided bin Laden with a blueprint for constructing nuclear weapons. Thereafter, sometimes in collaboration with the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and otherwise unilaterally, American operatives have sought to intercept further "vacations" in Afghanistan by Pakistani nuclear physicists and engineers. The CIA's summary of the matter, submitted to President Bush, concluded that while Mahmood and his charity claimed "to serve the hungry and needy of Afghanistan," in fact, it "provided information about nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda."

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PATIENCE, THOUGHTFULNESS, AND EXPERTISE

Andrew Marshall, director of net assessments at the Department of Defense and one of the wise men among national security insiders, has long warned that "if the U.S. ever faced a serious enemy, we would be in deep trouble." Al Qaeda qualifies as a formidable foe. With an annual budget of over $200 million during the 1990s, Al Qaeda brought more than sixty thousand international recruits to Afghanistan for training in terrorist attacks. It established cells, including sleeper cells, in approximately sixty countries. It created affiliate relationships with major terrorist groups around the world, from Chechnya to Indonesia, from Saudi Arabia to Germany, and within the United States itself. Indeed, an Al Qaeda sleeper cell in Singapore, among the most secure and watchful societies in the world, was narrowly prevented from launching an attack on the U.S. and Israeli embassies there, with ten times the amount of explosives used by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. As one Singaporean official observed, "If they could do it here, they could do it anywhere."

Even before 9/11, Al Qaeda's attacks demonstrated an organizational capacity to plan, coordinate, and implement operations well above the threshold of competence necessary to acquire and use a nuclear weapon. Veterans of the most successful U.S. covert actions agree with Tenet's bottom line: the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was "professionally conceived and executed-it showed patience, thoughtfulness, and expertise." As an analyst conducting the postmortem on that attack observed: Who else could have found four scheduled American flights that took off on time?

After 9/11, terrorism analysts and other specialists within the U.S. government reexamined the pattern of Al Qaeda's earlier attacks in an effort to connect the dots. When those dots are connected, they reveal a dagger pointed from Al Qaeda's February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, through the August 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the bombing of the warship USS Cole in October 2000, to the massive attack of 9/11. Indeed, the dagger points beyond what was achieved in that case to further mega-terrorist attacks with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

When U.S. Special Forces, CIA operatives, and Afghan warlords toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in late 2001, the U.S. government and American journalists learned more about Al Qaeda than most had imagined they wanted to know. Overrunning hundreds of headquarters buildings, safe houses, training camps, and caves, they recovered tens of thousands of pages of documents, plans, videos, computers, and disks. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld found in this evidence "a number of things that show an appetite for WMD." Together with information extracted through interrogation of captured Al Qaeda operatives, these findings now provide a solid base for assessing Al Qaeda as a nuclear threat.

One of the untold stories of this drama has been the key role played by journalists in acquiring critical information. In December 2001, the Wall Street Journal purchased a desktop computer and a laptop computer looted from an Al Qaeda safe house that turned out to have been used by several top bin Laden lieutenants, including al-Zawahiri and bin Laden's former military commander, the late Mohammed Atef. In addition to hundreds of routine letters and memos dealing with the daily administration of Al Qaeda's terrorist network, the computers' hard drives contained password-protected files on a project code-named "al Zabadi," Arabic for "curdled milk." The curdled milk project sought to acquire chemical and biological weapons, and it had reached the point of testing nerve gas recipes on dogs and rabbits.

CNN discovered perhaps the most disturbing piece of evidence in the Kabul home of Abu Khabab, a senior Al Qaeda official-a twenty-five-page essay titled "Superbomb," which included information on types of nuclear weapons, the physics and effects of nuclear explosions, and the properties of nuclear materials. David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector who reviewed the document, concluded that "the author understood shortcuts to making crude nuclear explosives."

Excerpted from NUCLEAR TERRORISM by GRAHAM ALLISON Copyright © 2004 by Graham Allison. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc.

**visioninthedark** · 08 Sep 04,, 22:41

Excerpts from a Book .... naturally meant for sale ... at a very nice time too ... the writer had a lot odf sense where all the money was ..

an attempt to make big bucks .... hell .... all this scare mongering sells well ...

besides ... the US government is satisfied with what our givernment did ...

CAN YOU QUOTE ME A SINGLE STATEMENT BY US GOVERNMENT SAYING THEY ARE NOT HAPPY WITH PAKISTAN OR MUSHARRAF??

private individuals can write whatever they want .... to sell their books ... and make a few million dollars in the process!!

**Jay** · 08 Sep 04,, 22:48

Acually if you read the excerpt, you would know that he's not trying to scare but just stated the facts.

Are you denying the whole hoopla about Abdul Quadir Khan, Mahmood and Majeed ?? Are you denying the fact that AQ Khan was dismissed and given an official pardon ??

Excerpts from a Book .... naturally meant for sale ... at a very nice time too ... the writer had a lot odf sense where all the money was ..
private individuals can write whatever they want .... to sell their books ... and make a few million dollars in the process!!

Going by your logic journalists always write the truth. This is not a piece of editorial from an unnamed NYT Editor, it has the author' name on the top.
So whats the fuss? Is it bcoz only the articles you post quoting "Indian" sources are the only true gem and rest of all are biased?? didnt you post Washn Post and NYT article that talked about Pakistan and Mushraff in big, green font? Arent they private individuals?? Whats the matter "Vision"??

**visioninthedark** · 08 Sep 04,, 23:38

Are You Denying The Fact That The Us Govt. Is Totally Satisfied With The Actions Of The Pakistan Govt. Against Terrorism And Nuclear Black-marketing??

**Jay** · 08 Sep 04,, 23:52

Lets see, this might answer your question, but you still havent answered my questions though.

VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) -- The nuclear black market used by Pakistan's top atomic scientist to sell nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea may be far bigger than initially feared, the U.N. nuclear watchdog and Western diplomats have said.

The father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, publicly confessed to leaking nuclear secrets on Wednesday, and several Western diplomats told Reuters they suspected the Pakistan-led black market uncovered by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) might only be the tip of the iceberg.

"Our big priority is to figure out if there are any other countries that might have benefited from this nuclear network," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

Media attention has focused on Khan's atomic aid to Tripoli, Tehran and Pyongyang. But Western diplomats said it could not be ruled out that other countries had been customers of Khan's network of nuclear "middlemen."

"This is what we are all worried about," said one Western diplomat. He declined to say what other countries might have been customers of Khan.

In contrast to media reports that the nuclear black market Khan used was small, diplomats said the available evidence indicated it is massive. Its aim is to skirt international sanctions and sell potentially weapons-related technology to nations under embargo.

"Clearly what came out of Libya is that this is much bigger and more extensive than was previously thought," said a second Western diplomat.

In December, Libya said it would allow international experts to destroy its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes. Diplomats said Libya had provided the IAEA with key evidence to implicate Khan in Tripoli's illicit procurement of uranium enrichment equipment -- a key technology in making nuclear weapons.

The second diplomat said the size of this black market, which spans the Eurasian landmass, should not be underestimated.

"It's not as big as the automotive industry, but it's certainly bigger than the tiddlywinks industry," he said.

Diplomats said the "middlemen" who helped countries like Iran, North Korea and Libya acquire sensitive nuclear technology operated in Germany, Netherlands, Malaysia and United Arab Emirates -- and possibly other states as yet undisclosed.

'Could not have acted alone'
Diplomats also doubted Khan's statement that he had arranged it all himself and that Pakistan's government and army knew nothing of his actions. They said it was inconceivable Khan acted alone given the interest Pakistan's military takes in the country's nuclear programme.

At the same time, some Vienna-based diplomats said the most important issue was not who did what but that the investigation by the IAEA uncovered every tentacle of the global nuclear black market so that it could be destroyed.

"The most important thing is that this never happens again," said the first diplomat, who added that export controls on all sensitive nuclear technology across the globe must be tightened to prevent rogue states from developing atomic weapons.

Several diplomats said they believed Khan had either directly or indirectly supplied Libya with designs for nuclear weapons and they feared these designs could have ended up in Iran and North Korea.

Tehran insists U.S. allegations that its civilian nuclear power programme is a front for developing the bomb are false and says its atomic ambitions are purely peaceful.

Western diplomats remain skeptical.

A third diplomat said Khan may be able to provide the "silver bullet" showing he sold Tehran not only uranium enrichment technology, which has peaceful uses, but know-how that could only be used for bombs.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapc....nuclear.reut/

Black Market Nukes
Many in the atomic underground claim they were ignorant, and innocent. Will anyone be punished?
Reviled in the global community for spreading nuclear technology throughout the world, Abdul Qadeer Khan remains a national hero in Pakistan
By Michael Hirsh and Sarah Schafer

Feb. 23 issue - A lone, elderly guard sits at the entrance to the Scomi Precision Engineering plant, a drab single-story building in the middle of a tree-lined industrial park in Kuala Lumpur. The plant, supposedly a supplier to Libya's nuclear-weapons program, is still up and running, contrary to CIA Director George Tenet's recent assertion that Malaysian authorities had shuttered it. In fact, Scomi officials are only too happy to take you around, saying they have nothing to hide. But this is not your run-of-the-mill factory tour. Rather than proudly displaying their wares, the executives are mostly interested in parading their ignorance.
Mainly they say they have no idea what they're manufacturing. Rohaida Ali Badaruddin, the PR director, grabs a domino-size metal part from a table covered with "product samples." "Something like this—no one in the world could know what this is for!" she says. Factory manager Lokman Omar picks up a black cylinder while Rohaida, who wears a headscarf and funky glasses, giggles. "I don't know what it is!" she says.

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The CIA says it knows quite well what Scomi is doing. Last August, the company's name was found stamped in bold letters on five crates of centrifuge parts seized en route to Libya. Since then Scomi has been at the center of an international detective story that has uncovered an astonishing global nuclear-weapons "black market." All of it leads back to Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who fathered the underground network. In pursuit of both profits and a kind of Islamic nuclear parity, Khan passed on equipment and know-how to Iran and Libya, and made offers to Iraq and most recently Syria, officials say. Khan also helped North Korea's covert program.

Nuclear experts are aghast at the size of the network, which extends from Switzerland to Japan to Dubai. Over 30 years, Khan put together what Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called "a veritable Wal-Mart" for nuclear-weapons buyers, a not-so-secret netherworld where proliferation meshed with globalization. Khan even held nuclear-related symposiums. "The horse is out of the barn. At this point, we can't stop the technology from spreading," says former Clinton official Gary Samore. One senior U.S. official told NEWSWEEK that Khan's role in destabilizing the 21st century will "loom up there" with Hitler's and Stalin's impact in the 20th.

Even so, most of the A.Q. Khan network's key operatives will likely escape punishment, officials concede. Khan himself benefits from the delicate politics of the war on terror. Pakistan, not Iraq, is probably the world's most dangerous breeding ground for both WMD and terror. But Pakistan is also a key U.S. ally. U.S. officials had to swallow hard while President Pervez Musharraf only mildly disciplined Khan, a national hero, dismissing him from his ceremonial role as adviser. NEWSWEEK has learned that it was the IAEA, rather than the Bush administration, that first put pressure on Pakistan to force Khan to publicly reveal his central role in the network.

Other players in the network claim they had no knowledge of the overall plot. A Malaysian government official absolves Scomi, saying "the parts produced ... were of a generic nature." The middleman was Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir, a Dubai businessman whom President Bush identified in a speech last week as the network's "chief financial officer and money launderer." Scomi officials admit they set up the plant specifically to fill his orders. But even Tahir, a Sri Lankan Muslim, has been absolved by his hosts. "The government feels he didn't do anything wrong," the Malaysian official told NEWSWEEK. "He was just accepting orders as a businessman." Another associate of Tahir's, a British businessman named Paul Griffin, said in a telephone interview from Dubai that he had never done business in Libya, Iran or North Korea. "I wouldn't touch the nuclear or weapons business," Griffin insisted. "I'm a pacifist."

The Bush administration is weighing possible sanctions against Malaysia. Last week Bush also announced a new counterproliferation initiative that would effectively ban fissionable nuclear fuel from every country except the ones already allowed to manufacture it, like America. The proposal would create a brazen double standard, angering most states. It would also do nothing to clean up the vast amounts of loose highly enriched uranium already out there.

In any case, the most pressing issue may not be how far-flung the A.Q. Khan network is. It is what Khan's promiscuity with nuclear secrets might mean at home in Pakistan. Prior to 9/11, one Pakistani scientist connected to the nuclear-weapons program met Osama bin Laden, who asked him: "Why don't you come and help us build these things?" according to press reports and statements by the scientist's son. The scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, told bin Laden that making a nuke was too complicated, his son says. Mahmood was arrested in November 2001 and held for two months while Pakistani intelligence and the FBI interrogated him. But he, too, was set free.

With Mark Hosenball and John Barry in Washington and Ron Moreau in Pakistan

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904/site/newsweek/

Pakistan Knew of Nuclear Black Market
Sunday, March 07 2004 @ 12:31 PM Eastern Standard Time
Nuclear Proliferation
George Jahn
U.N. investigators are increasingly certain Pakistan government leaders knew the country's top atomic scientist was supplying other nations with nuclear technology and designs, particularly North Korea, diplomats told The Associated Press. While rogue nations were the main customers of the nuclear black market, sales of enriched uranium and warhead drawings have fed international fears that terrorists also could have bought weapons technology or material, the diplomats said. The investigation has widened beyond Iran, Libya and North Korea the identified customers of the network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan they said, speaking on condition of anonymity in a series of interviews.

The diplomats' assessment comes about half way through the probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency and western intelligence services into the Khan network, whose tentacles extended from Pakistan to Dubai, Malaysia, South Korea, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Britain, the Netherlands and beyond with potential ties to Syria, Turkey and Spain. Investigators told AP they expect to complete the probe by June, eight months after U.S. officials confronted the Pakistani government with suspicions about Khan, setting into motion events that led the father of Islamabad's nuclear program to confess last month. Despite denials by the Pakistani government, investigators now are certain that some, if not all, of the country's decision makers were aware of Khan's dealings, especially with North Korea, which apparently helped Islamabad build missiles in exchange for aid with its nuclear arms program, said one diplomat.

"In all cases except Pakistan, we are sure there was no government involvement," he said. "In Pakistan, it's hard to believe all this happened under their noses and nobody knew about it." The diplomats didn't say which parts of the Pakistani government might have known of Khan's black market activity - military, political or both. Andrew Koch, of Jane's Defense Weekly, said he ran into evidence that senior military officers knew of Khan's sideline four years ago when he attended a military technology exhibition in Karachi. There, the booth of A.Q. Khan's Research Laboratories, complete with pamphlets offering uranium enrichment equipment, shared space with displays of electronics, anti-tank missiles and other items sold by the government defense industry, he said.

"I picked up the (Khan) brochures and I inquired whether everything inside was for sale and was told, 'yes, of course, it all had government approval and was available for sale and export,'" he said from Washington. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, has insisted his government was not involved. "The Pakistani government has never and will never proliferate," he told a meeting of world leaders in January in Davos, Switzerland, pledging to prosecute all "anti-state" elements found culpable. But his pardon of Khan led to speculation the scientist agreed to keep silent on any government involvement in exchange for avoiding punishment.

Much of what was sold were expensive and high-tech uranium enrichment centrifuge components to Libya which has confessed to trying to build weapons of mass destruction and Iran, which denies such ambitions and says its enrichment plans are not for warheads but nuclear power. Such equipment would be useless to terrorists lacking the space and expertise needed to set up thousands of centrifuges in series and repeatedly recycle isotopes until they were weapons grade. The tens of millions of dollars needed to buy the equipment might also be a deterrent. But the diplomats identified two recent discoveries traces of highly enriched uranium apparently of Russian origin found in Iran, and drawings of a nuclear warhead surrendered by Libya as representing a potential fast track for terrorists looking to build a weapon.

The uranium apparently was sold by individuals in the black market and not by the Russian government and carried a signature typical of enrichment in the former Soviet Union, the diplomats said. While short of the 90 percent weapons level, it was enriched enough to make it suitable for a warhead with much less equipment and effort than needed to enrich natural uranium. "We're talking a couple of dozen centrifuges, as compared to about 1,000," said one diplomat. The engineers' drawings of a nuclear weapon, now under IAEA seal in the United States, were of Chinese origin. The texts accompanying them were in both Chinese and English, some handwritten. China is widely assumed to have supplied much of the clandestine nuclear technology that Khan used to establish Pakistan as a nuclear power in 1998.

With such high-tech drawings and about 50 pounds of highly enriched uranium, nuclear experts associated with terrorist groups could make a crude warhead, said one diplomat. "The simplest way to go about it is to get ready-made nuclear material and weapons design, and from what's been found in Iran and Libya both seem to be available on the market," said another. Investigators cannot say whether other countries or groups have the drawings. Al-Qaida has shown an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

Published by The Sentinel (Hosted by Pakistan-Facts.com)
http://www.pakistan-facts.com/articl...40307173128340

**Ray** · 09 Sep 04,, 00:15

I am not too sure that the US is 100% satisfied with any govt.

They want their money's worth.

Jay,

That was chilling. Real chilling.

Before anything bad happens, I think I will chillax.