AQ Khan, scientist at center of Pakistan nuclear scandal, dies

[Klaralven]

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who acknowledged being part of a nuclear proliferation ring, died on Sunday. He was 85.

Khan was admitted to Khan Research Laboratories Hospital on Aug. 26 after testing positive for COVID-19 and was later moved to a military hospital in Rawalpindi, said the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.

"He was loved by our nation bec(ause) of his critical contribution in making us a nuclear weapon state," Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan on Twitter. "For the people of Pakistan he was a national icon."

https://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Obituaries/AQ-Khan-scientist-at-center-of-Pakistan-nuclear-scandal-dies

[Kid Berwyn]

1. CIA analyst Richard M. Barlow blew the whistle and got ruined.

Last edited Sun Oct 10, 2021, 11:42 AM - Edit history (1)

The Whistle Blower

The Man Who Told the Truth and Paid the Price

by Tamar Sullivan
Ami, January 28, 2015 - 8 Shvat 5775
Via Project On Government Oversight

Richard Barlow was simply doing his job when he uncovered an illegal network of Pakistani procurement agents acquiring US components to build a nuclear bomb. But his irrefutable intelligence and his intention to go after the criminals were politically problematic, so his rivals sought to discredit him with one of the most dishonest smear campaigns in this nation’s recent history. Despite overwhelming evidence in his favor and President Bill Clinton’s full support while in office, Barlow has never been compensated for sacrificing his career by exposing the facts that could have prevented the bomb from falling into Pakistani hands, leaving us in the precarious global situation in which we find ourselves today.

Barlow’s last request for personal restitution from the White House in 2009 was probably his last. President Obama’s silence in Barlow’s case follows the latter’s two decades of failed attempts to clear his name and receive his pension. After years of backstabbing sabotage and dashed hopes, Barlow laments the reality of this last shot at compensation.

“That was the end of it for me,” Barlow, 60, quietly acknowledges. He now lives in a motor home with his dogs and barely a penny to his name.

Snip…

The news of the operatives on American soil enraged many in Congress, and they began to call for a termination of aid to Pakistan under the Solarz Amendment. Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz called for an immediate hearing to ascertain the truth about Pakistan’s nuclear program. Barlow, as the CIA’s top expert on Pakistan, was called to the hearing along with a national intelligence officer, David Einsel. Because Einsel’s priority was to keep intelligence regarding Pakistan from interfering with the Afghan war, his testimony was expected to be purposely deceitful. Barlow’s supervisors and attorneys instructed him to tell the truth when asked.

Continues…

http://www.pogoarchives.org/m/wi/ami201_feature_barlow.pdf

That was the PREVIOUS Afghan War, the one where we helped give the Soviets their Vietnam.

[Klaralven]

3. Quote on motivation

Pakistan's motivation for nuclear weapons arose from a need to prevent "nuclear blackmail" by India. Had Iraq and Libya been nuclear powers, they wouldn't have been destroyed in the way we have seen recently. ... If (Pakistan) had an atomic capability before 1971, we [Pakistanis] would not have lost half of our country after a disgraceful defeat.

—?Abdul Qadeer Khan, statement on 16 May 2011, published in Newsweek,

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Patriotic Profits

BCCI: The Bank of the CIA

Jack Colhoun
Covert Action Quaterly, Spring 1993

Jack Colhoun was Washington correspondent for the (New York) Guardian news weekly from 1980 to 1992. He has a Ph.D. in history and specializes in post-World War II U.S. foreign policy. His soon-to-be-published book The George Bush File (Los Angeles: ACCESS, 1993) includes reprints of several of his articles cited below.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal opens a window with a spectacular view of a subject usually shrouded in secrecy: How the CIA uses banks to finance clandestine operations.

The view is spectacular because BCCI, which earned the moniker the “Bank of Crooks and Criminals International,” worked closely with former Director of Central Intelligence William Casey and the Reagan administration’s off-the-shelf arms Enterprise. BCCI financed some of the Enterprise’s arms-for-hostages deals with Iran. Arms merchants linked to the October Surprise banked with BCCI. The CIA funneled funds through the bank to underwrite the Agency’s secret wars in Afghanistan and Nicaragua.

But BCCI’s ties to the shadowy world of intelligence go deeper. Clark Clifford and Richard Helms--retired, but still connected senior members of the U.S. intelligence community--helped pave the way for BCCI’s secret acquisition of the Washington, D.C.-based banking network, Financial General Bankshares. Sheikh Kamal Adham, the founder of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, also played a key role on behalf of BCCI in the takeover of Financial General, which was renamed First American Bankshares.

Casey met “every few months” with Agha Hassan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of BCCI, in Washington, D.C. and Islamabad, Pakistan, over a three-year period in the 1980s. Casey and Abedi talked about Iran-Contra arms deals, the Agency-funded war in Afghanistan, and the ever volatile situation in the Persian Gulf. Abedi even made arrangements for Casey’s travels in Pakistan.1

1. For the Casey-Abedi meetings, see Peter Truell and Larry Gutwin, False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, The World’s Most Corrupt Financial Empire (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 133; and NBC News, Sunday Today, February 23, 1992.

CONTINUED...

https://covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/CAQ44-1993-1.pdf

Lots from DU of Old:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6201672

[hunter]

2. The "secrets" are not the greatest impediment to building a bomb.

The first atomic bombs were designed and built a little over 75 years ago. There's not many secrets left.

Establishing the industrial and intellectual infrastructure to build atomic bombs is the largest hurdle.

Most anti-nuclear-proliferation efforts attempt to impede the development of the required industrial infrastructure, in some cases by sabotage and acts of extreme violence.

Which nation has, or doesn't have the bomb is largely determined by industrial capacity and international politics, especially as those politics relate to simmering conflicts between super-powers. It's not determined by lone heroes or villains.