A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout

The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation

Right-wing friends (are you listening, Howie?) love to tell me that, despite the fact that a Presidential Daily Briefing on intelligence from August 6, 2001 warned that al Qa'ida was planning to hijack airplanes and specifically mentioned Washington, DC and New York City as targets ("too vague" says Howie); that despite the fact that Richard Clarke, terrorism expert under three Presidents, criticized the Bush administration for treating the threat of terrorism on US soil too lightly and warned the administration a week before 9/11 that al Qa'ida's threats were serious; that despite the fact that the independent 9/11 Commission (that George W. Bush tried to stonewall) found that on September 11, 2001, the US government was unprepared "in every respect;" that somehow the disastrous events that took place on that day were all Bill Clinton's fault.

Fine. Right-wingers also put the blame for a four-year lame economy anywhere but on the Bush administration. It was Clinton's recession. The dot.com bubble burst. It was the jobs lost after 9/11. Anyone and everyone is to blame besides the man sitting in the White House. All the evils of the world began under the previous administration's watch. Fine.

Well, nuclear secrets left Pakistan, heading for Libya, and probably for Iran and North Korea, under the watch of George W. Bush. Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervid Musharraf (apparently in no danger of "regime change" despite the hollow allusions to liberty and democracy in Bush's inaugural address) allowed the illegal sales of nuclear weapon-making technology by A.Q. Khan, Pakistani scientist and the ceator of Pakistan's nuclear weapons threat. Musharraf chided Khan on Pakistani television. He can't be questioned or extradited by western authorities.

If nuclear weapons manufactured from Khan's plans, resources, and technology sales are used on Western targets, who will be to blame?

When the new Bush administration came into office in January 2001, the CIA briefed officials at the National Security Council on the dangers posed by Khan. The NSC officials recognized the threat as well as the need to get as much information as possible before acting, said two people involved in the talks.
"The suspicion was that the intelligence guys were all about reporting and watching and they had to overcome that," said Richard Falkenrath, an NSC staff member at the time. "The other question was, 'What would we do about Khan, what would Pakistan tolerate?'
"Throughout 2001, the CIA and MI6 tracked Khan's activities. A comprehensive assessment in March 2002 concluded that Khan's network had moved its base to Dubai and established production facilities in Malaysia. A few months later, new information led the agencies to conclude that Khan's network was central to a Libyan nuclear weapons program.
By January 2003, the British were concerned that "Khan's activities had now reached the point where it would be dangerous to allow them to go on," the report says.