CIA Slow to Pursue Smuggling Network, Expert Says

CIA attention to state-to-state relations prevented the spy agency from learning more about the nuclear smuggling network once headed by top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, a nonproliferation expert said yesterday (see GSN, May 3).

“There's no doubt that the CIA knew about some of Khan's activities at various stages of his proliferation,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, lead author of a sweeping report on the Khan network.  Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. State Department official, is now a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“There’s also no doubt that the CIA didn't give enough attention to this area of private sector proliferation in looking at Iran's nuclear development program over the years,” he added.

A CIA spokesman disputed Fitzpatrick’s assertion.

“The disruption of A.Q. Khan's proliferation network was a major success, one in which the CIA played a crucial role. To suggest otherwise is to ignore the facts,” said spokesman Paul Gimigliano.  “As with so many other intelligence triumphs, this was the result of hard, careful, essential work over time” (Reuters/Washington Post, May 9).

Fitzpatrick said Khan’s network acted largely as a private enterprise without the approval of Pakistani political leaders.

“The network’s sales to Libya … were almost exclusively private business transactions, beyond state control,” he told the Pakistani Dawn newspaper.

Still, the question of official Pakistani involvement in the network requires more information.

“Past Pakistani governments’ knowledge of and even involvement in A.Q. Khan’s secondary proliferation activities remains open to debate,” Fitzpatrick said, noting that former army chief Gen. Aslam Beg had encouraged the Khan network’s dealings with other nations.

Khan was motivated by “ego, money, nationalism and a sense of Islamic fraternity,” Fitzpatrick said (Dawn, May 9).

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