Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

Footage of Khan’s appearances on television and on cinema newsreels had been studied along with his endless newspaper interviews and magazine profiles. The names of his close associates were noted—fellow scientists in the nuclear program, secretive background men who worked directly with him. His journeys around Pakistan, Asia, and to Europe were carefully charted; how he liked his favorite seat when flying with Pakistan Airways—3A in First Class—and that his accommodation choices in Europe’s capitals were usually presidential suites. It was there that he had met diplomats from China, Iran, and Iraq. Many of these hotel suites were already on kidon computers so that if it were required to bug them it would be possible to do so. Details of his sexual preferences were investigated. Did he have a liking for a particular kind of woman? Could any of the companions he had been seen with in public be open to blackmail?

The profile of Abdul Khan had been painstakingly built from a wide range of sources. Part of that planning included the recruiting of Horaj. He and Jamal had met again after that momentous day, February 4, 2004, when Khan had sat in a television studio in Islamabad, faced the camera and made one of the most astonishing confessions in the long history of treachery.

“I am solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear weapons material,” he intoned.

Before a stunned nation could adjust to the revelation, Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, dressed in commando fatigues—he had been an army general—took Khan’s place and announced that though “I was shocked by these revelations,” he would nevertheless pardon Khan, whom he called “my hero,” because of all his services to Pakistan. The excuse was less than the truth. Mossad knew that Musharraf could not afford to bring Khan to trial.

While the kidon continued preparing the ground for any decision to assassinate Khan, Meir Dagan and his analysts saw the scientist’s confession and the equally extraordinary response by Musharraf as evidence of a massive cover-up to hide the full extent of Pakistan’s complicity in nuclear proliferation. It was a cover-up buttressed by cynical political maneuvring. It had started when Pakistan won over China by supporting its border dispute with India. This led to a deepening relationship between Islamabad and Beijing. In the region’s political jigsaw of alliances, it brought North Korea, an old ally of China, into friendly contact with Pakistan. At first it was only cultural and exploratory visits by diplomats. But in Islamabad, Khan was watching and waiting; his finely tuned political nose told him it would not be long before the way was open for nuclear deal making.

China had also been nurturing its relationship with Iran. It began in October 1984 when the first planeload of nuclear components had landed in Tehran. Since then Beijing had provided three subcritical and zero-rated reactors and an electromagnetic isotope separation machine used in the process of creating enriched uranium. An 80-kilowatt thermal research reactor had followed. Each shipment had been monitored by Mossad’s deep-cover agents in Iran.

Meantime Saddam Hussein, in the midst of his eight-year war with Iran, had turned to India for help to kick-start his nuclear arsenal. To encourage Delhi, he had publicly endorsed India’s nuclear testing, and Iraq began to receive equipment to create a small amount of enriched uranium. It was all done in great secrecy, with the equipment described as “agricultural components.” Mossad set out to expose what was happening. It dusted down a copy of a long-forgotten treaty of nuclear cooperation Iran had signed with India in 1974. The document was fed to the Iranian media. The revelation caused the furor in Tehran Mossad had intended.

Alarmed, the ayatollahs turned to China for assistance. But by then Beijing was already engaged, with the same secrecy it armed Iran, in providing Iraq with missiles to help Saddam fulfill his dream of reshaping the Middle East in his image and creating mayhem for the world’s economic and political security. Beijing, ever ready to assist the rogue states, suggested the ayatollahs should invite Abdul Qadeer Khan to visit Tehran. Arrangements were quickly made. Khan was issued a false passport and papers describing him as a carpet salesman. In reality he was a carpetbagger, a scientist, with his country’s blessing, off to market its most precious secrets for money.

He returned weeks later, cast by his hosts as the godfather of their nuclear hopes and with a substantial sum of money in a Swiss bank account. No doubt having enjoyed the favors bestowed by the ayatollahs, Khan had looked for other nations he could similarly service. To do so he enlisted the help of Pakistan’s Inter-Service intelligence agency, ISI, the most powerful of the country’s security apparatus. The service already had a large number of officers who were anti-Semitic, and Khan’s verbal attacks on Israel made him a welcome guest in their midst. They readily devised the documentation needed for the scientist to carry out nuclear-technology transfers.

After Tehran, the tireless Khan’s next port of call was to the closed world of North Korea. He did so on the back of Pakistan’s deal for Pyongyang to supply a range of conventional military equipment. In return Khan agreed to provide blueprints and state-of-the-art P1 centrifuges for the country’s nuclear program. What began as a deal based on North Korea’s need for hard currency and Pakistan’s requirement for conventional army equipment soon developed into a barter arrangement.

“One of Khan’s blueprints appeared to be worth a container filled with North Korean field artillery,” a Mossad analyst said (to the author).

Khan’s activities had gained Pakistan increased influence as the Muslim world’s first nuclear power; this was demonstrated by continued vast sums paid directly into Khan’s bank accounts. By the time he had made his confessions on television, Mossad calculated he had acquired over $10 million. It made him one of the wealthiest men in Pakistan.

All these details had been passed by Mossad to the CIA at the time George Tenet was on the verge of resigning. But there was no sign the Bush administration had ever warned Musharraf to stop Khan’s activities. Or an explanation why, eventually, Washington had only finally delivered a mild response to Khan’s television admission. Indeed, Musharraf’s pardon had earned praise from Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state. Poker-faced, he said, “Pakistan’s president is the right man in the right place.”

Armitage’s words were seen as further evidence that Washington’s hunt for Osama bin Laden had become, said a Mossad officer with years of experience in counterterrorism (to the author), “that most dangerous of all in intelligence, a hunt driven by an obsession that overrides all else. For Bush, nailing bin Laden had become personal from 9/11. He would continue to sanction huge sums, men, and materials to capture him. Anyone who could help do that could ask for anything. Musharraf was in that category.”

The president had seized power in a coup d’état in 1999. Despite the country’s large Muslim majority, many of whom were fundamentalists, when 9/11 happened Musharraf offered unwavering support for Bush’s war on terrorism. It was a huge gamble for a president who by then was already finding it hard to hold on to power. He had survived three assassination attempts and daily found himself confronting not only the country’s religious leaders over their entrenched anti-American views but also the army and the ISI for his support in the war on terrorism. For many of them bin Laden was a folk hero. As he flitted through the mountains bordering Afghanistan with the peaks of the Northwest Frontier, always one step ahead of the U.S. Special Forces hunting him, he received help from members of the ISI.