CIA chief confronted Musharraf on A Q Khan's network

WASHINGTON: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was confronted by the then CIA chief George Tenet with evidence of AQ Khan's nuclear proliferation network, warning him of the 'devastating' consequences if Islamabad's nuclear know how reached Libya, Iran or even Al Qaeda.

"If a country like Libya or Iran or God forbid an organisation like the Al Qaeda gets a working nuclear device and the world learns that it came from your country, I'm afraid the consequences would be devastating," Tenet warned Musharraf during a September 24, 2003 meeting when the General visited New York for the United Nations session.

In his memoir 'At the Centre of The Storm: My Years with the CIA', the former director of the US spy agency described the probe into Khan's network as "among the closely held secrets within the Agency."

"What we don't know is how many networks similar to Khan's may still be out there, perating undetected, and offering deadly advice and supplies to anyone with the cash to pay for them.

"In the current marketplace, if you have a hundred million dollars, you can be your own nuclear power," Tenet says.

Referring to the 'Four Eyes' meeting with Musharraf with no handlers or note takers, Tenet said he told the General "A Q Khan is betraying your country. He has stolen some of your nation's most sensitive secrets and sold them to the highest bidders. Khan has stolen your nuclear weapons secrets. We know this because we stole them from him."

"Thank you George,I will take care of this," was Musharraf's response according to Tenet.

"We discovered the extent of Khan's hidden network which stretch from Pakistan to Europe to the Middle East, to Asia. A Q Khan was the mastermind behind proliferation efforts as far afield as North Korea, Iran and South Africa," Tenet says.

Khan and his associates, by 2003, were involved in a range of activities that included providing Iran, Libya and North Korea with designs for both Pakistan's older centrifuges and for newer and more efficient models, he said.

But Tenet makes the point that it had to involve a person no less than Musharraf to come down on Khan who transformed Pakistan into a nuclear power and was looked upon as a national hero.

Tenet said busting Khan's network was one of the successful operations on which he focused during his entire seven year tenure. "Our efforts against this organisation were among the closely held secrets within the Agency. Often I would brief only the President on the progress we were making," he writes.

In the realm of weapons of mass destruction, Tenet also recounts the fashion in which the US and other intelligence outfits came to disarm a Pakistani NGO Umma Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) that had been ostensibly established to run social welfare projects in Afghanistan.

"However the information suggested that UTN had another purpose: they hoped to lend their expertise and access to the scientific establishment in order to help build chemical, biological and nuclear programmes for Al Qaeda.

Tenet lists the kind of people who ran the UTN, retired Pakistani nuclear scientists, military officers, engineers and technicians, the founder and Chairman being Sultan Bashiriduddin Mahmood, the former Director of Nuclear Power at the Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission.