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Joby Warrick of the Washington Post spotlighted the new book out by David Albright that sheds more light into the AQ Khan network: From the article:

As troops massed on his border near the start of the Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein weighed the purchase of a $150 million nuclear “package” deal that included not only weapons designs but also production plants and foreign experts to supervise the building of a nuclear bomb, according to documents uncovered by a former U.N. weapons inspector.

The offer, made in 1990 by an agent linked to disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, guaranteed Iraq a weapons-assembly line capable of producing nuclear warheads in as little as three years …

Warrick cities newly uncovered memos that David Albright at ISIS obtained and is in his new book, Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies,
released last week. These documents provide a deeper insight and broader scope than previously known about the AQ Khan network.

Most interesting from one memo states:

“Pakistan had to spend a period of 10 years and an amount of 300 million U.S. dollars to get it,” begins one of the memos. “Now, with the practical experience and worldwide contacts Pakistan has developed, you could have A.B. in about three years’ time and by spending about $150 million.” “A.B.” was understood to mean “atomic bomb…”

Related to the recent posts on Khan, Albright was also on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer last night briefly talking about Iran and AQ Khan. He noted

BLITZER: The father of the Pakistani bomb, you write extensively in the book, “Peddling Peril” he’s a free man right now, right?

ALBRIGHT: That’s right.

BLITZER: Is he under any restrictions whatsoever?

ALBRIGHT: No. He’s actually launched a media campaign to try to say he didn’t do any of this. And so, it’s almost outrageous that he want us becoming free mounting a media campaign to clear his name supposedly, and ironically when he’s in court, he actually says he has no contact with western media, so he’s trying to have it all ways, and I think it’s a travesty in justice.

BLITZER: Because he was involved in helping not only the Iranians but the Iraqis and others, Libya, right?

ALBRIGHT: That’s right.

BLITZER: You write extensively about that in the book.

ALBRIGHT: That’s right.

BLITZER: And then he was under house arrest by the Pakistanis, but no law even under house arrest.

ALBRIGHT: That’s right.

BLITZER: And the U.S. has never really had an access to questioning directly.

ALBRIGHT: That’s right. No one has. And the Pakistani government served as questioners for all, including the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency and other countries. It was very unsatisfactory.

Comment [2]

A side-note on that treasure trove of documents that AQ Khan gave Simon Henderson.

I keep recommending Henderson’s account of the documents in the Times as background, but allow me to make another recommendation — Henderson’s 1993 review of his involvement in the Pakistan nuclear issue in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, followed by a lengthy interview with Khan.

It’s a goldmine, not least for how Khan chooses to handle direct questions about the nuclear weapons production that we now know was occurring at Kahuta.

The most interesting part, to me, is Henderson’s revelation that Khan kept a diary in English:

But Khan looks forward to being able to collaborate with me on a book. He admitted that he has kept a diary since 1976, when he returned from Europe to start enrichment work. It is written in English “so that my wife can read it when I am gone.” I put in a request for a copy.

Wow, I’d love to see a copy of that. Wonder if the ISI grabbed it when Khan went under house arrest or if there is a second copy floating about.

Comment [1]

I notice that Jeff Smith and Joby Warrick have yet another story based on documents provided by AQ Khan to Simon Henderson. (For more about the documents, read Henderson’s account in the Times online.)

This story pisses me off. (I suspect the editors, not the reporters, are at fault here.)

The lede to the story is about Iran, but Khan doesn’t give a whit about Iran. He’s telling a story about domestic Pakistani politics. It’s like sending two reporters to watch a production of Othello, and then publishing a story about Ottoman maritime policy. (To refresh: Othello is sent from Venice to Cyprus to defend the island against the Turks. They Turks never appear; their fleet is destroyed in a storm.) The Post actually lists the players as though this were some off-beat summer stock production.

The main allegation is that Iran sent a senior military official, Ali Shamkhani, to Pakistan to pick up three nuclear weapons promised by the Pakistani military. When the Chairman of the Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff says they’ll have to discuss that further, all hell breaks loose. The Pakistanis send Shamkhani packing with little more than the promise of some refuse to be provided by AQ Khan from Kahuta:

Khan’s written statement to Henderson states that after [Ali] Shamkhani’s arrival in Islamabad on a government plane, he told the chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff committee that “he had come . . . to collect the promised nuclear bombs.”

When the chairman, Adm. Iftikhar Ahmed Sirohey, proposed to discuss other matters first and then “see how Pakistan could assist the Iranians in their nuclear program,” Shamkhani reportedly became irate, Khan wrote. He reminded Sirohey that “first Gen. Zia (ul Haq, the Pakistani president until 1988) and then Gen. Beg had promised assistance and nuclear weapons and he had specifically come to collect the same.”

[snip]

Khan said that after hearing Shamkhani’s demand for three finished weapons, Sirohey demurred and that other ministers backed him up. But Beg pressed then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her top military aide “to honour (Beg’s) . . . commitment,” Khan wrote.

Under pressure, the aide asked Khan to “get components of two old (P-1) discarded machines and pack them into boxes with 2 sets of drawings,” which were passed to Iran through an intermediary, he said. P-1 is the designation for the centrifuge model used in Pakistan.

I am writing a longer piece about the other two stories in this series as they relate to North Korea, but I have essentially the same complaint about all three: The apparent faith placed in AQ Khan.

There is good reason to be wary of Khan’s statements. He is not an historian, attempting to document the operation of a proliferation network for future scholars, or a journalist with a big scoop. He’s a perp, trying to save his own skin and repair his reputation. His motive is to demonstrate that everything he did, he did:

(1) with the approval, or indeed at the behest, of senior officials in Pakistan (which is not, precisely, the same thing as the Government of Pakistan), and

(2) in the service of Pakistan’s national interest.

That is the gist of Khan’s March 2004 “statement” to the Pakistani government, his handwritten December 10, 2003 letter to his wife Hendrina, and his 5-page description of his government’s nuclear cooperation with China. Indeed, the apparent reason that the Post won’t publish the documents is that they contain a lengthy list of likely litigious Pakistani officials whom Khan accuses of accepting bribes. (In the print version, there is an image of the statement with the name of one of Khan’s employees blacked out.) Khan is implicating others, casting his own actions as having served his country.

The whole Iran angle is just backdrop, like the never-seen Turkish fleet in Othello. The real drama is the fight between the Army and the civilian government, represented by General Beg and Prime Minister Bhutto. In this play, Khan is neither Othello nor Iago. He’s Roderigo — the fool used by one powerful force to get at another, then betrayed.

Seriously, the Post’s theater critic could have written a better story.

Who suggested giving Iran nuclear weapons? Not innocent AQ Khan, but the powerful Army Chief of Staff. Who decided to provide Iran with (old) centrifuges as a consolation prize? Not gentle AQ Khan, but Benazir Bhutto’s military aide. Seriously, I think Khan missed a career writing for stage and film.

Clearly the Iranians were up to no good with Pakistan, as were the Libyans, North Koreans and probably a few others. Khan played a central role in that relationship, so his account is interesting, if not dispositive. But to read Khan’s account of the wrangling in Islamabad as a story about motivations in Tehran is a bizarre editorial choice that speaks volumes about the state of the Post.

If the Post is worried about lawsuits arising from Khan’s allegations, doesn’t that say something about the credibility of the documents? Either the Post should have the courage to publish the documents in full, as David Albright et al. have suggested, or admit that there are real problems with Khan’s credibility.

Comment [19]

Enough slicing and a salami ends up like this.

What happens when a government with a nuclear program systematically works itself into the position of being “a ‘screw turn’ away” from building a nuclear weapon? On one hand, let’s say this government wants to preserve its relations with a great power ally that arms it and shields it from sanctions; on the other hand, its leaders compete to be more pro-nuclear, aiming to win the favor of the military, the scientific establishment, and the public.

The balance can be hard to maintain. With enough jostling, it could tip.

To get a sense of the problem, take a few moments to read this declassified memorandum from the U.S. National Security Council staff in 1987, previously described by Mark Hibbs in the December 28, 2009 issue of NuclearFuel. Titled, “Dealing with Pakistan’s Nuclear Program: A U.S. Strategy,” it expresses the difficulties faced by the White House in persuading the Government of Pakistan (GOP) to stay within certain “nuclear red lines” — including no enrichment beyond 5% — while trying to assure Congress that the situation was still under control.

Substitute “Iran” for “Pakistan” and “the West” for “Congress,” and you could almost imagine memos like this one being written over the last couple of years in the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai.

As it happens, Pakistan seems to have crossed the enrichment “red line” during or shortly after an armed crisis with India in early 1990. (Senior Pakistani diplomat Abdul Sattar hinted as much at a 1994 event sponsored by the Stimson Center — see p. 42 of this edited transcript.) Afterward, the White House would no longer certify to Congress that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons, sanctions kicked in, and nothing remained of the alliance for an entire decade.

Which Brings Us to Now

In his first full-scale report Iran report as IAEA Director-General (GOV/2010/10), Yukia Amano is pretty direct about “possible military dimensions”:

The information available to the Agency in connection with these outstanding issues is extensive and has been collected from a variety of sources over time. It is also broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved. Altogether, this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. These alleged activities consist of a number of projects and sub-projects, covering nuclear and missile related aspects, run by military related organizations.

The concluding summary of the report opens with another crisp statement:

While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.

That’s a non-certification if there ever was one.

The Bad News

We don’t know what red lines Moscow and Beijing might have communicated to Tehran, if any — although Iran’s own decision to enrich “up to 20%” may have triggered this response from the Russians.

Among other provocative actions described in GOV/2010/10, the Iranians also rushed to commence the re-enrichment process without waiting for IAEA safeguards inspectors to show up — an incident that occasioned an unusual short report to the IAEA Board of Governors last week.

The Iranians have now relocated nearly their entire stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP), where re-enrichment has begun. Yet GOV/2010/10 documents no progress toward setting up process lines to make new fuel assemblies for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) — the ostensible reason for re-enrichment. Nor is there word of any work on a process line to convert the re-enriched UF₆ gas from PFEP to the uranium oxide needed for the fuel.

The report does record that, as of last November, a process line has been completed at Iran’s Uranium Conversion Facility to produce “natural uranium metal ingots” for R&D purposes. And if that weren’t good enough, another process line is planned to make metal from 19.7% enriched UF₆ — basically what’s now being produced at PFEP. Again, that’s for R&D purposes.

As many readers will know, U metal — enriched to 80% or more — is the stuff of which bombs are made. Iran may not have the Bomb, but it has acquired a complete salami-slicing kit, and knows how to use it.

(At least we can’t say that we had no warning at all. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) publicly signaled interest in making U metal ingots as early as 2005. The idea was reiterated as recently as last April.)

The Good News

Amid the mounting fatalism and hand-wringing, what separates Iran in 2010 from Pakistan in 1990 is too easily overlooked. Iran is an NPT member state. Its nuclear facilities — the declared and operational ones, anyway — are under containment and surveillance, meaning that what happens there is visible to the world in short order. Also, these facilities can’t be defended effectively against the determined actions of one or more Western military powers — something Pakistan never had to contemplate. If push ever came to shove, the Iranians would have to start over again, and under very different circumstances.

For these reasons, withdrawal from the NPT would be a dicey business. And trying to sneak around the NPT, as the Qom/Fordow experience teaches, is not as easy as it once might have seemed.

While a diplomatic solution remains out of reach — and a military solution, if it can be called that, remains the option of last resort — vigilance and firmness can still keep the screwdriver from turning.

Comment [23]

You have no doubt seen the Times of London story, in which Catherine Philp claims to have obtained a 2007 “technical document” from from Iran that “describes the use of a neutron source, uranium deuteride, which independent experts confirm has no possible civilian or military use other than in a nuclear weapon.” (The Times published a more detailed discussion of UD3 in a separate article).

I have no idea whether the document is authentic, but I do want to confirm that Pakistan appears to have used uranium deuteride (UD3) as a neutron initiator.

The Times story doesn’t adequately convey that this is a relatively novel source of neutrons for a bomb design. Technically inclined readers may recall that earlier accusations against Iran focused on more traditional route of polonium-beryllium (Po-Be). Several colleagues have emailed me, expressing surprise that Pakistan is alleged to have used UD3 instead of the Po-Be.

But yes, it appears that both China and Pakistan explored the use of UD3 as a neutron source. There are two data points of which I am aware.

The first, and most colorful, is a well-known picture (above) of AQ Khan from the cover of his book, modestly titled Dr. A. Q. Khan on Science and Education.

AQ Khan graces the cover, holding a soccer ball (which is basically the size and configuration of the shell of high explosives in a nuclear weapon), standing in front of a blackboard showing a nuclear weapon diagram. The most shocking detail is the notation “Uran Deuteride Initiator.”

(A funny side note, the book Deception (2007) by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark reproduces the image, with a portion of the blackboard redacted. Unfortunately, they redacted the wrong portion!)

Now, you may be thinking “How does that work?”

Four scientists from the Southwest Institute of Fluid Mechanics in Sichuan (which is the part of China’s nuclear weapons complex responsible for hydrodynamic research) published a detailed explanation in a 1989 paper entitled “Fusion Produced by Implosion of Spherical Explosive.” The paper is included in the proceedings of an American Physical Society meeting published as Shock Compression of Condensed Matter, (S. C. Schmidt, James N. Johnson, Lee W. Davison, editors, North-Holland, 1990.)

I had previously sort of steered clear of mentioning this on the blog, but between AQ Khan’s entrepreneurial activities and the Times of London, there’s not much point in denying it.

I won’t put the paper on line, but you can readily purchase your own copy.

Update | 3:09 pm ISIS has placed Farsi and English versions of the document online, along with a short analysis that basically describes the process outlined in the Dong et al paper.

Late Update | 6:12 pm Danny Stillman and Tom Reed mentioned the picture and the Dong et al paper in Nuclear Express on pp 250-251:

In 1997, a publishing house in Lahore, Pakistan, relaesed a collection of mid-1980s to mid-1990s lectures by A. Q. Khan entitled Dr. A.Q. Khan on Science and Eduction. This book discloses some of Dr. Khan’s early knowledge about nuclear weapons, including a sophisticated neutron initiation scheme. Initiators are the devices needed to assure an adequate supply of neutrons to the weapon core at the moment of maximum supercriticality. During World War II, the United States achieved this result by mixing beryllium and polonium at the center of an implosion. In later years the United States and most other nuclear weapons states turned to pulsed neutron tubes, essentially mini-accelerators, to produce a surge of neutrons when needed. But in 1989, at an American Physical Society conference in Albuquerque, the Chinese explained their very different approach to neutron generators. That Chinese initiation scheme appears with Dr. Khan’s book, and thus the origins of Pakistan’s A-bomb are unambiguously confirmed.

I should say that the first place I heard about all this was a talk we organized at Harvard for Danny. I didn’t link it to Danny since the talk was under the Chatham House-rule, but since he was able to put it in a book …

Comment [77]

The twain between my ACW posts and my day job at the Stimson Center have not met — until now. The following analysis, a trimmed-down version of which has been posted on Stimson’s website, seems way too wonkish to be confined there.

On November 28, 2009 the Pakistani media reported that President Asif Ali Zardari “divested himself” of his “powers” as Chairman of the National Command Authority, transferring them to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Pakistan’s history has been marked by triangular jockeying among Pakistan’s Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Army Chiefs, as well as Constitutional gyrations facilitating Army, Parliamentary, and Presidential rule. Against this backdrop, does this change in the Chairmanship of the NCA have meaning? Are changes in the NCA and public releases of information about them helpful or harmful to nuclear stabilization on the subcontinent?

General Pervez Musharraf is taking well-deserved lumps for his long tenure as Pakistan’s Army Chief, Chief Executive, and then President. But one undeniably positive result of his tenure was a stable, institutional structure for Pakistan’s nuclear decision making. Feroz Khan’s much awaited book about Pakistan’s nuclear history will delve into details; the short form is that Musharraf stood up a dedicated military organization, the Strategic Plans Division which was located at Joint Service Headquarters in 1999 to work on nuclear-related matters. A Nuclear Command Authority, chaired by Musharraf, was established in February 2000. The composition and functions of the NCA were clarified when Musharraf unilaterally promulgated the NCA Ordinance in December 2007, after he dissolved the National Assembly. (The text of this ordinance can be found here) It is not possible to tell from the public record whether the NCA design, as promulgated in 2007, differed from its initial conception. When Zardari replaced Musharraf as President of Pakistan in 2008, he nominally sat at the apex of this decision-making body.

Under the 2007 ordinance, other members of the NCA serving under the President were the Prime Minister of Pakistan (Vice Chairman); the Minister for Foreign Affairs; the Minster for Defense; the Minister for Finance; the Minister for Interior; the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee; the Chief of Army Staff; the Chief of Naval Staff; and the Chief of Air Staff. The Director General of the Strategic Plans Division, Gen. Khalid Kidwai (pictured above, with the author), has served as Secretary to the NCA since its inception.

The scope of the 2007 ordinance covered space as well as nuclear applications and technologies. The powers of the Chairman included establishing “committees and entities” as he deems fit. Two Committees were previously announced: An Employment Control Committee, chaired by the President of Pakistan, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs as Deputy Chairman; and a Development Control Committee chaired by the President of Pakistan, with the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, serving as Deputy Chairman. The Employment Control Committee’s membership mirrored that of the 2007 NCA Membership, with the notable variation in the number two slot. The Development Control Committee had a decided military cast. Presumably, the Chairmanship of these two Committees has now shifted to the Prime Minister, but there has been, as yet, no official word on this, on whether a new Vice Chairman of the NCA has been designated, and if so, who this person is, or whether the composition of the NCA or its committees have been changed in some other manner.

The functions of the NCA, as spelled out in the 2007 ordinance, included the exercise of command and control over nuclear and space programs; supervision, management control, and audits of programs and budgets; authorizing “specialized scientific and technological work”; authority to hire, fire, promote and transfer personnel; personnel reliability, safety and security programs; and the authority “to take measures regarding employees in respect to their movement, communication, privacy, assembly or association in the public interest or in the interest of integrity, security or defense of Pakistan or friendly relations with foreign states.” There is no public word, as yet, on whether the language of the new ordinance comports with the 2007 version.

Far more is known about the new NCA structure and functioning in Pakistan than in India. On January 4, 2003 the Cabinet Committee on Security issued a spare press release “on operationalization of India’s nuclear deterrent.” It conveyed the information that the Government of India had created a Political Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, which could authorize the employment of nuclear weapons. An Executive Council, chaired by the national security adviser, was also formed to provide inputs for the NCA and to execute the directives given to it by the Political Council. The membership of both Councils has not been officially released. Presumably, at a minimum, the Cabinet Committee on Security sits on the Political Council.

India has a firmly entrenched Parliamentary system of government, which suggests that its NCA, unlike Pakistan’s is not subject to significant changes. Despite and because of Pakistan’s political upheavals, the Army has remained, by far, the strongest voice on national security matters, as well as the arbiter between contesting political leaders. Until these circumstances change, no matter which civilian sits at the apex of Pakistan’s NCA, the decision making power rests in uniform. Collective civil-military decisions remain ideal, but votes behind closed doors on crucial national security issues in Pakistan have always been heavily weighted.

No government, including the U.S. Government, says much about its National Command Authority. One important reason for doing so is to improve deterrence. Another is to promote reassurance for domestic and international audiences. The Government of Pakistan might consider releasing more information to demonstrate institutional durability during a period of heightened political uncertainty. The Government of India might consider releasing more information to disabuse those who might think that a decapitation attack in extreme circumstances has any chance of success.

Comment [2]

Michael Krepon, in both his recent ACW article and in the Stimson Center Occasional Paper on the 1990 Indo-Pak crisis , does a thorough job of discussing the problems associated with some the conclusions raised in Seymour Hersh’s past investigative work on nuclear weapons and Pakistan. Since I cannot add anything new to that discussion, I would like to talk about a related issue: just how effective US “aid” might be in preventing Pakistani nukes from falling into the wrong hands.

Hersh mentions a disturbing possibility in his recent New Yorker article, that Pakistan would try to remove some nuclear weapons from the “count” that his report says has been turned over to the US. Such a possibility is far from surprising. In fact, Hersh’s listings of various areas of cooperation with the US (including giving target lists, mobilization plans, and security plans) are some of the least credible portions of the article. But the big danger might be that Pakistan actually does some of the things Hersh says they did. That additional danger includes the consequences of Pakistan establishing a sort of second arsenal outside of the normal nuclear depots. It could also include any plan to turn over nukes or their components to the US.

Complex Systems and Nuclear Security

Any of the potential actions Hersh talks about could cause what Scott Sagan calls the “problem of redundancy problem” for the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. I first read about this issue in Scott’s wonderful book, The Limits of Safety where he describes a problem the US faced with its early warning radar in Thule. Because Thule’s radar guarded an important corridor for Soviet ICBM’s, it represented in important target for a precursor attack, an attack only on that site by a short-range nuclear missile; perhaps one fired from a Soviet submarine. This was before bhang-meters were put into outer space to detect nuclear explosions. At that time, the US might not be able to detect a nuclear attack until the warheads started exploding over US cities if the base was destroyed. To prevent this, the Strategic Air Command started to position a B-52 on flying alert over the Thule radar base. That way, if Thule stopped reporting back to Headquarters, the B-52 could be contacted to check if Thule had been destroyed or if there had simply been a communications problem. All was going fine until the orbiting B-52 crashed.

Fortunately, it crashed seven miles or so away from Thule. If it had crashed into Thule it might have caused the US to respond to an assumed nuclear attack. This is an example of introducing redundant safeguards into a system if they are not totally independent. (It also shows how the connection can be not very obvious.) Scott has extended his ideas in the paper linked to above that discusses the connection between increasing security at US nuclear facilities and terrorism that is very analogous to some of the ways agreements between the US and Pakistan might increase the dangers of extremist elements getting a nuclear weapon.

Outside “Assistance” and Nuclear “Insecurity”

Consider the example that Hersh gives of how Pakistan might split its nuclear arsenal into a “normal” arsenal and a second “secret” arsenal that very few even in the Pakistani government know about. Again, I have no idea if this is true. (I strongly suspect it is not.) But for the moment let us assume it is. That means that a significant portion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons have been removed from the normal procedures for their care, use, and securing them. How does that decrease their security? It increases the so-called “insider” danger in many ways: First, the missile or airbases where the delivery vehicles are kept must have procedures in case of a nuclear alert to let in a strange force purportedly carrying nuclear weapons into the base. If those bases have nuclear weapons in the normal arsenal on site, this could be used to allow extremists masquerading themselves as this force onto the base, allowing them to get that much closer to the normal nuclear weapons.

Second, for these secret arsenals to be truly different than the normal arsenal, the technicians who assemble the nuclear weapons (if the implication in Hersh’s article that the nuclear component is kept in multiple parts such as the pit and conventional explosive is true) will be unfamiliar to the guards at secret arsenal depot. That too increases the possibilities for unauthorized people get close to nuclear weapons. And there are other possibilities for extremists getting access to nuclear weapons either because of the implications of agreements with the US or directly because of the mechanisms set up as part those agreements. Consider the possibility that an arrangement has been made for US troops (such as these teams of JSOC and DoE personnel) could come and take nuclear weapons away. Here, too, the biggest danger might be a terrorist group somehow passing themselves off as such a team and being given a nuclear weapon.

Of course, US assistance to Pakistan in securing nuclear weapons can be very helpful but the direct insertion of the US into securing these weapons could cause a significant increase in the dangers associated with them. These possibilities, which are not obvious and only result from the complex procedures implemented in securing nuclear weapons, must be thoroughly studied. Until that time, the best way of helping Pakistan is to provide money, if needed, for physical security and consultations for other dangers.

Comment [4]

Seymour Hersh deserves every one of many awards for investigative journalism he has received, but not for his reporting on Pakistan, where his sourcing is weak and his conclusions are suspect.

Hersh’s latest, Defending the Arsenal, Can Pakistan’s nuclear weapons be secured? (The New Yorker, November 16, 2009) has one headline grabbing assertion:

Current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that [the Obama] Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide additional security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis.

In return, Hersh says, “the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities.”

If there were any truth to Hersh’s story, those “specially trained American units” can now forget about helping Pakistan to secure its arsenal: Public revelation of such an agreement makes it about as palatable within Pakistan as changing that nation’s religious preference. But there are many good reasons to seriously doubt Hersh’s headline, and the sources he relied upon to reach this conclusion.

First, Pakistan’s military establishment doesn’t need to provide access to its most sensitive nuclear sites in order to receive money for equipment and training from the United States. Second, there is a wide trust deficit at present between Pakistan and the United States. Pakistan’s military does not trust the United States to get up close and personal with its crown jewels, which is why offers to provide help along these lines have been rebuffed in the past. (Perhaps this has something to do with other press reports, Hersh’s included, of plans for “specially trained American units” with a mission to swoop in and remove Pakistan’s nuclear assets in the event of government takeover by extremists or other dire scenarios.) If special units of the US military were to visit nuclear-related facilities in Pakistan, it is highly unlikely that they would be served tea and treated as guests. Third, the very few individuals in Pakistan who know truth from fiction regarding nuclear safety and security don’t speak to journalists about particulars.

The authoritative Pakistani rebuttal to Hersh’s article was provided to the Pakistani media by Gen. Tariq Majid, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee:

There is absolutely no question of sharing or allowing any foreign individual, entity or state any access to sensitive information about our nuclear assets. Our engagement with other countries … to learn more about international best practices for security of such assets is based on two clearly spelt out red lines – non intrusiveness and our right to pick and choose.

Pakistan has accepted, and hopefully will continue to accept, assistance to increase security of its nuclear assets – as long as it is provided at a safe distance.

Hersh’s previous work on Pakistan has also been faulty, especially his reporting on a crisis between India and Pakistan in 1990 (The New Yorker, On the Nuclear Edge, March 29, 1993) that, in his estimation, came very close to a nuclear exchange. This crisis was generated by a significant increase in turbulence within Kashmir, and by military exercises near fighting corridors carried out by both Pakistan and India. What gave Hersh’s article great credibility was a quote by Richard J. Kerr, then Deputy Director of the CIA, that the 1990 crisis “may be as close as we’ve come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more frightening than the Cuban missile crisis.”

This is an astounding quote that is presumably based, as Hersh reported, on evidence of a mass evacuation of Kahuta, the movement of a heavily guarded truck convoy from a suspected nuclear weapon storage facility in Balochistan, and the arming of F-16s with nuclear weapons on strip alert.

The 1990 crisis clearly had a serious potential for escalation, as did an earlier crisis in 1986-7 sparked by large-scale Indian exercises involving heavy armor and live ammunition. During the 1990 crisis, Pakistan resumed production of highly-enriched uranium and signaled its readiness to employ nuclear weapons if matters spiraled out of control. But were India and Pakistan close to a nuclear conflagration, as Hersh’s sources believed? The Stimson Center convened a meeting of crisis managers who were stationed in Islamabad, New Delhi and Washington to assess what actually transpired. (See Conflict Prevention and Confidence-Building Measures in South Asia: The 1990 Crisis, Michael Krepon and Mishi Faruqee, eds. April 1994.) The US defense attachés based in Islamabad and Delhi participated in this post mortem. They played a key role in crisis management, as the governments of India and Pakistan allowed them to visit areas where they could directly assess the level of Pakistani and Indian military readiness for warfare.

The participants of Stimson’s crisis evaluation, including the US Ambassadors to Pakistan and India in 1990, believed that there was no credible evidence for the most hair-raising of Hersh’s conclusions. Despite — or perhaps because of — the potential for escalation, both India and Pakistan refrained from mobilizing their ground forces during this crisis. India did not put armor in the field that would be required for a military campaign, and Pakistan held its strike corps in their cantonments.

The United States has been a trusted crisis manager for India and Pakistan since both countries acquired nuclear weapon capabilities. This role is becoming harder to play. Overblown reporting doesn’t help matters.

Comment [28]

For those us hoping that the Conference on Disarmament would get down to business on negotiation a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, Britain’s PermRep to the CD tweeted some very disappointing news:

Conference on Disarmament fails to unblock decision to start work on FMCT. Very disappointing that 1 country unable to join the compromise.

The “1 country” is Pakistan.

Reaching Critical Will has been following the ins and outs of Pakistani obstinance — even if one suspects that the particulars of the Pakistan’s objections, such as to the procedure for rotating the chair, belies Islamabad’s desire to keep churning out fissile material.

Reuters Jonathan Lynn also has a very good summary if you want a quick overview.

Comment [3]

New Year’s resolution: Get back to blogging regularly.

There were a couple of stories that I blogged about towards the end of last year—potential nuclear sales to Pakistan and Israel—that I had been meaning to follow up on but never got around to in the debris that was the end of 2008. For some of you, particularly readers of Mark Hibbs, some of this might be old news. If that applies you, my apologies.

According to a story from Hibbs in Nucleonics Week from November 6, it turns out that the Pakistan-China deal never actually was.

Apparently not only is there no agreement for new reactor sales but, at the moment, Pakistan could not afford them anyway. So, where did the story come from? According to Hibbs, it originated in Pakistan:

Some of these officials [his sources for the story] suggested that Pakistan last month raised the issue of Chinese PWR imports to media outlets to put pressure on the NSG to grant Pakistan—as it did India in September—an exemption from NSG trade restrictions banning reactor exports to states without full-scope safeguards.

In the December 15 Nucleonics Week Hibbs has an excellent background piece on a potential US-Israel deal in return for Israeli ratification of the CTBT. Predictably, many NSG members are unenthusiastic:

One official said that, in 2007 and 2008, some NSG members notified the US informally that they would not support granting an exception to Israel, and officials from some NSG member states suggested this month that CTBT ratification by Israel would not suffice to prompt the NSG to permit vendors in NSG members to export controlled nuclear items to Israel.

Several NSG representatives said that, to qualify for an exemption, Israel would have to take steps consistent with a future global fissile material cut-off treaty, or FMCT, such as agreeing to a verified shutdown of its reactor at Dimona, at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, which is widely believed to have produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Much also depends on personnel changes within Israel. Within the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, the Director General Gideon Frank and his deputy Ariel Levite have retired and were replaced by Shaul Chorev and David Danielli respectively. How they view the trade-offs potentially necessary to effect the deal is unclear. There will also certainly be a change at the very top with elections and Olmert standing down. In particular, Netanyahu who may well win, is known to vehemently oppose an FMCT.

The prospects for either of these deals in the short term are clearly poor (and so much the better some of us would say). In the longer term, however, I wouldn’t write them off. One interesting tidbit I picked up over Christmas is that the current IAEA Director-General is very strongly in favour of both of them. Although, of course, he isn’t much longer for this job. We wait to hear what his successor thinks.

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