"Keep Khan in Prison" Posted by Michael Cohen

If you live in a major American city and are the slightest bit fatalistic you may want to skip this piece that appeared over the weekend about the latest in the A.Q Khan investigation - in case you've forgotten Khan is the Pakistani nuclear scientist accused of selling nuclear secrets to the highest bidder:

Four years after Abdul Qadeer Khan, the leader of the world’s largest black market in nuclear technology, was put under house arrest and his operation declared shattered, international inspectors and Western officials are confronting a new mystery, this time over who may have received blueprints for a sophisticated and compact nuclear weapon found on his network’s computers.

The blueprints are rapidly reproducible for creating a weapon that is relatively small and easy to hide, making it potentially attractive to terrorists.

Stories like these, besides serving as an important reminder about the threat that potentially exists from jihadist terror networks, are further evidence of the futility of the Iraq war and its supposed focus on stamping out the threat of WMDs being used against the United States.

The nuclear threat from state actors is certainly not insignificant; but it pales next to the threat of a rogue non-state actor developing the capability to produce a nuclear weapon or radiological device. Unlike rational state actors these folks may actually decide to use it! Indeed, that is the whole point of developing it; the same cannot be said of states. Since investigators still remain unclear on who exactly Khan was selling to, it may be impossible to determine into whose hands these plans may have fallen.

For all the focus on Iran's uranium enrichment program (or the ultimately non-existent Iraqi WMD program) this is the greatest immediate threat to America - and where the greatest systematic change in how America's assesses its foreign threats must lie. When the threat from a former nuclear scientist and his ring of conspirators may be more significant than the threat from a rogue nation like Iraq or Iran you know the world is changing. The fact that the Bush Administration has short-changed efforts to secure nuclear material, through programs like Nunn-Lugar is indicative of a flawed international mind-set that continues to wrongly view the world through a state-centric prism.

The threats of the 21st century are not going to come from foreign armies, but instead the netherworld of non-state actors armed with the information and tools to wage great destruction. Instead of our seemingly single-minded focus on Iran's nascent nuclear program, securing all nuclear material across the globe, particularly in the former Soviet Union, where hundreds of tons of nuclear materials remain vulnerable, would seem a bit more pressing.

In addition, ensuring that folks like AQ Khan never see the light of day might not be a bad idea. It's interesting, for all our focus on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda's top leadership, ensuring that Pakistan does not release Khan (as they are hinting they might) may ultimately do more to protect America in the long-run. "Keep Khan in Prison" may not be the most stirring slogan, but in the global climate of the 21st century, it ultimately could be most important.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

This is old information dealing with warhead design which is not terribly sophisticated. In any case, there is no way in this world to keep a warhead design, or almost anything, secret. I'll bet it's on the web, if one took the time to search. While not mentioned in the NYT article, similar articles in The Washington Post and Fox News are based on information provided by David Albright. Albright, a physicist, is President of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C. which specializes in anti-Iran propaganda and (my guess) is likely funded by the CIA or a neocon anti-Iran faction.

Albright's "draft report" which is the basis of this latest Post/Fox/NYT scare states that the warhead design is "better suited [to] the missile capabilities of countries such as Iran." (Fox)

So this is just old news being recycled as a part of the Iran war run-up, not a terrorist scare. “We’re very concerned about the A.Q. Khan network, both in terms of what they were doing by purveying enrichment technology and also the possibility that there would be weapons-related technology [read "Iran"] associated with it,” [National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley] told reporters traveling with Mr. Bush from Paris to London on Sunday.// Sure you are.

Of course there is a limit to Hadley's "concern" about Dr. Khan. What we haven't seen (and won't see) in the US media is any news about Sibel Edmonds, who alleges that in the course of her work for the US government, she found evidence that the FBI, State Department, and Pentagon had been infiltrated by a Turkish and Israeli-run intelligence network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. . . Edmonds also accuses Dennis Hastert of taking bribes [Hastert, former House Speaker, resigned from the House last November], and of high ranking members of the US government of selling nuclear secrets to Turkey and Pakistan, which were then likely passed onto A. Q. Khan, who helped Iran, North Korea and various other nations start their nuclear programs (from Wikipedia).

[Mike M.]

I dunno. Our weapons developers aren't in prison. They get to be rich.

[Don Bacon]

Here it comes--the Iran war run-up:
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NBC News

Does Iran have blueprints for a miniature nuclear warhead?

U.S. officials are downplaying reports in the New York Times and Washington Post that Pakistan's A.Q. Khan may have given Iran--and other nations--blueprints for a miniature nuclear warhead first developed for his country's program.

The reports were based on a study by the Institute for Science and International Security. In its study, David Albright, a former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, states that a Swiss family accused of working with Khan had the designs on their computers."Why did these smugglers associated with the notorious Pakistani nuclear engineer A. Q. Khan have these designs, unless they had sold or intended to sell them for Khan?" Albright asked.
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"U.S. officials are downplaying reports" -- gotta love it. Dollars to donuts they're paying Albright to write this stuff.

[Jim Arkedis]

The NYT piece and Michael's post unfortunately fail to address one underlying truth: The designs found during the investigation were for warheads, not suitcase nukes. A warhead design only solves the problem of placing the device on the tip of a missile.

Those plans would be to the great benefit of the Irans and North Koreas of the world -- countries that needed to fit a smaller warhead on their existing arsenal.

This scenario would not, however, increase the threat from the likes of al-Qa'ida - unless UBL has somehow figured out how to acquire, fuel, arm, aim, and fire an inter-continental ballistic missile, which he could then direct at the United States through his vast array of satellites. Bin Laden is a great many things, but Dr. Evil is not one of them.

Instead, AQ’s only hope of getting a nuclear device into the US is by slipping a “suitcase nuke” through port security and remotely detonating a previously planted device – an entirely different matter with a different set of challenges.

While the threat from AQ – well documented in a recent slate of NIEs and GAO reports – continues to exist, I would argue that this particular investigation does not increase it.

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