Global Security Newswire

British authorities last week raided the home of customs agent who has accused U.S. and British officials of allowing an international nuclear smuggling network to operate instead of shutting it down, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, May 9).

The customs agent, Atif Amin, was featured in a recent book that charged that the network once led by top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan distributed nuclear technology to rogue nations as Western intelligence agencies stood by and watched.

Amin said he was investigating the Khan network in 2000, but was ordered to stand down because intelligence officials feared he would upend their own investigations.

"They knew exactly what was going on all the time," Amin said in the book, America and the Islamic Bomb by David Armstrong and Joseph Trento of the Washington-based National Security News Service.  "If they'd wanted to, they could have blown the whistle on this long ago," Amin added.

Last week, officials searched Amin's home seeking evidence that he had violated the British Official Secrets Act, the Post reported.

The book authors said the raid was intended to deflect attention from the question of whether intelligence agencies allowed the Khan network to operate.

"It's a story Washington and London do not want out," said Armstrong.  "If Amin can be discredited, it would distract the public from the fact that the U.S. and Britain prevented the most dangerous nuclear smuggling operation in history from being shut down when the opportunity existed" (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, Dec. 16).