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USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER

CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL

Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Issue No. 370, 10 September 2004

Articles & Other Documents:

U.S. Begins Weapon Disposals North Korea Says Seoul's Nuclear Experiments Stoke Arms Race South Africans Release Engineer Held in Nuclear French connection armed Saddam Proliferation Case Libyan Sincerity On Arms In Doubt U.N. Nuclear Agency Asleep At The Switch S. Africa Drops Charges In Nuclear Case S. Korea Admits Extracting Threat Of Attack On U.S. Remains Real Nuclear Nightmare Closer To Reality Two Charged In S. African Nuclear Trafficking Case

Welcome to the CPC Outreach Journal. As part of USAF Counterproliferation Center’s mission to counter weapons of mass destruction through education and research, we’re providing our government and civilian community a source for timely counterproliferation information. This information includes articles, papers and other documents addressing issues pertinent to US military response options for dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats and attacks. It’s our hope this information resource will help enhance your counterproliferation issue awareness. Established in 1998, the USAF/CPC provides education and research to present and future leaders of the Air Force, as well as to members of other branches of the armed services and Department of Defense. Our purpose is to help those agencies better prepare to counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction. Please feel free to visit our web site at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm for in-depth information and specific points of contact. Please direct any questions or comments on CPC Outreach Journal Jo Ann Eddy, CPC Outreach Editor, at (334) 953- 7538 or DSN 493-7538. To subscribe, change e-mail address, or unsubscribe to this journal or to request inclusion on the mailing list for CPC publications, please contact Mrs. Eddy. The following articles, papers or documents do not necessarily reflect official endorsement of the Air Force, Department of Defense, or other US government agencies. Reproduction for private use or commercial gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. All rights are reserved

Philadelphia Inquirer September 9, 2004 U.S. Begins Weapon Disposals By Andrew Kramer, Associated Press HERMISTON, Ore. - Workers yesterday destroyed the first nerve-gas rocket in a long-delayed $2.4 billion project to dispose of chemical weapons left over from the Cold War. An electrical problem with a trapdoor temporarily delayed disposal of the M-55 rocket in one of the four incinerators built for the Army project at its Umatilla Chemical Depot. An emergency shutoff had been inadvertently pressed, preventing the door from opening, Army spokeswoman Mary Binder said. Technicians overrode the system with a jumper cable to deliver the rocket parts to an incinerator that burns off any traces of the remaining nerve agent. The process began when the rocket was moved to a concrete-reinforced containment room, where it was punched open and drained of about a gallon of sarin, a deadly nerve agent. The depot plans to continue disposals today to test an identical system that will eventually run in tandem to speed up disposal, Binder said. About 3,700 tons of nerve-gas rockets and other chemical weapons have been stockpiled at the depot since 1962. Disposal plans call for each sarin-laden rocket to be chopped into eight pieces before they are fed to the decontaminating furnace. The rocket's destruction came after years of delays in construction and testing at the depot, and after a lawsuit still pending in the Oregon Court of Appeals seeking to block the process. The opposition group GASP, which is seeking the injunction, says burning the weapons risks an accidental release of chemical agents. The Army now has three working chemical-weapons incinerators in the United States. http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/9613662.htm

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New York Times September 9, 2004 North Korea Says Seoul's Nuclear Experiments Stoke Arms Race By James Brooke TOKYO, Thursday, Sept. 9 - North Korea warned on Wednesday that a recently disclosed South Korean experiment with uranium enrichment could "accelerate a northeast Asia nuclear arms race," and accused the United States of applying a "double standard" to the nuclear programs of the two Koreas. In North Korea's first public reaction to reports last week of the clandestine experiment four years ago, Han Song Ryol, deputy chief of North Korea's mission to the United Nations, lambasted the United States. But he did not specifically rule out attending a new round of regional talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. [South Korea acknowledged Thursday that it had conducted plutonium-based nuclear research in the early 1980's, Agence -Presse reported. A government official cited a recent visit by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to a South Korean government-run nuclear research center as a reason for revealing the previously undisclosed research.] "We view South Korea's uranium enrichment program in the context of an arms race in northeast Asia," Mr. Han told the Yonhap news agency of South Korea. "It has become difficult to prevent expansion of a nuclear arms race because of South Korea's test." Last week, South Korea admitted publicly that in 2000 government scientists had enriched tiny amounts of uranium in what it called an "academic" exercise. On Wednesday, South Korea said it should have reported the uranium enrichment experiment to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency. "We should have reported that uranium was used during this experiment," a senior South Korean Foreign Ministry official told reporters at a briefing in Seoul. South Korea has said that the uranium was enriched to only 10 percent. Last weekend, I.A.E.A. inspectors took a .10 gram sample to Vienna for testing to determine if the enrichment approached bomb-grade levels, or over 85 percent. South Korea has one of the world's largest nuclear power industries. Nineteen nuclear power plants supply 40 percent of the nation's electricity. It is also seeking to build nuclear power plants in . Under a 1994 nuclear disarmament accord, South Korea was helping to build North Korea's first two commercially viable nuclear power plants when work was suspended last year as a result of North Korea's violation of the accord. Two years ago, American officials say, North Korea admitted that it was secretly enriching uranium. In January 2003, it expelled I.A.E.A. inspectors and said it started to process stored fuel rods for nuclear weapons material. Since then, it has claimed to have produced "a nuclear deterrent," North Korea's ambiguous phrase for a nuclear weapons arsenal. After the American-led invasion of Iraq last year, Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, said the United States would not have attacked Iraq if it had had nuclear weapons. Since then, China and the United States have lead a regional effort to try to persuade North Korea to give up its weapons, most likely in return for economic aid and security guarantees. Although China has set a Sept. 22 date for the start of the fourth round of talks, North Korea has not committed to attending. In , Ambassador Han called Washington "worthless" as a negotiations partner and said that American policy toward North Korea made it "no longer worth meeting." But these are phrases that have been used in the periods before talks. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/asia/09korea.html?pagewanted=all

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New York Times South Africans Release Engineer Held in Case By MICHAEL WINES Published: September 9, 2004 OHANNESBURG, Sept. 8 - Five days after the police arrested a 53-year-old engineer on nuclear proliferation charges and carted 11 crates of suspected uranium enrichment gear from his office, prosecutors dropped all charges against the man on Wednesday and released him from jail without explanation. Officials said later that the case would undergo further investigation. But they left unclear whether the engineer, Johan Andries Muller Meyer, faced the possibility of being arrested again. Mr. Meyer's lawyer, Heinrich Badenhorst, also declined comment but said that a statement on the case could be issued Friday. Mr. Meyer, who runs an engineering company in Vanderbiljpark, an industrial town about 50 miles south of Johannesburg, had been jailed last Friday on three charges of violating South African laws against possessing, importing and exporting nuclear weapons machinery or components. Officials had accused Mr. Meyer of being part of a global nuclear materials smuggling ring masterminded by Abdul Qadeer Khan, 's top nuclear scientist. They said that Mr. Meyer's company, Trade Fin Engineering, was suspected of manufacturing components for Libya's clandestine nuclear weapons program in 2000 and 2001. Court documents listed a range of equipment that had been seized from Mr. Meyer's offices and turned over to an investigative team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is based in Vienna. The equipment included parts of gas centrifuges, which are used to purify uranium gas, and a Spanish-made precision lathe that could be used to make centrifuge parts. Libya voluntarily shut down its weapons program in December and has turned over equipment and related documents to the international authorities. Last week, the United States called Mr. Meyer's arrest a breakthrough in the fight against nuclear proliferation and praised the South African authorities for "an important contribution to the international effort" to shut down the Khan network. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/africa/09africa.html?pagewanted=all

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(Editor’s Note: Parts 2 and 3 of this series of articles follows part 1 below.) Washington Times September 8, 2004 French connection armed Saddam By Bill Gertz The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book "Treachery" (Crown Forum). In this excerpt, he details France's persistence in arming Saddam Hussein.

First of three excerpts

New intelligence revealing how long France continued to supply and arm Saddam Hussein's regime infuriated U.S. officials as the nation prepared for military action against Iraq. The intelligence reports showing French assistance to Saddam ongoing in the late winter of 2002 helped explain why France refused to deal harshly with Iraq and blocked U.S. moves at the United Nations. "No wonder the French are opposing us," one U.S. intelligence official remarked after illegal sales to Iraq of military and dual-use parts, originating in France, were discovered early last year before the war began. That official was careful to stipulate that intelligence reports did not indicate whether the French government had sanctioned or knew about the parts transfers. The French company at the beginning of the pipeline remained unidentified in the reports. France's government tightly controls its aerospace and defense firms, however, so it would be difficult to believe that the illegal transfers of equipment parts took place without the knowledge of at least some government officials. Iraq's Mirage F-1 fighter jets were made by France's Dassault Aviation. Its Gazelle attack helicopters were made by Aerospatiale, which became part of a consortium of European defense companies. "It is well-known that the Iraqis use front companies to try to obtain a number of prohibited items," a senior Bush administration official said before the war, refusing to discuss Iraq's purchase of French warplane and helicopter parts. The State Department confirmed intelligence indicating the French had given support to Iraq's military. "U.N. sanctions prohibit the transfer to Iraq of arms and materiel of all types, including military aircraft and spare parts," State Department spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said. "We take illicit transfers to Iraq very seriously and work closely with our allies to prevent Iraq from acquiring sensitive equipment." Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, declared that France's selling of military equipment to Iraq was "international treason" as well as a violation of a U.N. resolution. "As a pilot and a former war pilot, this disturbs me greatly that the French would allow in any way parts for the Mirage to be exported so the Iraqis could continue to use those planes," Stevens said. "The French, unfortunately, are becoming less trustworthy than the Russians," said Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "It's outrageous they would allow technology to support the jets of Saddam Hussein to be transferred." The U.S. military was about to go to war with Iraq, and thanks to the French, the Iraqi air force had become more dangerous. The pipeline French aid to Iraq goes back decades and includes transfers of advanced conventional arms and components for weapons of mass destruction. The central figure in these weapons ties is French President Jacques Chirac. His relationship with Saddam dates to 1975, when, as prime minister, the French politician rolled out the red carpet when the Iraqi strongman visited Paris. "I welcome you as my personal friend," Chirac told Saddam, then vice president of Iraq. The French put Saddam up at the Hotel Marigny, an annex to the presidential palace, and gave him the trappings of a head of state. The French wanted Iraqi oil, and by establishing this friendship, Chirac would help France replace the Soviet Union as Iraq's leading supplier of weapons and military goods. In fact, Chirac helped sell Saddam the two nuclear reactors that started Baghdad on the path to nuclear weapons capability. France's corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the United Nations after the Persian Gulf war. By 2000, France had become Iraq's largest supplier of military and dual-use equipment, according to a senior member of Congress who declined to be identified. Saddam developed networks for illegal supplies to get around the U.N. arms embargo and achieve a military buildup in the years before U.S. forces launched a second assault on Iraq. One spare-parts pipeline flowed from a French company to Al Tamoor Trading Co. in the United Arab Emirates. Tamoor then sent the parts by truck through Turkey, and into Iraq. The Iraqis obtained spare parts for their French- made Mirage F-1 jets and Gazelle attack helicopters through this pipeline. A huge debt U.S. intelligence would not discover the pipeline until the eve of war last year; sensitive intelligence indicated that parts had been smuggled to Iraq as recently as that January. "A thriving gray-arms market and porous borders have allowed Baghdad to acquire smaller arms and components for larger arms, such as spare parts for aircraft, air-defense systems and armored vehicles," the CIA said in a report to Congress made public that month. U.S. intelligence agencies later came under fire over questions about prewar estimates of Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But intelligence on Iraq's hidden procurement networks was confirmed. An initial accounting by the Pentagon in the months after the fall of Baghdad revealed that Saddam covertly acquired between 650,000 and 1 million tons of conventional weapons from foreign sources. The main suppliers were , China and France. By contrast, the U.S. arsenal is between 1.6 million and 1.8 million tons. As of last year, Iraq owed France an estimated $4 billion for arms and infrastructure projects, according to French government estimates. U.S. officials thought this massive debt was one reason France opposed a military operation to oust Saddam. The fact that illegal deals continued even as war loomed indicated France viewed Saddam's regime as a future source of income. Telltale chemical Just days before U.S. and coalition forces launched their military campaign against Iraq, more evidence of French treachery emerged. In mid-March 2003, U.S. intelligence and defense officials confirmed that exporters in France had conspired with China to provide Iraq with chemicals used in making solid fuel for long-range missiles. The sanctions-busting operation occurred in August 2002, the U.S. National Security Agency discovered through electronic intercepts. The chemical transferred to Iraq was a transparent liquid rubber called hydroxy terminated polybutadiene, or HTPB, according to intelligence reports. U.S. intelligence traced the sale to China's Qilu Chemicals, "the largest manufacturer of HTPB in China," one official says. A French company, CIS Paris, helped broker the sale of 20 tons of HTPB, a controlled export that was shipped from China to the Syrian port of Tartus. The chemical solution was sent by truck from Syria into Iraq, to a missile- manufacturing plant. The Iraqi company that purchased the shipment was in charge of making solid fuel for long- range missiles. HTPB technically is a dual-use chemical, because it also can be used for commercial purposes such as space launches. However, Iraq often disguised military purchases as commercial ones, as documents found later in Iraq would confirm. In a report to Congress, the CIA said Iraq had constructed two "mixing" buildings for solid-propellant fuels at a plant known as al-Mamoun. The facility originally was built to produce the -2000, a solid-propellant missile also known as the Condor. The new buildings "appear especially suited to house large, U.N.-prohibited mixers of the type acquired for the Badr-2000 program," the CIA report stated. French denials Despite controversy over prewar intelligence on Iraq, the CIA said its estimates of Iraqi missiles were on target. Representatives of the French and Chinese governments went on the attack when The Washington Times asked about the chemical sale. Chinese Embassy spokesman Xie Feng did not address the specifics, but said "irresponsible accusations" about China's exports had been made in the past. "These accusations are devoid of all foundation," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau declared. "In line with the rules currently in force, France has neither delivered, nor authorized, the delivery of such materials, either directly or indirectly." By that point, many in the U.S. government were fed up with French denials. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called in the French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, to complain about France's covert and overt support for Saddam's regime. "Twelve years of waiting was too costly in terms of the growing threat from Baghdad," Wolfowitz told the ambassador, according to a U.S. official who was present. Made in France The war in Iraq, which began March 19, 2003, provided disturbing evidence that France's treacherous dealings come at a steep cost to the United States. On April 8 came the downing of Air Force Maj. Jim Ewald's A-10 Thunderbolt fighter over Baghdad and the discovery that it was a French-made Roland missile that brought down the American pilot and destroyed a $13 million aircraft. Ewald, one of the first U.S. pilots shot down in the war, was rescued by members of the Army's 54th Engineer Battalion who saw him parachute to earth not far from the wreckage. Army intelligence concluded that the French had sold the missile to the Iraqis within the past year, despite French denials. A week after Ewald's A-10 was downed, an Army team searching Iraqi weapons depots at the Baghdad airport discovered caches of French-made missiles. One anti-aircraft missile, among a cache of 51 Roland-2s from a French-German manufacturing partnership, bore a label indicating that the batch was produced just months earlier. In May, Army intelligence found a stack of blank French passports in an Iraqi ministry, confirming what U.S. intelligence already had determined: The French had helped Iraqi war criminals escape from coalition forces — and therefore justice. Then, there were French-made trucks and radios and the deadly grenade launchers, known as RPGs, with French- made night sights. Saddam loyalists used them to kill American soldiers long after the toppling of the dictator's regime. The intelligence team sent to find Iraqi weapons also discovered documents outlining covert Iraqi weapons procurement leading up to the war. The CIA, however, refused to make public the documents on assistance provided by France or by other so-called allies of the United States. The clandestine arms-procurement network, disclosed late last year by the Los Angeles Times, put a Syrian trading company in a pivotal role. Documents showed the company, SES International Corp., was the conduit for millions of dollars' worth of weapons purchased internationally, including from France. Al Bashair Trading Co. in Baghdad was the major front used by Saddam to buy arms abroad. A Defense Department-sponsored report produced in February identified France as one of the top three suppliers of Iraq's conventional arms, after Russia and China. The report revealed that France supplied 12 types of armaments and a total of 115,005 pieces. A major reason Iraqi militants posed a threat to U.S. forces for so many months was that they had access to weapons that Saddam stockpiled in violation of U.N. resolutions. A close call One of the most frightening examples of how the militants put French weapons to use against the Americans came Oct. 26, 2003. That morning, at about 6 o'clock, they bombarded the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad with French missiles. The French rockets nearly killed Wolfowitz, whom Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has called "the brains" of the Pentagon. The deputy defense secretary had just gotten dressed in his room that Sunday morning when a car stopped several hundred yards from the hotel. It dropped off what appeared to be one of the blue electrical generators that were common in the power-starved Iraqi capital. The driver stayed just long enough to open a panel on the end of the metal box that was pointing upward toward the hotel. The car sped off. Minutes later, a pod of 40 artillery rockets set off by remote control began firing at the hotel, their trails leaving sparks as they flew. The rockets hit one floor below where Wolfowitz and about a dozen aides and reporters were staying. One rocket slammed into the room of Army Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring, a public-affairs officer. The explosion hit Buehring, 40, in the head. A reporter discovered him and tried to help, but the Fayetteville, N.C., resident died a short time later. In all, between eight and 10 missiles hit the hotel. The casualties might have been higher, and included Wolfowitz, if the improvised rocket launcher had fired all the missiles. Because of a malfunction, 11 failed to go off. Playing defense Half the missiles fired at Wolfowitz's hotel were French-made Matra SNEB 68-millimeter rockets, with a range of two to three miles. The others were Russian in origin. The French missiles were "pristine," Navy SEAL commandos reported. "They were either new or kept in very good condition," said one SEAL who inspected the rocket tubes. The rockets were thought to have been taken from Iraq's French-made Alouette or Gazelle attack helicopters. The fact that new French missiles were showing up in the hands of Saddam loyalists months after the fall of Baghdad made Wolfowitz and his close aides livid. Still, others in the U.S. government worked to defend the French. The CIA, to avoid upsetting ties with French intelligence, played down the French role in helping Saddam. The agency had a weak human intelligence?gathering capability, and France, because of its history of ties to Iraq, was much better at penetrating Saddam's regime. The State Department's response was not surprising. Asked about French support for Iraq while on a fence-mending mission to Paris in May 2003, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had said: "We're not going to paper over it and pretend it didn't occur. It did occur. But we're going to work through that." Powell, the retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was too inexperienced in the ways of diplomacy. As a result, he largely had turned over control of State Department policy-making to the Foreign Service. The problem with the Foreign Service is its culture. It trains diplomats to "get along" with the foreign governments they are sent to work with. Not insignificantly, Paris is among the most coveted postings in the world. Backing down Pentagon hard-liners on France, led by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, carried the day early in the war, but accommodationists within the upper councils of the Bush administration took control as the conflict went on. Among those who took a softer position on France was National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, the former Stanford provost who surrounded herself with State Department officials and Foreign Service officers. Rumsfeld drew a great deal of attention on Jan. 22, 2003 — and created a backlash within the State Department — when he let fly a verbal salvo against France and for not siding with the United States, describing them as "old Europe" during a meeting with foreign reporters. Rumsfeld also criticized French and German political leaders for making policy based not on "their honest conviction as to what their country ought to do" but on opinion polls that reflected ever-shifting public sentiments. As the accommodationists in the Bush administration gained the upper hand, Rumsfeld and others were ordered to tone down the anti-Europe rhetoric. By late last year, the defense secretary's critics within the Foreign Service were crowing that Rumsfeld had been "tamed." Just a day after the Iraqi attack on Wolfowitz's hotel in Baghdad, in an interview with The Washington Times, Rumsfeld took an even softer approach toward the French. "People tend to look at what's taking place today and opine that it is something distinctive," Rumsfeld said of the turbulence in Franco-American relations. "I don't find it distinctive. I find it an old record that gets replayed about every five or seven years." The public soft-policy line was, in many ways, a great victory for France. Even as new evidence poured in that the French had betrayed the United States and cost the lives of American troops, the government backed down from a confrontation with its erstwhile ally. http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040908-123000-1796r.htm

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Washington Times September 9, 2004 Pg. 1 Libyan Sincerity On Arms In Doubt Deal didn't tell the whole story By Bill Gertz, The Washington Times The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book "Treachery" (Crown Forum). Second of three excerpts Musa Kusa, the head of Libya's spy agency, got the attention of Britain's Foreign Office and MI6 intelligence service when he contacted them in March 2003. Kusa was a man with blood on his hands. He had been deputy chief of Libyan intelligence when two of its agents were dispatched to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground. When Kusa informed the British officials that he had an offer from Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, they heard him out. Kusa said Libya would agree to rid itself of all nuclear and chemical weapons and materials, along with longer- range missile delivery systems. Gadhafi's condition: Britain and the United States must help remove the sanctions on his regime and normalize relations with Libya, an officially designated state sponsor of . The CIA was skeptical. "You're talking to the most suspicious organization in the world," said one intelligence official who was closely involved in the negotiations. Still, a decision was made at the highest levels of both governments — by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair — to pursue the talks. To Douglas Feith, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, Gadhafi's apparent decision to "open up" reflected a victory in Bush's global war on terrorism, which focused on the connections among terrorist organizations, weapons of mass destruction and state sponsors of terrorism. For many years, Gadhafi tried to remain at that intersection while attempting to buy his way off the list of rogue states, Feith said. "When President Bush made it clear that living at that intersection is really dangerous," Feith said, "Gadhafi decided he was going to come clean." Over several months, CIA officers and British diplomatic and intelligence officials held secret meetings with Libyan representatives in London. In May 2003, Gadhafi himself met with U.S. and British officials in Tunisia. That fall, a CIA and MI6 team visited Libya. Before a second planned visit to Libya could take place, another event exposed a clandestine network of nuclear suppliers headed by scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program. And that same month, October 2003, a U.S.-initiated diversion and search of a German-flagged ship bound for Libya from the United Arab Emirates also called into question Gadhafi's sincerity in negotiating Libya's nuclear and chemical disarmament. Khan's key man What one CIA official called a "breakthrough" in the secret arms talks with Libya was the result of electronic eavesdropping conducted by the supersecret U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Back in 2000, U.S. intelligence agencies had put Khan under clandestine electronic surveillance and soon confirmed long-held suspicions that he was a major figure in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Intercepts revealed that Khan's network of companies and contacts stretched from Southeast Asia to Europe. The intercept that reached NSA headquarters in early October 2003 concerned Khan and key associate Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman. Tahir, having married a Malaysian in 1998, was a permanent resident of Malaysia. U.S. officials said Tahir and his brother owned SMB Group, a company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Tahir did work with SCOMI Precision Engineering, known as SCOPE, a subsidiary of a petroleum-services company that produced centrifuge parts for Libya's growing nuclear-weapons program. SCOPE had a plant in Shah Alam, Malaysia, about 95 miles southeast of the capital of Kuala Lumpur, where it worked on centrifuge components for Gadhafi. The evidence in the NSA intercept led investigators directly to Tahir, who would reveal the extent of his involvement with Khan and the reach of Khan's network. Investigators later concluded that Tahir's company served as a front for numerous black-market deals for nuclear technology; he was a key player in building Libya's program. Tahir's first contact with A.Q. Khan occurred in 1985, when Tahir visited Pakistan and won a contract to supply air- conditioning equipment to the Khan Research Laboratory. U.S. officials concluded that Tahir played a critical role in Khan's covert nuclear-weapons network, which would sell equipment — specifically centrifuge components — to Libya, , North Korea and other rogue states. The network cleverly disguised transactions by also selling commercial equipment used in oil drilling, water treatment and other unrelated endeavors. Libya's interest Investigators reveal that in about 1995, Khan asked Tahir to send two containers of centrifuge parts from Dubai to Iran aboard an Iranian merchant ship. Iran paid Tahir and Khan about $3 million. The cash was delivered in suitcases to a guesthouse in Dubai that Khan used during frequent visits to the Persian Gulf. In 1997, Libyan intelligence agents reportedly contacted Khan and requested help in developing a uranium- enrichment system with centrifuges. Several meetings between Khan and the Libyans followed, including one in Istanbul. Among those present were Khan, Tahir and two Libyan arms-procurement officials, Mohamad Matuq Mohamad and a man identified only as Karim. The Libyans said they wanted to build a centrifuge and were willing to pay for it, whatever the cost. Khan, Tahir and Mohamad met several times between 1998 and 2002 — at least once in Dubai and once in Casablanca, , Tahir later said. In 2001, Khan notified Tahir that Pakistan had sent Libya a shipment of , the gas necessary to produce highly for nuclear bombs. By 2001 and 2002, Khan was sending centrifuge components for complete machines aboard Pakistani cargo flights to Libya. Tahir told Malaysian investigators that he thought the centrifuge design had been copied from the P1 model, which Pakistan adapted from a centrifuge plan stolen from the European conglomerate Urenco. The Libyans put the centrifuges in a nuclear facility code-named Project Machine Shop 1001. Tahir said Libya used middlemen to set up the facility and to obtain equipment, including a lathe to make centrifuge components and a furnace to temper them. Nuclear agents Tahir identified a key middleman as Peter Griffin, a British national who was retired and living in France. Griffin's son now headed his company, Gulf Technical Industries. Tahir disclosed the names of other nuclear agents. One was the late Heinz Mebus, an engineer who helped Khan smuggle centrifuge designs to Iran in 1984 and 1985. Another supplier was Gotthard Lerch, a German who lived in Switzerland and at one time worked for the German company Leybold Heraeus, producer of vacuum technology. Lerch tried to help the Libyans obtain specialty pipes for Machine Shop 1001 from South Africa, but was unable to conclude the deal even after Libya paid for the tubes in advance. Tahir also fingered Gunas Jireh, a Turkish national whom Khan had hired to supply aluminum casting and a centrifuge dynamo for the Libyan nuclear program. Another Turk, engineer Selim Alguadis, supplied the Libyan nuclear program with electrical cabinets and voltage-regulator equipment. Tahir said some of the most important contributors to the Libyan nuclear program came from a Swiss family, the Tinners. , a mechanical engineer, had worked covertly with Khan since the 1980s and was able to provide safety valves for centrifuges obtained from European manufacturers. Tinner arranged for the goods to be shipped to Libya by way of Dubai. Tinner's son, Urs, worked for Tahir and helped set up SCOPE's factory in Malaysia in December 2001. Urs was also in charge of setting up Libya's machine shop. At one point, he coordinated with brother Marco, owner of Switzerland's Traco Co., to import key machines to Libya. Urs also procured machines from Britain, France and Taiwan. In all, the Khan network helped Libya purchase more than a hundred machine tools for its plant. Libya's goal was to produce a cascade of 10,000 centrifuges to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Stopping a ship The Libyans made other efforts to hide their nuclear procurement. When purchasing raw materials for centrifuge components, they chose a grade of aluminum tubes that was not controlled for export and thus would not raise suspicions among intelligence agencies. Libya purchased 300 metric tons of tubes from a Singapore-based company that was a subsidiary of the German company Bikar Metalle. Tahir then arranged for the tubes to be machined at the SCOPE plant in Malaysia. Between December 2002 and August 2003, even while the Libyans were in disarmament talks with British and U.S. intelligence, Tahir sent the tubes to Libya in four shipments via a trading company in Dubai. But Libya's ongoing nuclear advances were thwarted Oct. 4, 2003, seven months after its spy chief, Kusa, first reached out to the British. That was the day the CIA alerted German and Italian authorities that the German-flagged ship BBC China was bound for Libya with parts for its nuclear program. The vessel had set sail from Dubai. The U.S. government contacted the ship's owner, the German company BBC Chartering and Logistic GmbH, and asked for help in blocking the shipment. With that assistance and the presence of a U.S. warship, the vessel was diverted to a port in Italy. This was considered the first action of what is now known as the Proliferation Security Initiative, the Bush administration's program for halting illegal-weapons sales. When investigators boarded the BBC China and seized the cargo, they confirmed that five shipping containers contained parts that could have helped Gadhafi build nuclear bombs. The containers were filled with wooden boxes bearing the SCOPE logo. All the goods were made of high-quality aluminum used to make high-speed centrifuges for enriching uranium. Also on board were the aluminum casting goods and dynamo that nuclear agent Gunas Jireh had procured for Libya. U.S. intelligence agencies previously had not known the extent of Libya's nuclear-arms program. Two weeks later, investigators discovered that Tahir had arranged to ship electrical components to Libya for its machine plant. Gadhafi's lesson Caught in the act, Libya was forced to publicly reveal it had worked secretly to build nuclear as well as chemical weapons. Gadhafi, concerned about his legacy and an economy hit hard by sanctions, made a startling announcement two months later, in December 2003. The dictator said Libya would abandon its nuclear and chemical arms programs, limit the range of its missiles and comply with numerous international weapons treaties. Libya ultimately admitted it had spent some $500 million since the late 1990s in developing nuclear weapons. Gadhafi's announcement was widely hailed as a victory in the effort to stem the flow of nuclear-weapons technology to rogue states. Feith, the U.S. undersecretary of defense, was more cautious. But he acknowledged that Libya's pledge to disarm could be an important step. Feith suggested that Gadhafi adopted this approach after the sobering U.S.-led ousters of the from Afghanistan and Saddam from Iraq. "At that point, Gadhafi, having tried for years to get off the 'bad list' [of rogue states] by means short of opening up, decided that he had to open up," Feith said. "Now, what does one infer from that? I suppose it seems as if he came to the conclusion that it was too risky being coy, it was too risky trying these lesser means to get off the bad list. "And it became more urgent for him to get off the bad list when he saw the fate of the Taliban regime and the Saddam Hussein regime." Still, the Libyans have continued to deny the existence of a biological-weapons program, even though numerous intelligence reports indicate they have such a program. Sobering reminder Feith and other U.S. officials were right to be cautious and skeptical about Gadhafi's disarmament pledge. In May, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) produced a report that confirmed their suspicions. The confidential report praised the Libyan government for allowing inspectors to examine nuclear-weapons facilities, and it disclosed for the first time the exact locations of those sites. But on the whole, the report was a sobering reminder that much remained unknown about the Libyan nuclear-weapons program. The report stated, for example, that Libya failed to provide documents confirming the program had been dismantled. And U.S. officials said the Libyans could not account for major portions of components and equipment. The IAEA report stated that a container of centrifuge components "actually arrived in Libya in March 2004." The report concluded that "nearly all of the technology involved in Libya's past nuclear activities was obtained from foreign sources, often through intermediaries." The IAEA did not identify countries or persons, but those involved included at least one declared nuclear-weapons state, probably Russia or China; an Eastern European nation; a Western European company; a Far Eastern country; and a "supplier state" thought to be Pakistan. "Libya has stated that centrifuge-related training had been provided by foreign experts at locations in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia," the report said. The stark conclusion was that Libya, known to support international terrorism, received much assistance in building the most deadly weapons known to man. Reason for doubt The report's most alarming section related to whether the Libyans tried to make a nuclear warhead. Libyan government officials said that in January, they turned over to the United States all documents and drawings related to nuclear weapons design and manufacturing. They asserted that the data never had been transferred in electronic form. "It is practically impossible for the agency to prove or disprove such statements," the IAEA reported, highlighting just how much remained unknown about the Libyan program — and the difficulty of weapons monitoring and verification in general. Libya received design data for nuclear warheads in late 2001 or early 2002, but the Libyans said they did not act on the information or even check whether it was credible or practical. The IAEA doubted this. "This is surprising," the IAEA report said, "given the substantial effort that was being devoted to uranium enrichment." U.S. officials familiar with Libya's program said the design data originated in China and probably had been re- exported from Pakistan through Khan's network. As it did in Iran, the IAEA discovered trace amounts of weapons-grade uranium on centrifuge components in Libya. The highly enriched uranium may have come from equipment sent from Pakistan or it could have been produced in Libya. Whatever the case, the discovery raised serious questions about how far along the Libyan nuclear program was — and whether Libya's promises could be trusted. http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040909-121930-9087r.htm

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Washington Times September 10, 2004 Pg. 1 Treachery: How America's Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies U.N. Nuclear Agency Asleep At The Switch N. Korea, Iran, Libya overlooked By Bill Gertz, The Washington Times The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book "Treachery" (Crown Forum). Last of three excerpts Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's new foreign minister, delivered a memorable address to the United Nations Security Council in New York on Dec. 16, 2003. Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, began his remarks by noting the historic capture, three days earlier, of Saddam Hussein. Then, after laying out a plan for Iraq to become a democracy, the foreign minister lowered the boom on the assembled diplomats. "One year ago," Zebari said, "this Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wantedto hold him accountable. The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today, we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure. "The United Nations must not fail the Iraqi people again," he said. It was clear to whom Zebari was referring: France, Germany, Russia and China, among others in the world body, fought U.S.-led efforts to end Saddam's bloody dictatorship. But the organization's failure was far more significant than failing the Iraqi people. The United Nations had failed in its founding purpose: to preserve peace and international security. It appeased Saddam for years before the United States called for decisive action. And Saddam's Iraq is just one of many rogue regimes that the United Nations has failed to keep in check. Again and again, dangerous states have built up their militaries and weapons programs right under the world body's nose, despite sanctions and anti-proliferation agreements. Sleeping watchdog Three times, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency missed the covert nuclear-arms programs of rogue regimes, allowing those states to build deadly weapons capability under the guise of generating nuclear power. Disclosures of the nuclear progress of North Korea, Libya and Iran came in rapid succession, within the space of about a year. If the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not detect these programs, one must wonder what purpose the U.N. branch serves. The United Nations established the IAEA in 1957 to help countries build nuclear facilities for generating electricity. Its initial program, Atoms for Peace, quickly became "Atoms for Bombs." And not much has changed in the past five decades, except the size of the program. Today, the IAEA has about 2,200 staff members at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and at four regional offices in Geneva, New York, Toronto and Tokyo. Its budget for 2004 was $268.5 million. The IAEA's statutory purpose is to assist in transferring expertise and equipment for the "peaceful" use of nuclear power. The international agency also is charged with making sure that nations do not divert equipment or material for nuclear-energy development into weapons programs. Specifically, Section 5 of the empowering statute directs the IAEA to "establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable and other materials, services, equipment, facilities and information made available by the agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose." But the IAEA has not administered appropriate safeguards. And as a result, it has been fooled again and again by states such as North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria and Iraq. The centerpiece of the IAEA's work has been the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, which went into effect on March 5, 1970. Korean threat Rogue states generally sign international agreements only if doing so is expedient. Nothing better illustrates this point than North Korea. The NPT provided cover for North Korea's secret nuclear-weapons programs, allowing Pyongyang to purchase equipment, train technicians and build reactors. North Korea was one of the agreement's 188 signatories when, in the fall of 2002, the communist regime of Kim Jong-il revealed that it secretly had been developing nuclear weapons. The IAEA failed to anticipate or uncover North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. The agency admitted as much last year, when it reported: "The agency has never had the complete picture regarding [North Korean] nuclear activities." Pyongyang froze plutonium production as part of a 1994 pact with the United States known as the Agreed Framework. But the CIA noted in 1995, in a classified Special National Intelligence Estimate: "Based on North Korea's past behavior, the [intelligence] community agrees it would dismantle its known program [only] if it had covertly developed another source of ." Sure enough, North Korea's disclosure in October 2002 of its uranium-enrichment activity confirmed that Pyongyang was trying to build nuclear bombs. In essence, Kim and the North Koreans were announcing that membership in the NPT had been a ruse all along. Still, the IAEA did not take a hard line with Kim. It responded to the disclosure by sending faxes requesting "clarification." The North Koreans ignored the request. Saber-rattling The IAEA adopted a resolution calling on Pyongyang to cooperate. The North Koreans responded with a letter saying that they rejected the U.N. agency's unfair and unilateral approach. The director of North Korea's nuclear program, Ri Je-son, stated in a letter dated Dec. 4, 2002, that Pyongyang would resume nuclear work if the United States did not resume oil shipments to North Korea. Then, on Jan. 10, 2003, North Korea unceremoniously abandoned its partners in the NPT. In a broadcast on Kim's state radio, government commentator Jong Pong-kil said the decision to pull out was a defensive measure: "The United States trampled on the NPT and the [North Korean]-U.S. Agreed Framework and is trying to crush us by all means," Jong declared. "By even mobilizing the IAEA, the United States is compelling us to give up the right of self-defense. Under such conditions, it is clear to everyone that we cannot let the country's security and the nation's dignity be infringed upon by remaining in the NPT treaty." Jong then added a threat: "If the U.S. imperialists and their following forces challenge our republic's withdrawal from the NPT with new pressure and sanctions, we will respond with a stronger self-defensive measure." In other words, the North Koreans, who already had shown that their membership in the NPT was a ruse, were announcing that they would keep building nuclear arms. The IAEA's response to Jong's announcement was tantamount to appeasement. Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian, said North Korea must return to the NPT. Then, during a meeting with U.S. senators, ElBaradei said: "If North Korea were to show good behavior, they need to get some assurance as to what to expect in return for good behavior, and I think that's very important in articulation of what to expect in case of compliance." It did not matter that the North Koreans openly admitted defying the IAEA for years; ElBaradei sent the message that the international arms-control agency would impose no penalty. The matter was sent to the U.N. Security Council, but that body did little more than express "deep concern" for the violations. The United States picked up its diplomatic approach, which produced no results. North Korea continues its drive for nuclear arms. Iran and Libya The United Nations also failed to confront the nuclear threat from Iran, which, like North Korea, used the NPT to acquire equipment and materials to make nuclear bombs. When Iran's weapons work was discovered, showing that the Iranians knowingly ignored obligations to their treaty partners, the IAEA essentially ignored the violations. The agency sought only an additional "protocol" from Iran as a new safeguard. "This is a good day for peace, multilateralism and nonproliferation," ElBaradei declared after Iran signed the protocol. "A good day for peace because the [IAEA] board decided to continue to make every effort to use verification and diplomacy to resolve questions about Iran's nuclear program." But "verification and diplomacy" failed to stop Iran from developing nuclear arms in the first place. Despite pressure from security officials within the Bush administration, ElBaradei refused to cite Iran for breaking its obligations. Moreover, the IAEA did not keep careful watch over Libya's nuclear-weapons program, which was further along than both U.S. intelligence or the U.N. agency had known. When Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi publicly disclosed his weapons program in December 2003, the IAEA knew nothing about it. The agency said Libya should have reported its activities to the IAEA. The IAEA was happy to report Tripoli's decision to eliminate "materials, equipment and programs which lead to the production of internationally proscribed weapons." But the agency tried to minimize its failure to discover the program. It noted that a Libyan official characterized his nation's uranium-enrichment program as "at an early stage of development" and that "no industrial-scale facility had been built, nor any enriched uranium produced." Algeria long since had launched its own nuclear-arms program in response to the military buildup by neighbor Libya, with which it had tense relations, reflecting how weapons proliferation only breeds further proliferation. U.S. intelligence agencies in the spring of 1991 detected the first signs that Algeria was developing nuclear weapons with the assistance of China. 'New urgency' The ultimate threat to peace is nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorists. There is a real danger that terrorists could use nuclear materials in radiological attacks, or "dirty bombs." Worse, terrorists would use them in a nuclear blast that could kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands. To his credit, the IAEA's ElBaradei has begun to worry about this threat. "[Nuclear] source security has taken on a new urgency since 9/11," the U.N. arms agency's director general said in a speech last year. "There are millions of radiological sources used throughout the world. Most are very weak. What we are focusing on is preventing the theft or loss of control of the powerful radiological sources." The fact is, al Qaeda and the world's other most lethal terrorist organizations are trying to acquire nuclear arms. The United Nations' record of failure to detect and halt nuclear threats posed by rogue states, however, casts doubt on its ability to grapple with such arms in the grip of shadowy terrorist groups. http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040909-115659-4549r.htm

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Washington Post September 9, 2004 Pg. 21 S. Africa Drops Charges In Nuclear Case Man Accused of Possessing Arms Components Expected to Cooperate in Probe JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 8 -- South African authorities abruptly announced Wednesday that they had dropped criminal charges filed last week against a Pretoria man accused of possessing components used to make bomb-grade uranium for nuclear weapons. The move was part of a deal in which the man, Johan Andries Muller Meyer, 53, is expected to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation of other targets, a source familiar with the probe said on condition of anonymity. Police arrested Meyer last Thursday in Vanderbijlpark, an industrial town 50 miles south of Johannesburg, where he is a director of Trade Fin Engineering. He was charged with violating South Africa's strict laws against nuclear proliferation. Eleven shipping containers of components for a , used in the enrichment of uranium, were confiscated in the investigation, along with related documentation and a machine that can be used to make other weapons components, officials said. The arrest was part of an international investigation into the nuclear black market established by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, who helped Libya and other countries develop weapons programs. Authorities were cautious in their public statements Wednesday. Sipho Ngwema, spokesman for the Scorpions unit, an agency similar to the FBI, declined to comment on whether Meyer remained under suspicion for wrongdoing, saying only that charges had been dropped. Meyer's attorney also declined to comment, according to news reports. --Craig Timberg http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5652-2004Sep8.html

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Washington Post September 10, 2004 Pg. 1 S. Korea Admits Extracting Plutonium Acknowledgement of '82 Test Follows Disclosure on Uranium By Anthony Faiola and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Foreign Service SEOUL, Sept 9 -- The South Korean government acknowledged Thursday that it extracted a small amount of plutonium during a 1982 research experiment, a declaration that came a week after the country acknowledged its scientists had secretly enriched uranium. Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said the agency had begun to suspect that South Korea was conducting nuclear experiments more than six years ago and said South Korean officials had worked hard to hide the work from inspectors. "They had a fairly elaborate plan involving denial and deception in order to evade detection by inspectors," said one diplomat who would discuss the agency's investigation only on condition of anonymity. In Washington, U.S. officials said they gave a clear message to South Korea this week that they consider the charges to be serious and would apply the same standards to any country found to be violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That message, which diplomats said would be repeated next week in Vienna at a board meeting of the IAEA, was meant to assuage concerns that the United States was applying a double standard by pushing for tough action against North Korea and Iran, which were also accused of conducting clandestine nuclear work. The IAEA believes that South Korea's work on plutonium and uranium -- the key ingredients for nuclear weapons -- seriously violated the treaty and that the matter could be referred to the U.N. Security Council in November, diplomats said. One diplomat familiar with the IAEA's work said that despite South Korea's official denials, uranium was secretly enriched in 2000 to nearly bomb-grade levels and the other experiment was optimized to produce bomb-grade plutonium. But South Korea, which derives 40 percent of its energy from nuclear power, contends that all the tests were one- time research efforts unrelated to weapons programs. The IAEA announced last week that it had launched an intensive investigation after South Korea belatedly admitted to enriching a small amount of uranium during three experiments in January and February of 2000 -- tests that diplomats and experts said the South Korean government was required to report under terms of the Non- Proliferation Treaty. North Korea, which has been pressured by the United States about its nuclear program, reacted quickly to the report on South Korea. On Wednesday, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Han Sung Ryol, said the Bush administration had a "double standard" on the Korean Peninsula and warned of a budding "nuclear arms race" in northeast Asia. Japan, an ally of South Korea, expressed concern about the report from Seoul. A spokesman for the Japanese government, Hiroyuki Hosoda, said Thursday that while the 1982 experiment appeared not to be linked to a weapons program, it was "inappropriate" and, he insisted, "should not have happened." North Korea expelled international inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty about two years ago, and U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe the North Koreans have now amassed an arsenal of up to eight nuclear devices. After three rounds of six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear program in Beijing, the Pyongyang government and the Bush administration had not significantly changed their negotiating positions. Analysts are concerned about progress in the talks, predicting they may be delayed until after the U.S. presidential election in November. "This gives another reason for North Korea to raise the issue of fairness with the international community," said Jhe Sung Ho, professor of law at Joongang University in Seoul. "They are going to claim that Washington is pressing them while giving South Korea a break." South Korea conducted nuclear weapons research during the 1970s but is believed to have abandoned it under U.S. pressure before the end of the decade. One South Korean official familiar with the government's report to the IAEA on the 1982 plutonium experiment said details of the test remained sketchy but insisted there was no indication it had been related to a weapons program. "This experiment was conducted by a small group of scientists to analyze the chemical characteristics of plutonium," the Science and Technology Ministry said in a statement. "We have no written data left on the result of the experiment and the amount of plutonium extracted, but we estimate that a very minute amount in the range of milligrams was extracted." But one South Korean official familiar with the findings said if the experiment had taken place today, "the government would not have allowed it." The first indication of a plutonium experiment came to light in 1998 after international inspectors detected traces of the substance at a government-run nuclear research center in Seoul, according to the South Korean science ministry. IAEA sources said the samples were inconclusive, and inspectors began additional testing in other areas of the country. During that work, the South Koreans allegedly dismantled a test site, moved equipment and failed to notify the IAEA about the experiments while they knew the agency was trying to determine whether such tests had been conducted, according to the diplomats. By 2003, inspectors had collected irrefutable evidence of plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment, and they confronted the South Koreans with it last December. The Seoul government submitted a report on the plutonium incident this March, but the report faced delays and problems, officials said, because the key researcher on the project had died. An official familiar with the case would not identify the researcher and could not cite the date of his death. The IAEA has identified six violations by the South Koreans that could be reported to the Security Council, including the work on plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the diplomats said. The plutonium experiment took place during political turmoil in South Korea following the 1980 military coup by former president Chun Doo Hwan, who left office with the return to democracy in 1987. The South Koreans said they were unsure if the IAEA would declare the plutonium test in violation of international laws. They disclosed information about the plutonium experiment after the Associated Press quoted an unnamed senior Bush administration official in Washington, who gave details. "We haven't found out the accurate purpose of the experiment, because the head of the research project at that time has passed away," said one South Korean official familiar with the plutonium test. "We feel at a loss." But Shin Sung Tack, a nuclear expert at the government-run Korean Institute for Defense Analysis, said, "you need at least 10 kilograms of plutonium to make low- level weapons grade." That is far beyond what the South Koreans said their scientists produced. High-ranking South Korean officials insisted they did not know about the uranium enrichment experiments until lower-level government administrators informed them in February. Full knowledge of the plutonium test, they said, became clear only over the past year. Linzer reported from Washington. Special correspondent Johee Cho contributed to this report. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9761-2004Sep9.html

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USA Today September 10, 2004 Pg. 4 The status of al-Qaeda Threat Of Attack On U.S. Remains Real By John Diamond, USA Today WASHINGTON — Deep in the 9/11 Commission Report, in the footnotes section on page 514, is a chilling passage. The main sections of the report make clear that captured Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — "KSM" in CIA jargon — gave CIA interrogators a wealth of information about the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks and the operating methods of al-Qaeda. But the footnote points out that there was one area where he stayed silent: the whereabouts of al-Qaeda operatives who might be preparing to launch further attacks in the United States. "Protecting operatives in the United States appeared to be a 'major part' of KSM's (interrogation) resistance efforts," the footnote says. When asked about U.S. ZIP codes found in his notebooks, for example, Mohammed — who is being held at an undisclosed location outside the United States — offered the unpersuasive explanation that they had something to do with e-mail accounts he was planning to open. The little-noticed passage is one of many reasons why, on the third anniversary of Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence remains on edge about the threat of al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil. CIA and FBI officials say they have made significant progress in the war on terrorism, including the capture of Mohammed in Pakistan in March 2003 and the arrest of dozens of other al-Qaeda figures around the world. "The situation has changed dramatically" since Sept. 11, acting CIA Director John McLaughlin told a Senate committee recently. Aggressive steps to seize assets and close down front groups are "starving al-Qaeda of its lifeblood — money," McLaughlin said. And CIA officers and U.S. special forces in Afghanistan "have al-Qaeda on the run." But al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain at large, possibly somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan, and Zawahiri seems to be active. In a videotape broadcast Thursday on al-Jazeera television, Zawahiri declared that U.S. forces are on the verge of defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. While U.S. troops have faced fierce attacks from insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military commanders insist they maintain the upper hand. It was not immediately clear when the tape had been made. It is not so much the terrorists in Afghanistan who worry U.S. security officials, but their operatives in Europe and the USA. As devastating post-Sept. 11 terror attacks in Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey and Spain have shown, small terror groups with little money or central organization can still wreak destruction. On Thursday, suspected Muslim militants detonated a car bomb outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, striking a key U.S. ally in the war in Iraq. The bombing killed nine people and wounded more than 170. Gaining strength A report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies warns that the militant Islamic movement "continues to gain strength" and that al-Qaeda seeks chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The drive to obtain weapons of mass destruction stems in part from what the report calls a "feedback loop" in which al-Qaeda members are motivated by Western media accounts of how destructive such attacks would be, and the vulnerability of Western society to them. Ironically, the successes against al-Qaeda have made counterterrorism more difficult. Instead of training in a central location in Afghanistan and planning attacks through a single al-Qaeda hierarchy, the global Jihad movement is now more dispersed and decentralized, using local, loosely affiliated cells to launch smaller but still deadly attacks. Even so, anti-terrorism authorities have had some successes, most recently this summer with arrests in Pakistan and Britain of suspected al-Qaeda operatives. Computers and disks seized along with the suspects included evidence that financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., came under detailed al-Qaeda surveillance in 2000 and 2001 and that the information had been accessed by al-Qaeda operatives earlier this year. The CSIS report warned: "Al-Qaeda itself has taken numerous blows from post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism efforts, and its capabilities have probably been diminished. But these positive results have been undermined by the galvanizing effects of Sept. 11 and subsequent attacks in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia." To fight al-Qaeda, the CIA has steadily increased the number of operatives and analysts working on the terrorism problem, from about 440 in 1997 to 700 on Sept. 11, 2001, to about 1,500 today, according to public statements by agency officials. It's possible the agency has more people fighting al-Qaeda than al-Qaeda has members. 1% approach At home, the difficulty lies in the need to defend everywhere while terrorists can focus on attacking in one place. CIA counterterrorism officials talk of a "1% approach": If a potentially catastrophic attack, such as using hijacked planes as missiles or setting off a radioactive "dirty bomb," has even a 1% chance of occurring, the CIA must work against it. Heritage Foundation researcher Christopher Harmon argues that terrorist organizations, if not terrorism itself, can be and have been defeated. He points to a long list of defunct or inactive terror groups such as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Peru's Tupac Amaru, the Philippines' Huks and Germany's Red Army Faction. The means have included massive military action, the capture or killing of a key leader and decisions by terror groups to change their ways. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has frequently pointed out, if victory comes, it will announce itself only gradually, as more time goes by without an attack — not with a climactic surrender ceremony such as the one on the deck of the Battleship Missouri that ended World War II. Status of al-Qaeda leaders Top leaders of the terrorist group al-Qaeda have been among the world's most wanted fugitives. Some of the most prominent: At large Osama bin Laden (Saudi): Founder; may be in Afghanistan-Pakistan border region or in a city in Pakistan. Ayman al-Zawahiri (Egyptian): No. 2 leader; possibly with bin Laden. Shaikh Saiid (Saudi): Financial director; said to have provided passports and money to Sept. 11 hijackers; possibly in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Saif al-Adil (Egyptian): Security chief; linked to U.S. embassy bombings in 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania and bombing in in November; suspected of training Sept. 11 hijackers. May be in Iran. Abu Mohammed al-Masri (Egyptian): Financial officer, former training camp commander; said to be involved in embassy bombings. May be in Iran. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Jordanian): Operations planner; blamed for a series of bombings and beheadings in Iraq. Saad bin Laden (Saudi): Son and possible successor to Osama bin Laden. May be in Iran. Killed (Egyptian): Al-Qaeda military commander; killed by U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan in November 2001. Mohammad Saleh (Egyptian): Military operations; killed in U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan. Captured Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Kuwaiti): Key Sept. 11 planner; captured March 2003 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan; under interrogation at undisclosed location. Ramzi Bin al-Shibh (Yemeni): Suspected Sept. 11 plotter; captured in September 2002 by Pakistani authorities in ; under interrogation at undisclosed location. (Palestinian): Operations chief; captured in March 2002 in Pakistan; under interrogation at undisclosed location. Source: USA TODAY research, wire reports http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20040910/a_qaeda10.art.htm

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Baltimore Sun September 10, 2004 Nuclear Nightmare Closer To Reality By Graham Allison PRESIDENT BUSH has called nuclear terrorism our "ultimate nightmare," and combating it America's "highest priority." As we reflect on the third anniversary of al-Qaida's assault on America, it is chilling to realize that we are now more vulnerable to a nuclear 9/11 than we were when Osama bin Laden hit us three years ago. Consider the evidence on five related fronts: bin Laden, Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Russia. Some in the intelligence community now refer to the leader of the al-Qaida movement as "Osama bin Missing." While he lost his sanctuary and terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, bin Laden, his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and 86 percent of the individuals identified by the U.S. government as al-Qaida leaders remain at large. Since Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida has conducted dozens of attacks, including one in March that helped topple the government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, one of Mr. Bush's staunchest allies. Bin Laden and al- Zawahiri regularly issue audiotapes and videotapes calling upon al-Qaida members and new recruits to attack America and our allies. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, al-Qaida's ranks have likely swelled to more than 18,000. In short, there is little reason to think the enemy is weaker now than it was then. Second, however one assesses the wisdom of going to war with Iraq, the way we went compromised the campaign against nuclear terrorism. In seeking support, Mr. Bush argued that Saddam Hussein might transfer weapons of mass destruction to terrorists such as al-Qaida. Having called for war on false pretenses, the administration's credibility to address urgent WMD threats from North Korea and Iran has been seriously weakened. Moreover, Iraq has so consumed the Bush administration's attention, diplomatic leverage and military capability that it has sucked the air out of efforts to address other gathering dangers. Third, since the United States made Iraq its top priority, what have North Korea and Iran done? Since January 2003, North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has turned off the 24-hour cameras that were watching its 8,000 nuclear fuel rods, has kicked out the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who were ensuring that these rods were not used to make weapons, and has begun reprocessing the rods, which should produce enough plutonium for six more nuclear weapons. Certifiably the most promiscuous proliferator on Earth, North Korea has sold missiles to everyone who will pay: Iraq, Iran, Libya and . Al-Qaida has said publicly that it is in the market for a nuclear bomb, and North Korea may soon have a few spare bombs to sell. As a result of our neglect, we could awaken tomorrow to an announcement that North Korea now has a nuclear arsenal of five or even eight bombs and that it is completing a weapons factory capable of producing another dozen a year. Fourth, in the past two years, Iran has rushed to complete its factories for producing highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the stuff of nuclear weapons. Once it achieves this goal, it will be able to transfer nuclear weapons to its terrorist client and collaborator, Hezbollah, which repeatedly has attacked Americans in the Middle East. That includes the attack that killed 241 U.S. military personnel in Lebanon in 1983 and the attack on American military barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen in 1996. In 2001, Iran's program was years away from making the essential ingredient of nuclear weapons. Today, because of accelerated development occasioned by our invasion of its neighbor, Iraq, Iran stands months from that finish line. Finally, on the Russian front, many nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear materials remain poorly guarded and vulnerable to theft by terrorists or by insiders who might sell them to terrorists. One incandescent fact summarizes the bad news: In the two years after 9/11, fewer of these weapons and materials were secured than in the two years prior. Although bureaucratic obstacles on both sides are partially to blame, Mr. Bush clearly has not used his relationship with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to break through these logjams and secure material that could fuel al- Qaida's nuclear bomb. Regarding the next al-Qaida assault, CIA acting Director John E. McLaughlin said recently, "In the summer of 2001, we had ample warning of an attack. ... We had the conviction that something big was coming at us. We have that same conviction now." If this "something big" is a nuclear terrorist attack, history will judge harshly a president who spent his time, our money and American lives on a country that had no nuclear program while leaving us vulnerable to the gravest threat to American lives and liberty. Graham Allison, director of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, is the author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.terror10sep10,1,7088537.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

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Washington Post September 10, 2004 Pg. 20 Two Charged In S. African Nuclear Trafficking Case JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 9 -- A German man and his colleague appeared in court Thursday on charges of violating South Africa's ban against nuclear proliferation, according to news reports. Gerhard Wisser, 66, is accused of receiving more than $1 million to arrange for a South African firm to manufacture parts for a gas centrifuge used to enrich uranium, according to the reports. Prosecutors say the parts were intended for Libya's atomic weapons program. Wisser was arrested in Germany in late August and released on bail pending investigation. The nationality of the other man, identified as Daniel Geiges, 65, was not immediately known. The men, who were arrested Wednesday, work for Krisch Engineering, a company in Randburg, near Johannesburg. Wisser is managing director of the company. Their lawyers say they have denied any wrongdoing. Authorities confirmed that the charges are related to the international investigation into the nuclear arms network led by a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who helped Libya and other countries develop weapons programs. A third man, Johan Andries Muller Meyer, 53, was arrested last week on similar allegations, but prosecutors dropped the charges against him as part of a deal in which he is expected to cooperate with the investigation, officials said Wednesday. Police seized 11 shipping containers from Meyer's company, Trade Fin Engineering, that allegedly contained components used in building gas centrifuges. The International Atomic Energy Agency is leading an investigation into the Khan network. "We're getting very good cooperation from the South African authorities," said Mark Gwozdecky, a spokesman for the agency. --Craig Timberg and Dafna Linzer http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10136-2004Sep9.html

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