BCCI and Pakistani Nuclear Hero

[seemslikeadream]

Pakistan's Nuclear Hero Defended
by Jefferson Morley

"Washington and Islamabad," says the Delhi-based daily, are "holding their breath" to see if Khan "will spill the beans about Pakistan's offical complicity in the spread of nuclear weapons technology."

Pakistan proceeded to spend some $10 billion developing a nuclear arsenal, say the editors of the Times of India. The money came from Libya, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and the depositors of the BCCI. The bank, says the editors of the Times of India, was founded by a Pakistani and operated freely in the Persian Gulf oil enclave of Dubai. It is inconceivable, they argue, that Western intelligence agencies didn't know all about this black market.

In other words, was the United States totally clueless while a Pakistani scientist supplied nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8262-2004Feb3_2.html

[cosmicdot]

1. I get the impression that the reporter's last sentence should be the first

or even the article's title: "In other words, was the United States totally clueless."

and, perhaps the rather generic "depositors of the BCCI" examined in more detail ???

Perhaps some might think it vital to get someone elected who has in the past or will in the future 'protect' those who brought BCCI's corruption to our shores. Despite Senate "investigations", I don't think the BCCI scandal was punished ... I don't recall the likes of Jackson Stephens; Harvard Management, i.e., Pug Winokur; James Bath; etc., serving time. The BCCI trial in the UK and such must have some heart's racing ... It might pay to play both sides of the fence in the presidential contest ... just in case Diebold fails to deliver or re-deliver the ideal candidate.

Or, am I off-base?

1986

George W. Bush and partners receive more than $2 million of Harken Energy stock in exchange for a failing oil well operation, which had lost $400,000 in the prior six months. After Bush joined Harken, the largest stock position and a seat on its board were acquired by Harvard Management Company. The Harken board gave Bush $600,000 worth of the company's publicly traded stock, plus a seat on the board plus a consultancy that paid him up to $120,000 a year. When Harken runs short of cash it hooks up with investment banker Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas, who arranges a $25 million stock purchase by Union Bank of Switzerland. Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh, who joins the board as a part of the deal, is connected to the infamous BCCI.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0203/S00035.htm

[KharmaTrain]

2. Did We Ever Really Get Down To The Bottom Of BCCI?

The scandals are foggy in my mind, but the connections to things going on today are getting clearer and clearer the more I read. I hope someone can connect all the dots from then and now in a simple way...if it's possible.

There's a lot of co-incidents here that should raise major red flags...most notably BCCI's base being in Islamabad...the financial money pit for Al Queda...and a virtual black hole in the financial world. Money flows in and out of that city and the country like water...and BCCI developed the conduits that are surely still being used today.

60 Minutes came touching on the fringes recently on their expose on Haliburton's economic connections with Iran, Libya and Hussein-era Iraq, and now we're starting to learn how Pakistan's top scientist played let's make a deal for nuclear secrets between other "rogue" states and surely with our own "friends" to build his bomb and feather his nest. I'm sure where the interests of our "friends" like Haliburton or KBR run ahead of the "national security" aspect you know who wins every time.

I'd love to see more about this connection and see others get on it as well.

Thanks for the post.

[seemslikeadream]

3. I would like to read this from the Financial Times

Jan. 27, 2004

...According to bankers, some of worked with BCCI before it collapsed in 1991, Pakistani investigators have sought the help of former BCCI employees to try...

but I don't have a subscription. :cry:

[9215]

4. Quid pro Quo

In the early 80's there was also something about Poppy cutting a deal to exchange nuke technology for Pakistan purchasing US Bell helicopters.

[DrBB]

6. Whoa--simultaneous posting

See mine, below, too. I've been trying to run this down for a while now, but haven't had any luck. Do you remember any more about this?

[DrBB]

5. PLEASE help me remember...

I distinctly recall reading an article related to all this in the New Yorker, well before 9/11. Pre-Bush II, also. Might have been by Sy Hersh. Might have been published in the first Clinton admin--that far back.

The occasion of the article was to bring out that, near the end of the Bush I administration, there had been an exceedingly narrowly-averted nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent. This was largely thanks to right-wing stupidity of some kind on the part of Bush I's foreign policy team. The article had a lot of evidence that we'd gone on high alert, and that India had come very close to nuking Pakistan. At that point, Pakistan did not have the Bomb, and my memory is hazy on the details of this, but what keeps bringing it to mind is this:

The article also went into some detail, IIRC, about US complicity in Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear technology. I seem to remember the article having been published before Pakistan tested its weapon, but I could be wrong about that, given the subject matter. Because the point was that the US not only looked the other way, but may have indirectly facilitated Pakistan's acquisition of necessary precursor technologies, in return for Pakistan's complicity in our operations in Afghanistan. That there was a quid pro quo: in return for allowing us to stage support for the anti-Soviet Afghan rebels through Pakistan, Pakistan required us to look the other way as they developed nuclear capability.

In other words, al Qaeda isn't the only blowback from our long and misguided involvement over there.

Anyone remember reading this, or seeing anything along these lines?

[seemslikeadream]

7. Is this it?

I haven't read it yet.

http://www.pepeace.org/current_reprints/03/The_Nuclear_Arsenal.htm

[DrBB]

10. Not the one I'm looking for, but on the right track

Hersh does mention the incident, and helps fix the chronology, but this one doesn't deal with US complicity very much. But it fills in a lot of the holes--a big help, thanks! The relevant paragraph:

India has had a tactical atomic bomb since the nineteen-seventies, and Pakistan's became operational in the late nineteen-eighties, although Pakistani leaders denied this fact for years. The Kashmiri dispute first veered close to nuclear confrontation in 1990. That spring, the American National Security Agency was monitoring what seemed to be yet another slowly escalating series of Pakistani and Indian attacks, when intercepts revealed that the Pakistani leadership had "panicked," as a senior intelligence official put it, at the prospect of a preëmptive Indian strike and had readied its small arsenal of nuclear warheads. (The previous fall, the Bush Administration had assured Congress that Pakistan did not possess such weapons—although it knew better—in order to gain continued approval for military aid to the country.)

Helps to clear up when this happened, and why I was confused about Pakistan's having nuclear weapons even though their big publically-acknowledged bomb testing hadn't occured yet.

I believe the earlier article must have been published around 91-93 sometime, as I recall it being not long after the incidents in question. New Yorker doesn't archive their stuff that far back--guess I'll have to make a trip to the library. I'm pretty sure it was a Hersh piece....

[9215]

11. here is another link

I posted "The case of the Nuclear Triggers" years ago at Smirking Chimp. It looks like author Robert Parry put some of this material on his website:

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/kissingeriraq.htm

[DrBB]

13. Here's the title: "On the Nuclear Edge," Sy Hersh, New Yorker, 1993

So far I've found a bunch of references TO the article, but no copies of the thing itself. Anybody runs across it, please let me know.

And thanks, seemslikeadream.

[9215]

8. Some other stuff

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/04NUKE.html?hp>

The Pakistani leaders who denied for years that scientists at the country's secret A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories were peddling advanced nuclear technology must have been averting their eyes from a most conspicuous piece of evidence: the laboratory's own sales brochure, quietly circulated to aspiring nuclear weapons states and a network of nuclear middlemen around the world.

The cover bears an official-looking seal that says "Government of Pakistan" and a photograph of the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. It promotes components that were spinoffs from Pakistan's three-decade-long project to build a nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium, set in a drawing that bears a striking resemblance to a mushroom cloud.

In other nations, such sales would be strictly controlled. But Pakistan has always played by its own rules.

As investigators unravel the mysteries of the North Korean, Iranian and now the Libyan nuclear projects, Pakistan - and those it empowered with knowledge and technology they are now selling on their own - has emerged as the intellectual and trading hub of a loose network of hidden nuclear proliferators.

Brochure pictured on NYTimes;

[seemslikeadream]

9. On the day of the Indian nuclear tests, Henry Kissinger,

on his own accord, went to the CNN studios and justified the Indian tests on the ground that India was living in a tough neighourhood. He obviously knew what he was talking about.

In the light of Pakistan's state of industrial development, Islamabad will continue to need foreign black market imports for a long time to come to sustain its nuclear arsenal. There were recent reports of 800 spark gaps needed for triggers being bought in the US by a South African Jew, shipped to Dubai and then on to Pakistan.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/468709.cms

[seemslikeadream]

12. The secret empire of Dr. Khan

The incontrovertible truth is that Pakistan's nuclear programme in every aspect has been, and remains, under the firm and total control of its army at least since 1977; even its navy and air force have little role in it. Its clandestine nature relied on building a black market largely managed by trusted senior army (and ISI) officers and senior scientists in the nuclear establishment. Such people have undoubtedly been under a strong security and intelligence cover as much for their safety as to keep an eye on them. With a flourishing $2 billion-plus annual narcotics trade, and banks like the former Dubai-based Pakistani-owned "Outlaw Bank", the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International), and the Mehran Bank to manage the black market in narcotics, nuclear trade and tools for terrorism, there was obviously no dearth of unaccounted funds for the purpose. General Aslam Beg, the army chief in the late 1980's who controlled the nuclear programme, later publicly acknowledged receipt of hundreds of crores of unaccounted funds which he passed on to the ISI and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=40361

[varun]

14. Libya got its nuke blueprints from Pakistan...

..wonder who else has the blueprints...in this black market.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/04/politics/04NUKE.html

Warhead Blueprints Link Libya Project to Pakistan Figure
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: February 4, 2004


WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — Twelve days ago, a 747 aircraft chartered by the United States government landed at Dulles Airport here carrying a single piece of precious cargo: a small box containing warhead designs that American officials believe were sold to Libya by the underground network linked to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the creator of the Pakistani bomb.

The warhead designs were the first hard evidence that the secret network provided its customers with far more than just the technology to turn uranium into bomb fuel. Libyan officials have told investigators that they bought the blueprints from dealers who are part of that network, apparently for more than $50 million. Those blueprints, along with the capability to make enriched uranium, could have given the Libyans all the elements they needed to make a nuclear bomb. What the Libyans purchased, in the words of an American weapons expert who has reviewed the program in detail, was both the kitchen equipment "and the recipes."....

also...

"...The last shipment of those parts to Libya was intercepted in October, which was several years after Washington began pressuring Mr. Musharraf's government to shut down the scientists at the Khan lab...."

OCTOBER??? 2 years after Pakistan became a "frontline ally" of USA in the war against terrorism?

Something is seriously wrong here...

[varun]

15. BCCI funded Pakistan's nuclear bomb

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm

"...the Pakistani BCCI Foundation was created as a means of sheltering BCCI profits from taxation. In 1981, it received tax-free status while Ishaq Khan was Pakistan's minister of finance. In turn, the foundation received BCCI's profits from Pakistani operations, and then used some of those profits to finance projects the Pakistani government wanted and could not pay for itself. For example, 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. The institute is believed by some experts to be the headquarters for Pakistan's efforts to build an Islamic bomb. In the same period, other BCCI officials were assisting Pakistanis in purchasing nuclear technologies paid for by Pakistani-front companies through BCCI-Canada.(94).."

[RainDog]

16. And Bush knew and lied about it

a few quotes...not the article you want, though.

From Outlaw Bank by Beatty and Gwynne.

They include this statement from Sheikh Kamal Adham, former head of Saudi intelligence, bro-in-law of late King Faisal, and shareholder in BCCI and First American Bank, who was speaking to an Arabic audience when admitted, in 1992, that "Pakistan had their own atomic bomb and that Abedi/BCCI had helped them get it.

...Kamal Adham was anticipating...indictment in the U.S. over BCCI fraud.

"So why would he want to call attention to all of this? The Western press aside, the wily old spy master certainly knew the intelligence agencies of the U.S. would pick up his remarks...He may have been sending a message directly to George Bush, reminding the president that Kamal Adham knew far too much to be trifled with.

in perspective...9-91. Morganthau was going after the powerful Saudi as one of the main culprits of the BCCI scandal. Morganthau kept quiet about his intentions to indict Adham AND SHEIKH KHALID BIN MAHFOUZ (in hopes to avoid state department inverventions.)

but when Kamal found out what was happening, he hired the former executive assistant of then White House Chief of Staff John Sununu...who had just (surprise...not) quit to go "private."

This publically brought the Bush administration into the BCCI scandal for the first time.

Beatty and Gwynne learned that Bush's White House was closely monitoring the BCCI investigation, insisting that a administration official sit in on congressional and justice dept. interviews with BCCI witnesses (does this sound familiar to anyone else?? ...the investigation into whistleblowing with Dubya).

some in the FBI complained the FBI probe was spinning its wheels because it was "too political" (again, sound familiar as an excuse to investigate the Bush lies to go to war with Iraq???)...and decisions were being held up in Washington.

A justice dept official complained Washington didn't really want the Atty Gen.'s office to actually return indictments. Washington (Bush) wanted to do an overall package deal, "'where we cut off the hands of a few Pakistanis and paint it as if they were really all the big folks.'"

Beatty and Gwynne go on to note that Bush Sr, lied and claimed he didn't know Adham. (who had been director of the CIA in 1976, WHEN GEORGE BUSH HEADED THE CIA).

The American agency had been "helping to modernize Saudi intelligence during Bush's tenure (oh, no conflict of interest there, huh, Zapata Oil?)

The authors also note that Bush was known as "the Saudi vice president" throughout the middle east. State dept said it was impossible for Bush not to have known Adham because he was the main man in S.A. when you making BIZ DEALS, as well as policy.

when asked about Bush's statement, Adham did not directly deny it, though Saudi's knew Adham's newphew, Sultan bin-Bandar was ambassador to the U.S. and was a frequent guest of Bush.

...but what about the nuclear weapons issue? Reagan, "intent on continuing military aid to Pakistan during the Afghanistan (mujahadeen/Osama bin Laden as Reagan's allies) war, turned a blind eye b/c U.S. law prohibited military aid or sale to nonnuclear countries known to be developing nuclear weapons.

In 88 and 89, Bush danced on the edge of truth about Pakistan, saying it did not "possess a nuclear explosive device" to justify continuing MASSIVE support for Pakistan, b/c Pak, bush said, only had "unassembled components."

As soon as Russia pulled out of Afghanistan, Bush said unassembled components violated the rules and cut off aid.

Beatty and Gwynne, in Time Magazine, were "the first to assert that BCCI was instrumental in Pakistan achieving unofficial Nuclear Club membership.

Via BCCI, Pakistan had received sophisticated American military technology that Congress NEVER AUTHORIZED. Adham's remarks re: an atmomic bomb may have been suggesting that it wouldn't be in the Bush administration's self-interest to probe too deeply into how Pakistan, and BCCI, came to possess such military capacity.

The Sheikh knew that BCCI was "the creation of a real life Dr. No, whose empire brokered ballistic missiles, illicit pharmaceuticals, stolen military secrets, heroin, and hot money, leaving a trail of corruption across two decades and seventy countries. And of all people, Adham had reason to know that the (Bush) White House knew it too, and had known about it for years."

pp 272-77

[seemslikeadream]

17. Why no trial for the world's biggest criminal?

Pardon for scientist who sold atom bomb secrets
By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore and Robin Gedye

Pakistan is likely to pardon without trial the father of the country's atomic bomb even though he has confessed to selling nuclear technology to rogue states, a senior government official told the Telegraph yesterday.

Another promised international indignation in the event of pardon. "He is the world's biggest criminal, involved for 27 years in selling nuclear technology. If you let him off with a slap on the wrist, then what kind of message are you sending to others?" he said.

Mr. Khan has let it be known that he is prepared to blow the whistle on the army's involvement. A cabinet minister revealed that Mr. Khan's daughter, a British citizen, had traveled to London with papers that could incriminate generals and other Pakistani leaders, including the former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/04/wpak04.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/04/ixnewstop.html

[varun]

18. Pakistani nuclear sicentist offers public apology...

...and gets a slap on the wrist..

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=2&u=/nm/20040204/wl_nm/nuclear_pakistan_dc

Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Takes the Rap for Leaks
57 minutes ago Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Mike Collett-White

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Top Pakistani scientist and national hero Abdul Qadeer Khan made a dramatic personal apology Wednesday for leaking atomic secrets, the latest twist in a proliferation scandal stretching from Libya to North Korea (news - web sites).

In a somber address on state television, Khan, revered at home as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, absolved the government and fellow scientists of any blame in an apparent bid by all concerned to draw a line under the damaging affair.


Commentators said his confession smacked of a cover-up, possibly part of a wider agreement to spare the powerful military unwanted scrutiny in any trial and allow President Pervez Musharraf to avoid pressure from Islamists and nationalists....

[seemslikeadream]

19. Nuclear betrayal apology

But his claim to have arranged it all himself has been met with widespread skepticism.

Western diplomats said the middlemen operated in Germany, Netherlands, Malaysia and United Arab Emirates.

As a direct result of the Pakistani revelations, it was revealed yesterday a Malaysian company controlled by the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was being investigated for possibly supplying machine parts for Libya's nuclear weapons programs.

Malaysian special branch police began the investigation after the CIA in the US and Britain's M16 informed them in November that boxes of machine parts bearing SCOPE's name were found in five containers seized in a ship off Italy in October.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,8592971%255E663,00.html

Pakistan pardons rogue nuke scientist

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has pardoned a scientist who confessed to leaking nuclear weapons secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea and says the country will not allow international supervision of its nuclear programme.

Musharraf also said Pakistan would not hand over any documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency, submit to an independent inquiry or allow the United Nations to supervise Pakistan's nuclear programme.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=452765§ion=news

ElBaradei says A.Q.Khan just tip of nuclear iceberg

"Dr.Khan was not working alone," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters, adding he had help from people in many countries.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/CHA530199.htm

[seemslikeadream]

20. all roads lead back to BCCI

don't they Octafish?

[Octafish]

21. Really seems that way, seemslikeadream.

The bank was used to funnel petrodollars and cocaine cash and arms business monies back to where it would do the most "good" as defined by the BFEE: bribe politicos around the world, arm despots, further enrich the rich, and speed the spread of the nuclear genie. My guess is they plan to hide out in underground kommandbunkers for the bosses and its Armageddon for the rest of us.

Here's the story that ran the other day in India. The thing is full of BFEE Hall of Fame names:

The secret empire of Dr Khan

Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation poses a tricky challenge

JASJIT SINGH    

Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme and the man who relentlessly pursued it through clandestine means and methods for decades, has finally admitted in a written statement that he oversaw its further clandestine spread to at least three other countries. Official Pakistan, which for years insisted that its nuclear weapons programme is tightly controlled and completely secure, is now claiming that nuclear trade has been made into a private enterprise by some of its national heroes! Extensive evidence has emerged in the public domain about detailed plans for enrichment of uranium for bomb making having been transferred from Pakistan to a number of countries along with a new version of a “yellow pages” directory of networks from Malaysia to Europe and North America for supply of materials and components.

What is of critical importance is not only the world’s most adventurous multinational nuclear proliferation but the reason Khan has put forward for his activities. Pakistani officials are saying that, contrary to earlier assumptions, he did not do so for money, but that he “was motivated enough to make other Islamic countries nuclear powers also” and reduce pressure on Pakistan. This may be an effort to garner public support from Islamic parties and countries. It also harks back to Bhutto’s notion of the “Islamic Bomb” for its Um’mah. The only exception known so far is the supply of nuclear weapon making technology to North Korea for strategic reasons in exchange for long-range ballistic missiles for nuclear weapon delivery.

Islamism has been deepening in Pakistan for three decades. Its concept of “strategic depth”, especially to its west, led to intervention in Afghanistan to control Kabul through covert Mujahideen operations. Strategic depth made no sense in modern conventional military terms. But in the context of Islamic jihad, as an instrument of politics by other means in Clausewitzean terms, it incorporated deadly logic, especially when the Holy Quran was invoked under General Zia ul-Haq to justify terrorism. To this has been added the strategic depth of an “Islamic Bomb” whose wherewithal is controlled by Pakistan. One look at the map would show that Pakistan’s Islamic nuclear mushroom covers the whole of West Asia with what Mansoor Ijaz terms as the “North Korean-made missiles armed with a Chinese-made nuclear device assembled in Islamabad’s nuclear labs whose fuel came from gas centrifuges sold by Pakistan’s rogue Islamists.” Small wonder Al-Qaeda, which received extensive support from Pakistan and its most radical surrogate, the Taliban, boasted it could make a “dirty” nuclear bomb.

The incontrovertible truth is that Pakistan’s nuclear programme in every aspect has been, and remains, under the firm and total control of its army at least since 1977; even its navy and air force have little role in it. Its clandestine nature relied on building a black market largely managed by trusted senior army (and ISI) officers and senior scientists in the nuclear establishment. Such people have undoubtedly been under a strong security and intelligence cover as much for their safety as to keep an eye on them. With a flourishing $2 billion-plus annual narcotics trade, and banks like the former Dubai-based Pakistani-owned “Outlaw Bank”, the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International), and the Mehran Bank to manage the black market in narcotics, nuclear trade and tools for terrorism, there was obviously no dearth of unaccounted funds for the purpose. General Aslam Beg, the army chief in late 1980s who controlled the nuclear programme, later publicly acknowledged receipt of hundreds of crores of unaccounted funds which he passed on to the ISI and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.

CONTINUED...

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=40361

[Octafish]

22. BFEE Loves Nuclear Proliferation...

... as it gives them an excuse to continue as war party. That enables the ruling elites -- thugs and commies alike -- to lord it over their populatons. And it is truly Big Business -- the biggest there is.

Pakistan investigates BCCI role in sale of nuclear knowhow  

Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 06:11 PM CST

Stephen Fidler and Farhan Bokhari

The Pakistani government is examining records of the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International in its investigation into the role Pakistani scientists may have played in selling nuclear knowhow to Iran, North Korea and Libya. According to bankers, some of whom worked with BCCI before it collapsed in 1991, Pakistani investigators have sought the help of former BCCI employees to try to uncover payments made to scientists connected with Pakistan's nuclear programme. BCCI's role in financing Pakistan's own nuclear efforts has long been the subject of scrutiny. In 1992, a report into BCCI from a US Congressional sub-committee headed by Senator John Kerry, now a leading Democratic presidential contender, said "there is good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear programme". Though it said the issue deserved further investigation, there was little public follow-through.

This year, however, as evidence has mounted that Pakistani scientists helped the uranium enrichment programmes of Iran, North Korea and Libya, the Pakistani government has launched an investigation. A government spokesman in Islamabad said that anybody found to have passed on secrets would be punished, but denied that the government approved any transfers. At least 11 Pakistani scientists and officials - as well as the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan - have been questioned.

BCCI helped the Pakistani government under General Zia ul Haq, the military dictator killed in a 1988 plane crash, to channel payments from the US Central Intelligence Agency to fighters seeking to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 but former BCCI officials said the relationship for organising undocumented payments for influential Pakistanis continued until the bank's collapse. One former BCCI banker who said he organised funds transfers on behalf of senior military officers in the Zia regime commented: "I'm not surprised that the Pakistanis are now looking to put together dossiers on some of their scientists receiving payments through BCCI." He said that over the past two months, Pakistani officials had travelled to the Middle East, looking for evidence of nuclear scientists receiving payments through BCCI.

Another former BCCI banker said that establishing payments to Pakistani nuclear scientists through the bank could provide evidence about the so far undocumented role of senior former Pakistani military officers in overseeing the transfer of nuclear knowhow to other countries. The investigation has prompted speculation among western intelligence officials and diplomats over the extent to which General Zia, leader of a frontline anti-communist state, in fact sanctioned the transfer of nuclear knowhow to Iran. In the past four to eight weeks, he said the Pakistani investigators have been seeking evidence of payments made to Mohammad Farooq, one of the nuclear scientists at the centre of the investigation. Pakistani officials are said to have focused on Mr Farooq as a possible contact between the Iranians and Mr Khan.

Continued to source (with loads o' links-n-stuff Pakistani nuclear)...FT archives require $...blm warned me...

http://www.pakistan-facts.com/index.php?topic=wmd-proliferation