A.Q. Khan

Abdul Qadeer Khan was a Pakistani scientist "closely associated with Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb," in the words of the Kerry-Brown Senate report. United States officials in the 1980s referred to the "Khan Laboratory's" gas centrifuge program and to a nuclear procurement network under his name, and tracked its purchases for the enrichment plant at Kahuta. They identified a Lahore firm, Multinational, as a procurement agent for his network, and in 1987 the arrest of its buyer Arshad Pervez in the United States exposed an attempt to obtain maraging steel and beryllium for Pakistan's program.¹²³ Khan was project director of the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, to which, according to the Senate report, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) gave 10 million dollars in grants in the late 1980s.³⁴

Kahuta and the Procurement Network

In 1979 the administration of Jimmy Carter suspended aid to Pakistan under the Symington amendment after discovering the Kahuta enrichment plan; in 1981 the Reagan administration obtained a five-year waiver from Congress because of Pakistan's role in channeling U.S. aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. State Department telegrams of September and November 1985 show U.S. officials pressing West Germany over Pakistani agents seeking aluminum tubes for the Khan Laboratory's centrifuge program, and by fall 1986 the U.S. government regarded Multinational Inc. as a "procurement agent" for Khan's network. In May 1986 Representative Stephen Solarz told Zia ul-Haq that U.S. intelligence indicated Kahuta was enriching uranium to weapons grade, which Pakistani officials denied.²

The Pervez Case

Arshad Pervez, a native of Pakistan who had moved to Canada in 1967, ran an import-export business, A.P. Enterprises, in Toronto. In October 1986 he sought "maraging 350 steel," a high-strength steel used in gas centrifuge enrichment plants, from Carpenter Technology Corporation of Pennsylvania, whose staff alerted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the United States Customs Service. Pervez named his client as Inam Ul-Haq of Multinational Corporation of Lahore. He offered a series of end uses, among them a research project of Karachi University's engineering program, rocket motors and antitank weapons, and paid 1,000 dollars to an undercover Customs agent posing as a Commerce Department licensing officer. In 1987 he added a request for beryllium and proposed commingling it with the steel. When the undercover agent suggested that other metals were for "another application in the plant at Kahuta," Pervez answered, "Could be," and at the end of the meeting said that "the Kahuta client is ready." He was arrested in Philadelphia in July 1987 while arranging the first shipment.¹

A federal grand jury indicted Pervez and Inam Ul-Haq on July 28, 1987. Pervez was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States, attempting to export beryllium and making false statements to the Commerce Department, acquitted on the bribery counts after claiming entrapment, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment on the conspiracy count. On March 6, 1989, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated the conspiracy and beryllium convictions and ordered a new trial on those counts under Mathews v. United States, which entitles a defendant who denies elements of the offense to an entrapment instruction whenever the evidence could support one, and remanded for a hearing on entrapment on the false statement counts.¹ According to the National Security Archive, Inam Ul-Haq, whom it called "a key figure in the A. Q. Khan nuclear procurement network," left the United States before he could be arrested.² The Third Circuit's ruling opened the way to a retrial on all counts; after plea negotiations Pervez pleaded nolo contendere to the count of illegal export of beryllium and was released from prison on April 4, 1990, on the basis of time served. The State Department's legal adviser, Abraham Sofaer, wrote that the outcome "did not suggest either innocence on the defendant's part or a lack of evidence supporting the government's case."²

A State Department intelligence memorandum of December 29, 1987, linked Khan Research Laboratories to the maraging steel and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission to the beryllium, and concluded that the network "could not exist without the umbrella of government approval, protection, and funding." An Arms Control and Disarmament Agency memorandum stated that "there is no plausible end-use for 25 tons of grade 350 maraging steel other than in the manufacture of centrifuges." President Reagan certified to Congress on December 17, 1987, that "Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device," and in January 1988 invoked and then waived the Solarz amendment.²

BCCI and the Pervez Claim

The Senate report stated that "arms trafficking involving BCCI included the financing of Pakistan's procurement of nuclear weapons through BCCI Canada, as documented in the Parvez case, involving a Pakistani who attempted to procure nuclear related materials financed by BCCI through the United States," and that in the late 1980s "other BCCI officials were assisting Pakistanis in purchasing nuclear technologies paid for by Pakistani-front companies through BCCI-Canada." Both statements rest on a single source, the testimony of Alan Kreczko, Deputy Legal Adviser of the State Department, in the Senate hearing record (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, p. 599).³⁵ The Third Circuit's opinion in the Pervez case, which recounts the negotiations, payments and shipping arrangements, contains no reference to BCCI, to any bank, or to how the purchase was to be financed.¹

In a letter of November 22, 1991, the Central Intelligence Agency told the Subcommittee that "the Agency did have some reporting [as of 1987] on BCCI being used by third world regimes to acquire weapons and transfer technology," but declined to elaborate in public.⁵ The report's executive summary stated that documents on BCCI's use "to assist the builders of a Pakistani nuclear bomb" had been "sealed in the United Kingdom by British intelligence," and listed "the extent of BCCI's involvement in Pakistan's nuclear program" among its unanswered questions.⁶

Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute

The Pakistani BCCI Foundation, created to shelter BCCI's Pakistani profits from tax, received tax-free status in 1981 while Ghulam Ishaq Khan was minister of finance; Ishaq Khan chaired the foundation through the 1980s and became president of Pakistan after Zia's death in 1988. The Senate report stated that BCCI "provided $10 million in grants in the late 1980's to finance an officially 'private' science and technology institute named for Pakistani President Ishaq Khan, whose director, A. Qadir Khan, has been closely associated with Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb," and that the institute "is believed by some experts to be the headquarters for Pakistan's efforts to build an Islamic bomb."³

According to the Federation of American Scientists, the institute was formed in December 1985, its parent body, the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Sciences and Technology in Pakistan (SOPREST), was registered in June 1988, and a group of scientists and engineers under Khan's leadership produced its feasibility study in 1989. Khan agreed to be project director, civil works began at the campus at Topi, in the North-West Frontier Province at the foot of the Tarbela Dam reservoir, in early 1990, and the first students entered in October 1993. The FAS listed its main donors as the Infaq Foundation, Chiniot Anjuman-e-Islamia, the Dawood Group and the provincial government, which gave the land.⁴

The institute's own history does not name Khan. It dates the project to December 1985, when "the Benevolent Community Care and Infaq Foundation donated Rs. 50 million," records that Ghulam Ishaq Khan, then president, was elected president of SOPREST for life, with H. U. Beg as honorary executive director and Samiullah Marwat as secretary, and attributes the planning of the institute to "a group of eminent scientists and engineers." It credits a further 750 million rupees to the Infaq Foundation.⁷