Is US playing a double game with Pakistan? By supporting Musharraf and pouring millions of dollars. Check this new book on how US is working with Pakistani politicians.
Hiding in plain sight: Pakistan and nuclear proliferation
By Chuck Leddy | October 30, 2007
Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, By Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, Walker & Co., 576 pp., $27.95
With allies like Pakistan, who needs enemies?
The authors of “Deception” are award-winning British investigative journalists who make it abundantly clear that Pakistan has done more to spread nuclear weapons to America’s enemies than any other nation. They relate how our Middle East ally, while supposedly aiding our war on terror, has sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Not only was the United States aware of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and its proliferation, but, the authors say, our taxpayer dollars likely helped to fund the fiasco.
In the late 1970s, the United States needed Pakistan to help funnel covert aid to Islamic militants fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Starting with the Carter administration, and continuing since, the authors say the United States has sacrificed principle (i.e., nuclear nonproliferation) for pragmatism (i.e., fighting the Soviets and, later, the Islamic militants we’d helped to fight the Soviets). The authors describe the government’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to Pakistan’s nuclear program as “a complex conspiracy, with State Department officials actively obstructing other arms of government which could not help but fall over intelligence about Pakistan’s nuclear trade. Evidence was destroyed, criminal files were diverted, Congress was repeatedly lied to and . . . presidential appointees even tipped off the Pakistan government” about ongoing investigations.
The level of American willful blindness toward Pakistan, as described by the authors in detail, is the book’s most provocative argument. The role of Pakistan’s military in propping up the Taliban is well-known, but less known were the discussions between Pakistani nuclear scientists and Osama bin Laden. When CIA Director George Tenet met with Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf in 2003 and presented overwhelming evidence of Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation, the authors say, Musharraf called upon all his thespian skills to appear duly shocked.
Musharraf developed an amazing ruse for the United States and the world, the authors write: “Musharraf began to refashion Pakistan’s proliferation from a military prerogative to the act of a small group of renegade scientists.” These few money-grubbing scientists, Musharraf contended, had sold billions of dollars worth of nuclear knowhow and equipment to the outside world without Pakistan’s military-led government knowing anything about it.
In 2004, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, scientist A.Q. Khan, appeared on Pakistan television and apologized (in English) for his “unauthorized proliferation activities.” The following day, Musharraf pardoned Khan, who was immediately made unavailable for questioning by Western authorities investigating Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation.
As for Khan’s activities being unauthorized, the authors present overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In 2000, for example, the Pakistani military held an international munitions fair. “The central exhibit,” write the authors, “was a large Khan Research Laboratories booth promoting the sale of centrifuges with an after-sale consultancy service.” With enough money, anyone could buy, off-the-shelf, parts to a nuclear program.
The Bush administration trumpeted Khan’s 2004 “confession” as a triumph of US commitment to nonproliferation. Pakistan remained a friend and continued receiving billions of dollars in US aid. Yet nothing has changed after Khan’s public scapegoating, say the authors, who “follow the money” to show that Pakistan continues to allow nuclear proliferation. Most galling of all, the authors present evidence of US aid being misdirected toward the Islamic nation’s nuclear program, saying that “US taxpayers unwittingly fund[ed] Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme.”
“Deception” is not an easy read. The amount of detail presented, culled from thousands of documents and interviews, may leave a reader breathless, as will the horrific policy implications of America’s evident blindness. Reading “Deception” will likely leave you skeptical of what the US government says and does about Pakistan, and that’s likely a good thing.
Chuck Leddy is a freelance writer who lives in Dorchester.