Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Update from Times Online UK

June 16, 2008

Iran and North Korea may have bought nuclear missile blueprints

The discovery of designs for a compact nuclear bomb has raised fears that Iran and North Korea might have obtained blueprints enabling them to mount long-range strikes with nuclear-armed missiles.

Designs for a nuclear device small enough to fit on a ballistic missile were found on computers linked to the international smuggling ring that supplied nuclear knowhow to Iran, Libya and North Korea, a top US expert says.

“These advanced nuclear weapons designs may have long ago been sold off to some of the most treacherous regimes in the world,” David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, wrote in a report provided yesterday to The Washington Post.

The blueprints were among some 30,000 heavily encrypted documents found in 2006 on computers linked to the now-defunct smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s atomic weapons.

The Swiss President, Pascal Couchepin, said last month that the documents had been destroyed under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency to prevent them getting into the hands of a terrorist organisation or an unauthorised state. Mr Couchepin said: “There were detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultra-centrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium, as well as for guided missile delivery systems.”

The computers belonged to three members of a Swiss family under investigation for their alleged role in the “A.Q. Khan network”, which was broken up in 2003 with Dr Khan being placed under house arrest. Two brothers, Urs and Marco Tinner, are being held on suspicion of violating export controls. Their father, Friedrich, was also detained but has since been released.

The case is complicated by reports that Urs Tinner co-operated with the CIA in exposing nuclear trafficking to Libya. The Zurich weekly Sonntags Zeitung said in March that Urs Tinner provided the tip that led to the seizure in 2003 of the German-registered freighter BBC China as it carried components for a uranium-enrichment plant from Dubai to Libya. The interception of the ship prompted Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, to abandon his country’s covert efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

The A.Q. Khan network is known to have supplied Libya with designs for a bulky Chinese nuclear weapon from the mid-1960s. The designs discovered on the Tinners’ computers were for a smaller device similar to those for a Pakistani nuclear bomb.

The New York Times reported that the blueprints were for a bomb that was half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics.

“These would have been ideal for two of Khan’s other major customers, Iran and North Korea,” Mr Albright wrote. “They both faced struggles in building a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop their ballistic missiles, and these designs were for a warhead that would fit.”

Because the designs are in digital form, it would be easy to distribute copies. It is not known if the bomb designs were sent to Iran, North Korea or any other nation.

Mr Albright said that the IAEA confronted the Pakistani Government shortly after the discovery and its officials “were genuinely shocked”.

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12 months ago: Smugglers’ trucks and tractors are seen at the border with Iran, in Choman, northern Iraq, March 12, 2007. Smuggling across the Iraq-Iran border is a flourishing business in this remote corner of northeast Iraq, a rugged mountainous area where the lure of making a quick profit dwarfs the little government authority there is.

WZTV Nashville

June 15, 2008 15:26 EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — They knew how to build a nuclear device — and they may have shared that information with Iran.

That’s what The Washington Post is reporting about an international smuggling ring. It says the ring got hold of blueprints for a compact nuclear device that could fit on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and other developing nuclear countries.

According to the paper, the smugglers may have secretly shared the blueprints with Iran, North Korea, and other rogue countries.

The drawings were found two years ago on computers owned by Swiss businessmen. They’ve now been destroyed by the Swiss government. But U.N. officials say they can’t rule out the possibility that the material had already been shared.

A senior diplomat says International Atomic Energy Agency knew a nuclear weapons design was being peddled as far back as 2005.