While the amendment grew out of worries about both India and Pakistan, it hit Pakistan harder. The Indians already had much of their nuclear-weapons infrastructure in place and had tested a device two years earlier. Pakistan, on the other hand, was in the early stages of its nuclear program, and its diplomats and politicians complained bitterly that the legislation discriminated against what they claimed was a legitimate civilian program.
On May 12, 1976, the day after the amendment’s passage, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger convened a meeting of his senior staff to discuss nuclear proliferation and develop a strategy for dealing with Pakistan. One suggestion was to push Pakistan to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accept IAEA inspections of its nuclear installations. That way, the Pakistanis could buy the French plant without triggering the Symington sanctions. Pakistan was an ally, albeit not a fully trusted one, and Kissinger worried that applying pressure to sign the treaty would make Bhutto feel that Pakistan was once again being singled out.
“It is a little rough on the Pakistanis to require them to do what the Indians don’t have to do,” said Kissinger.
“The important distinction here is that there is no economic basis for the project,” said Reginald Bartholomew, a State Department counterproliferation official. “Pakistan has no need for reprocessed fuel at the present time, and its future needs, when they develop, could be better met in other ways.”
“Why do they want a reprocessing plant?” asked Kissinger.
“They want to be in a position to produce a weapon, and a reprocessing facility clearly puts them in that position,” Bartholomew replied.
Kissinger was told that there was no doubt that Pakistan had started its own nuclear program. Alfred Atherton, a deputy assistant secretary of state, said the shah had recently warned the United States that Bhutto intended to develop nuclear weapons. Adding to the worries, he said, a recent CIA report said that Libya had agreed to finance a significant portion of Pakistan’s effort to go nuclear “in return for some unspecified future nuclear cooperation.”
Three months later, on August 8, Kissinger flew to Islamabad for a showdown with Bhutto. Kissinger remained grateful to Pakistan for its help in arranging his secret trip to Beijing in 1971, which had paved the way for President Nixon’s opening of relations with China. But he recognized that Pakistan’s atomic ambitions threatened to bring nuclear warfare to the region, so he was determined to stop Bhutto. In an off-the-record briefing to reporters traveling with him, Kissinger said that Washington would invoke the Symington amendment to cut off all aid to Pakistan if Bhutto insisted on going ahead with the reprocessing plant. As an incentive, he planned to offer Pakistan a fleet of 110 Corsair A-7 jet fighters, complete with missiles, rockets, and cannons. Some administration factions, led by the CIA, believed that buttressing Pakistan’s conventional forces against India might persuade it to take its eye off the ultimate weapon.
“He told me that I should not insult the intelligence of the United States by saying that Pakistan needed the reprocessing plant for her energy needs,” Bhutto later wrote in his diaries, describing the encounter with Kissinger. “In reply, I told him that I will not insult the intelligence of the U.S. by discussing the energy needs of Pakistan, but by the same token, he should not discuss the plant at all.”
As the Americans anticipated, the Pakistani leader felt like he was coming under discriminatory pressure. Later, Bhutto summed up his anger by saying that if the Christians, Jews, Hindus, and communists had atomic weapons, why exclude Muslims? America’s inconsistent policy on the spread of nuclear weapons was already a major grievance among many Muslim countries, which were angered by the American failure to stop the Israelis from developing its suspected nuclear arsenal. Bhutto had tapped into that resentment earlier when he had persuaded the Libyans and Saudis to help finance Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons project.
Kissinger’s failure to secure a voluntary halt to Pakistan’s program increased the pressure on the United States and its allies to find another means of thwarting Bhutto’s nuclear aspirations. The challenge was part and parcel of the growing complexity and seriousness of proliferation as a whole, which led Len Weiss to reconsider his plan to leave Senator Glenn’s staff and return to the University of Maryland. Near the end of 1976, Glenn took over as chairman of a subcommittee of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and asked Weiss to stay on as chief of the staff for it, as it had jurisdiction over nuclear proliferation. Weiss agreed. He was determined to expose the people, the companies, and the governments that were spreading nuclear technology, at least for another year.
CHAPTER 7
THE ROAD TO KAHUTA
A.Q. KHAN RETURNED to Pakistan at a time when the nuclear-weapons program was in peril. Canada had crippled the reactor in Karachi by cutting off spare parts and fuel rods, and, in the face of international pressure, France was considering backing out of its agreement to sell Pakistan the reprocessing plant. The stage was set for the return of the prodigal scientist.
By the end of 1975, some of the equipment for the uranium-enrichment plant had arrived through front companies, and more was on the way. After settling his wife and daughters temporarily with his family in Karachi once again, Khan arranged to take a tour of a warehouse in the village of Sihala, a few miles from Islamabad, where the enrichment equipment was being stored. He hoped to find that they had started laying out the bare bones of a pilot centrifuge plant according to his instructions, but he was disappointed to encounter only unopened crates of machinery.
Bhutto had been on a trip with the shah of Iran. In Khan’s telling of events, when the prime minister returned he immediately summoned Khan to his office. Khan told him that the lack of progress was such that he was contemplating going back to the Netherlands. Appealing to Khan’s patriotism, the prime minister asked him to stay, but the scientist hesitated, saying he wanted to talk to his wife first. Khan was never shy about embellishing his role in history, and he later said that when he returned the next day to inform Bhutto of his decision to remain, the prime minister banged his fist on his desk and said, “I will see the Hindu bastards now.”
His years in Europe had left Khan ill prepared to deal with the convolutions of Pakistan’s bureaucracy. His awakening began when he learned that the pilot plant in Sihala was to be established and operated under the umbrella of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, meaning Khan would report to the agency’s head, Munir Khan (no relation). Khan knew his new boss had only a master’s degree, and he had no intention of sharing his anticipated glory with someone he considered his scientific and intellectual inferior. His concerns became more personal when he discovered that his salary would be three thousand rupees per month, about three hundred dollars, a tenth of what he had earned at FDO. Khan and his family had not lived lavishly in the Netherlands, but feeling like a pauper in his own country was intolerable. Pakistan was highly class-conscious, steeped in the traditions of the British Raj. To some people, Khan, no matter what his education or accomplishments, would never rise above his roots as the son of a schoolteacher. But Khan was determined to find a way to stay and rise.
Even after telling Bhutto he would remain, his worries increased in the days that followed as he toured the rest of the installations overseen by the PAEC. The procurement effort in Europe had yielded less than Khan had expected. Worse, there was no coordinated program to start the first stage of the pilot plant. Several factors had delayed its start. Munir Khan remained focused on using plutonium in the core of Pakistan’s first atomic device, and he still harbored hopes of reaching an agreement with France over the reprocessing plant. But Munir Khan was also worried about the way the technology was being obtained for the centrifuge program and how the world would respond to Pakistan’s treachery. Munir Khan had joined the IAEA in Vienna in 1958, the year after the agency had been founded, and he had developed a high regard for the organization and its agenda. He had not returned to Pakistan until 1972, when he attended the Multan confe
rence. Bhutto had prevailed on Munir Khan to take over the PAEC from I. H. Usmani. From his experience in Vienna, Khan knew some countries and companies would willingly sell sensitive goods to Pakistan or anyone else. But he also recognized that obtaining much of the most critical equipment would involve false invoices, front companies, and other forms of subterfuge, which made him uncomfortable. Already his reluctance to engage in the necessary lies was so strong that the control over Siddique A. Butt and his procurement ring had been transferred by Bhutto from the atomic-energy agency to the military.
When A. Q. Khan confronted Munir Khan about the lack of progress on the pilot plant that Bhutto had ordered started in late 1974, Munir Khan explained that the PAEC had many priorities, and uranium enrichment would wait its turn. As far as Munir Khan was concerned, it could wait forever. For Khan, that was unacceptable. He had no intention of playing second fiddle to a man he considered his inferior, and he had no intention of being denied his role at the forefront of Pakistan’s nuclear efforts. So A. Q. Khan decided to take the second big risk of his career, embarking on a scheme to push aside his new rival and gain personal control over the enrichment project. By this time, he had resigned from FDO, fueling suspicions in Amsterdam. If the gamble backfired, he knew he could end up trapped and marginalized in Pakistan. There was no way to predict the outcome of his plot with a scientist’s certainty, leaving him to count on his own cunning and Bhutto’s desperation.
His first move was to plant the seed of dissension, complaining to Bhutto’s military adviser that the lack of progress on enrichment was imperiling the nuclear effort. He said the PAEC and its head refused to provide the resources to carry out the work assigned to him by the prime minister, and he said he was worried about disappointing Bhutto. The adviser dutifully passed on the concerns to Bhutto, who summoned A. Q. Khan for what was to be a defining moment for the ambitious scientist.
As he sat face-to-face with Bhutto in the prime minister’s office, Khan launched a withering attack on Munir Khan and the PAEC, saying they had misled Bhutto about the nuclear program’s progress. Not only had they refused to start an enrichment program, but the plutonium project was stalled by the French and most likely doomed. He called his rival a liar and a cheat, claiming that he was incapable of ever delivering a bomb. “If you really want this atomic bomb,” Khan argued, “you must free me from this stifling bureaucracy. I cannot work with the PAEC, and I cannot work beneath someone as incompetent as Munir Khan. He has never participated in any scientific research. He doesn’t even have a single research paper to his credit. He is an enemy of Pakistan. I must have complete independence from this man, and I must report to no one but you, sahib.”
Khan bemoaned the lack of technology and infrastructure to develop the sophisticated equipment necessary to enrich uranium, saying the only way to build the bomb was to buy the equipment and the technology on the open market. In the most audacious element of his plan, the scientist told Bhutto that he needed complete freedom to use the Pakistani network already operating in Europe, without oversight or budget constraints.
“This will take large sums of money,” he told Bhutto. “I must be able to spend it without anyone looking over my shoulder. Many of the deals will be in cash because that’s the way these people do business. I know them because I’ve dealt with them and their kind for years.”
Bhutto promised to weigh the proposal. The prime minister had known Munir Khan for many years, and he liked and respected him. He didn’t trust the brash and egotistical new arrival, but he was desperate to have his bomb and willing to take a risk of his own. A few days later, Bhutto’s military adviser telephoned Khan and said the prime minister had granted his request, giving him complete control of the enrichment program and granting him the authority to operate outside the reach of the atomic-energy agency, with all the money he needed and without the troubling hassles of financial oversight. Bhutto, who was not averse to his own scheming, planned to pit the two Khans against each other, with one chasing the dream of enriching uranium in secret and the other leading a team trying to produce plutonium. Bhutto figured that just as American scientists in the Manhattan Project had manufactured bombs from plutonium and enriched uranium simultaneously, the two Khans, walking their two roads, offered twice the chance of success.
On July 31, 1976, Bhutto signed a secret order establishing the enrichment program, code-named Project 706. A. Q. Khan was in charge, reporting directly to the prime minister. The finance minister, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who was not related to A. Q. or Munir, was told to give Khan a blank check for whatever he needed to get the project running. Bhutto’s army chief of staff, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, was instructed to assign the military’s Special Works Organization, Pakistan’s equivalent of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to build a pilot enrichment plant as quickly as possible. Khan’s dream was under way. His gamble had paid off, but now he had to deliver on his promise, which meant that he would be taking another kind of gamble.
TO DELIVER, Khan needed equipment and people from the outside, and he needed them in a hurry. Obviously, the nuclear-armed Western countries and their allies were not going to share the technology willingly, particularly with a Muslim country. Khan would have to be crafty and careful, but he was confident that he could outwit the world.
Normally, years or even decades would be necessary to build a uranium-enrichment plant, with each step coming in sequence; a pilot plant would be built and a small number of centrifuges tested there; then a plant would be constructed to supply the gaseous uranium to spin the machines and produce the enriched uranium. Each step would involve lengthy studies and research and extensive tests. Khan did not have that kind of time or patience, so he had a far more radical approach in mind. He would not wait for completion of the pilot plant, nor would he delay construction of the centrifuges until prototypes were perfected. Everything would take place simultaneously. Within weeks of getting the green light, work had started on the pilot plant in Sihala, and the search was on for a site for the full-scale enrichment plant, which would be capable of running ten thousand centrifuges at a time, to turn out enough highly enriched uranium for several bombs per year. It was a daring move because it left no room for error, but Khan had great faith in the European technology he had stolen and the ability of the Pakistani pipeline to find the companies and people who would be willing to sell him what he needed. Along with the technology and equipment, he would use the government’s funds to hire the best minds away from the PAEC and recruit Pakistani scientists working abroad.
Seven months after his homecoming and just past his fortieth birthday, Khan had carved out his own fiefdom and begun enlisting a small army of people loyal only to him. In bypassing the bureaucracy, Khan dealt directly not only with Bhutto but with his two most powerful aides, Ghulam Khan and General Zia. The alliance with Zia offered a particular kind of insurance for Khan’s longevity—civilians leaders might come and go, but the military remained in power forever in Pakistan.
In a short space of time, Khan had positioned himself to reap the maximum benefits from his education as a scientist and the knowledge that he had gained and stolen in the Netherlands. He was poised to launch not just an enrichment project but himself. In both cases, he was driven by his fierce desire to be perceived as both a brilliant scientist and the savior of his nation.
THE ENRICHMENT program and the self-imposed deadline entailed enormous logistical and technological obstacles. Even an advanced industrial country would be hard-pressed to meet the timetable set by Khan, and Pakistan did not have the basic manufacturing ability to produce far less sophisticated products than a nuclear bomb. Its literacy rate was barely into double digits, and there were still no great universities to turn out legions of scientists and engineers. “The task was gigantic, and there were no visible means to accomplish it,” Khan said in describing the beginnings of the project. “Not a slightest sign of any advanced scientific infrastructure was available from where one could kick off, a
nd we had to start afresh. But as they say, ‘Where there is a will, there’s a way.’ This is a long chain of steps and usually takes a very long time, especially if you are dealing with one of the most difficult and sophisticated technologies of the world. We took a very bold step and started with all the steps simultaneously.”
Finding a location for the main enrichment plant was critical. Khan wanted it close enough to Islamabad to give him access to the centers of power, yet far enough from the city to discourage unnecessary intrusions by outsiders or bureaucrats. Eventually, a hundred-acre site was selected about twenty miles southeast of Islamabad, outside an obscure village called Kahuta. Khan thought the heavily forested location was perfect. To deter the curious, the plant would be given the innocuous name Engineering Research Laboratories.
“With no charm for the outer world, the place would not draw crowds, and security would be maintained, but with it so near to the capital, it was always for our benefit to take quick decisions and implement them without any delay,” Khan explained later.
Kahuta was not a unanimous choice. The village and Islamabad are in the eastern portion of Pakistan, closer to the Indian border—and within the reach of Indian missiles and aircraft—than some of the generals would like. But taking the facility to a far-flung location, like the Baluchistan desert in the southwest, would have made it harder for Khan to recruit top engineers and scientists and would have removed him from Islamabad. Khan prevailed. Ground was broken in late 1976.
In those frantic early days, Khan spent little time with his wife and two daughters, who were five and seven years old. They had settled into a small bungalow on Shalimar Road in a middle-class neighborhood of Islamabad. The city had been laid out a decade earlier in accordance with the rules of modern planning, with broad avenues, impressive whitewashed government buildings, and modern villas. A running joke among foreign diplomats was that Islamabad was “ten miles from Pakistan.” It was also far from the suburbs of Amsterdam, and Henny and the girls had been unprepared for the strangeness of the place.
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