Security

Nuke Smuggler Peddled Missile-Ready Bomb Designs (Updated Again)

The world’s most notorious nuclear smuggler may be even more of a monster than we thought. A.Q. Khan — the father of Pakistan’s A-bomb — pimped nuclear gear and expertise all over the world. He even gave Libya the designs for a bulky, crude atomic weapon. But the blueprints recently revealed to be on the […]

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The world's most notorious nuclear smuggler may be even more of a monster than we thought.

A.Q. Khan -- the father of Pakistan's A-bomb -- pimped nuclear gear and expertise all over the world. He even gave Libya the designs for a bulky, crude atomic weapon. But the blueprints recently revealed to be on the hard drive of Khan's Swiss partners could be "far more troubling" than these previous sales, the Washington Post reports. Because the plans provide "instructions for building a compact device," which "might allow for delivery by ballistic missile."

"To many of these countries, it's all about size and weight," said David Albright, [head of the Institute for Science and International Security,* who's set to unveil the blueprint's contents in a forthcoming report**]. "They need to be able to fit the device on the missiles they have... These would have been ideal for two of Khan's other major customers,
Iran and North Korea."*

"They're basically designs from Pakistan's nuclear arsenal," Albright tells CNN.

The Post says these drawings were "discovered in 2006." But a "senior diplomat" tells the Associated Press than the International Atomic Energy Association knew about "a sophisticated nuclear weapons design being peddled electronically by the black-market ring as far back as 2005."

[In] a panel discussion on Nov. 7, 2005, [IAEA chief Mohamed] ElBaradei spoke of at least one weapons design being copied by the Khan network onto a CD-ROM "that went somewhere that we haven't seen" and added, "That gives you an indication of ... how much the technology had (been) disseminated."

Which raises the alarming possibility that there are multiple electronic copies of these blueprints, floating around. For that reason -- among many others -- Albright says it is imperative that international inspectors finally be allowed to question Khan. Pakistan's response, courtesy of an embassy spokesman: "It considers the A.Q. Khan affair to be over."

Two weeks ago, Khan launched a media campaign, to recant his earlier smuggling confessions.
Pakistan's papers and clerics renewed their calls to have him freed from house arrest. And even these new revelations -- that he might have stolen his own country's nuclear weapons blueprints -- don't seem to have changed many minds.

"Isn’t it heroic that Dr. Khan, in a country that does not even build motor bike engines, successfully built a uranium enrichment plant? If all it takes was smuggling and putting together a team of scientists to reverse engineer, why so few countries in the world are nuclear capable?" asks Pakistani blogger Zubair Ahmed.

Steve Clemons, with the New America Foundation, has another question: "Given what we know of this guy [Khan], why hasn't an armed drone done to him what American and Israeli forces have done to lesser villains?"

UPDATE: Is a smaller, missile-ready A-bomb really more frightening than a big, clunky one? James Action, over at Arms Control Wonk, isn't so sure.

North Korea’s bomb... is already an effective deterrent, even if it can’t be delivered by missile. The threat of delivery by an airplane or container ship works just fine...

I don’t want to underplay the seriousness of Khan selling weapon designs. But, from a proliferators perspective, mounting a warhead on a missile is surely only a modest strategic advantage compared to obtaining the Bomb in the first place.

UPDATE 2: Albright's report is up. In it, he gives a fascinating rundown of how news of the smuggled blueprints spread. A snip:

The Pakistanis were upset, since they realized that the designs had to be from their nuclear weapons arsenal. They were genuinely shocked; Khan may have transferred his own country’s most secret and dangerous information to foreign smugglers so that they could sell it for a profit. And these advanced nuclear weapons designs may have long ago been sold off to some of most treacherous regimes in the world.

Albright also makes it clear that Khan's Swiss partners, the Tinners, were on the CIA's payroll as informants -- and they still didn't tell the Agency about these nuclear weapon designs.

[Photo: Portfolio]

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