The Nuclear Jihadist Read online

  A few days after the speech, Spiers was at his desk in Washington when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s office telephoned, asking Spiers to make his proposal a reality. Over the next three years, Spiers worked on the evolving treaty to create the IAEA. Early plans were for the agency to have its own intelligence operation to ensure that peaceful nuclear activities were not diverted to military programs, but powerful forces in the Eisenhower administration and Congress were leery of ceding real power to any international organization. “There was a lot of distaste for the UN, and they felt it was an intrusion on U.S. sovereignty,” said Spiers. There was no chance that Congress would ratify the treaty to join unless the new agency’s authority was watered down. Among the elements jettisoned was its independent intelligence arm, a step seen as giving the new organization too much power. The IAEA came into being in 1957, when it opened its headquarters in Vienna, but questions were raised from the outset about whether the agency had the powers necessary to cope with the spread of nuclear technology.

  By the time of the IAEA’s creation, the United States was already using taxpayer money to subsidize the sale of small nuclear reactors to a host of countries, including Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan, and South Africa. Attempting to counter American influence, the Soviets were also handing out nuclear goodies to countries aligned with them. The dangers were recognized almost immediately. Top-secret intelligence reports prepared by the CIA and other American intelligence agencies in the late 1950s and early 1960s warned that the spread of nuclear know-how was creating the capability for small-scale nuclear-weapons programs in many countries. The classified reports warned that some countries would try to convert peaceful nuclear research into weapons programs. France, China, West Germany, Japan, Sweden, and Israel were identified initially as the countries most likely to develop nuclear weapons, with India and Pakistan joining the list a few years later. The barrier between peaceful nuclear energy and its military uses was turning out to be an illusion. No better example existed than centrifuges, the narrow cylinders about six feet tall that were being developed at FDO in Amsterdam when A. Q. Khan arrived on the scene in 1972. The same machines could be used to produce nuclear fuel for civilian reactors—or, with some minor modifications—for atomic weapons.

  CENTRIFUGES have many uses. Washing machines are simple versions, using centrifugal motion to remove water from wet clothes during the spin cycle by creating enough artificial gravity to separate the heavy water from the lighter clothes. A good washing machine spins at twelve to twenty revolutions per second. The sophisticated ultracentrifuges used to enrich uranium need to spin about one hundred times faster, near the speed of sound. But the concept remains the same: In the uranium-enrichment process, the centrifuge must spin fast enough to separate the highly prized U-235 isotope from the other isotopes found in natural uranium. The U-235 is desirable because it easily splits in two, producing bursts of atomic energy.

  Enriching uranium cannot be done with just one centrifuge, however, but thousands of the slender cylinders linked by a series of pipes and specialized valves in arrays called cascades. A basic cascade contains 164 centrifuges, and as few as five cascades concealed in a school classroom could eventually produce enough highly enriched uranium for a small bomb. But a working enrichment plant requires thousands of cascades stretching the length of a football field. Each centrifuge increases the concentration of rarer U-235 ever so slightly as it spins and feeds the material into the next centrifuge, where it is enriched further and further. Centrifuges can run for months, and in some commercial plants they never stop. So they must be balanced perfectly atop precision bearings and magnets.

  When uranium is enriched to 3 percent U-235, it is suitable to fuel reactors for generating power. As is common with many forms of technology, the difference between commercial and military applications of the technology is only minor. Slight adjustments to the enrichment process can increase the concentration of the explosive U-235 to 90 percent, the level deemed most efficient for atom bombs. This end product is called highly enriched uranium, or HEU, and it was the fissionable material used by the Americans in the bomb that devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

  Despite the goal of sharing uranium to be used for fuel set forth in Atoms for Peace, the United States maintained a near monopoly on producing enriched uranium for civilian plants. In 1970, Britain, West Germany, and the Netherlands sought to escape their dependence on the Americans. The result was a joint program called Urenco, which became the largest nuclear project in Europe. Its mission was to guarantee a consistent and independent supply of enriched uranium fuel for their civilian power plants.

  Together, the governments built a sprawling uranium-enrichment plant in the quiet rolling hills near the Dutch town of Almelo, about fifteen miles west of the German border. The plant was intended to use the most advanced centrifuge technology available, and the three countries engaged in a competition to come up with the best design. Though Almelo’s purpose was strictly civilian, it was built behind rings of barbed wire, and security clearances were required for entry because of fears that the advanced technology could be stolen.

  Competing against their German and British partners, Urenco’s Dutch arm and its subcontractors were working at full speed to perfect their version of the advanced centrifuge, increasing the demand for qualified engineers and scientists. The need for new blood was particularly great at FDO, where Khan worked, because it was a new company set up to work on the big Urenco contract. The result was that security measures often took a backseat to filling key spots on the scientific roster.

  KHAN’S journey from Karachi to his new office at FDO had been difficult, just as the fortune-teller had predicted. Mastering German had proven tougher than he expected when he arrived in Düsseldorf in 1961. His frustrations were magnified by homesickness. In January 1962, he had been studying without a break for several months when he took a vacation in the Netherlands. Visiting The Hague, Khan was watching the crowds pass by when he worked up the courage to approach a young woman who appeared to be by herself, asking in his halting German if she knew the cost of postage to Pakistan. Transparent as the pickup line was, the woman knew not only the answer but a little about Pakistan. Khan struggled to keep the conversation going, but the plain young woman was in no hurry to escape the dashing older man. She told him that her name was Hendrina, but she said she preferred to be called Henny. She explained that she was on a day trip from Amsterdam, where she lived with her parents.

  Henny Reterink had been born in South Africa to expatriate Dutch parents, had been raised mostly in Northern Rhodesia, and carried a British passport. She had returned to Holland with her parents a few years earlier and learned to speak Dutch and German, though she was not a Dutch citizen. Khan and Henny chatted for several minutes before moving to an outdoor café. They found that they shared a sense of being outsiders and, before parting, exchanged addresses and promises to write. Henny did not expect to hear again from the handsome man. “To tell you the truth I never thought that this would lead to anything,” she said. “To me he was a lonely young man who was very homesick.”

  But he did write, and she replied. After exchanging several letters, she took an uncharacteristically bold step and agreed to visit him in Düsseldorf, where he was completing his German lessons before transferring to the Technical University of Berlin to begin his scientific studies. Several months later, the relationship became serious enough that Henny took a secretarial job in Berlin to be close to Khan. They were engaged in early 1963, and both families seemed to accept the couple’s decision. “Neither my parents nor my husband’s mother were against this relationship,” Henny said. “After having lived in many countries with different people, my parents were quite broad-minded. This does not mean there were no misunderstandings. There were, but luckily we resolved them amicably.”

  In September of that year, Khan transferred from Berlin to the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands to continue his gra
duate work. The university’s science and engineering departments were well regarded, and the medieval city had a charming combination of canals and cobblestones. Henny wanted to get married at Delft’s historic city hall, but that was prohibited because both of them were foreigners. Instead, a modest Muslim ceremony was performed at the Pakistani embassy at The Hague, where the ambassador served as Khan’s witness because his family had been unable to travel to Holland. The embassy staff arranged a tea party for the newlyweds, which was followed by a reception hosted by Henny’s parents. Khan was twenty-seven, and his wife was twenty-one.

  The newlyweds formed a world unto themselves. Henny had lived in Rhodesia until she was sixteen and never felt at home in the Netherlands. By the time of his wedding, Khan had spent two years in Europe and did not feel at home. People who knew Khan at Delft remembered him as quiet and serious about his studies. They said he seemed to enjoy strolling through the city arm in arm with his wife and appeared oblivious to the occasional ethnic slights sent his way. The assumption was that he intended to finish his degree and remain in Europe. One of his few friends at Delft was a Dutch student named Henk Slebos, who was also studying metallurgy. “He was a serious student,” Slebos recalled. “He was not what one would call a bon vivant.”

  Khan had been too busy to involve himself in politics. In 1965, however, events reached a stage that he felt he could not ignore. In 1948, Pakistan had lost a war with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir, and in 1965 the Pakistani army made a second attempt to liberate the predominantly Muslim region from Indian rule, resulting in a full-scale war and second defeat. The international community was critical of Pakistan’s continued designs on Kashmir, and a professor at Delft screened a documentary condemning the country. Khan heard about the film and sent off a series of angry letters to the professor and local newspapers in which he tried to correct what he saw as a biased view of his country.

  Pakistan’s defeat had struck a chord deep within Khan, dredging up his old hatred of India and foreshadowing events in his own life. The next year, he decided that the time had come for Henny to visit Pakistan for the first time. He wanted to introduce her to his family, and he wanted to test the waters for a possible return home. Initially, Khan’s mother and sisters-in-law insisted that the couple reenact their wedding with an imam presiding in a traditional Muslim ceremony, and Henny was relieved when her husband rejected the proposal. Much to Henny’s chagrin, her relatives asked continually when the couple planned to have children. She smiled and said time would tell, declining to share with them the fact that she was undergoing medical treatment because of fears of infertility.

  As for Khan, he was overjoyed to find himself back in the folds of his large family. His mother filled the family home in Karachi with the aromas of foods from his childhood, strengthening his resolve to return permanently. Pakistan remained poor and technologically backward, and Khan confided in Henny that he was determined to return home permanently and contribute to the country’s progress in a significant way. But when he applied for a job at the national steel mill in Karachi, he was turned down and told that he lacked the proper credentials. Dumbfounded, Khan and Henny returned to Delft, where he completed his master’s degree in 1967 and earned a research scholarship in metallurgy at the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium.

  His time at Leuven was to prove a turning point for Khan. Angered by his rejection in Karachi, he made a determined effort to become a European. Though not deemed a brilliant student, he worked fanatically on his doctorate, impressing his adviser with his ability to persuade his rival students and top-ranked academics to work toward a common goal. In one case, the adviser, Professor Martin Brabers, and Khan were editing a textbook on the esoteric topic of physical metallurgy, and the student persuaded senior scientists from around the world to contribute chapters. In the meantime, his family life thrived. Henny, who worked as a secretary, gave birth to their first child in 1968, a daughter named Dina. Two years later, when Henny was pregnant again, she asked her husband if he hoped for a son, something every Pakistani family seemed to want. He told her it did not matter whether the next one was a boy or a girl, but they agreed that they should stop at two, even when the second child turned out to be another girl. Khan still spent long hours at the university, but he always made it home in time to cook dinner for the family, a practice that had started after they were married because Khan considered himself the better cook.

  When the topic of Pakistan arose, Khan displayed little more than passing affection for his homeland. To Brabers, he appeared to be proud of his country and occasionally irritated that it was not treated well by its neighbors and the West, but Brabers saw nothing of the burning nationalist who was soon to emerge. “He had an international mind,” Brabers said years later. “He could live in any country, I think, and that’s what he tried to do.”

  Try as he might to blend in, however, Khan could not shake his past. For him, Pakistan was not an obscure chapter in a history book but something that he had seen written in blood. As he was finishing his dissertation on metallurgy in late 1971, he found himself distracted by violent new events unfolding on television. Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, was in the western portion of the divided country, leaving those in the eastern half feeling constantly slighted. With India separating the two, it was a difficult situation. Toward the end of 1971, the Pakistani military determined to put down the separatist-minded Muslims in the eastern portion, sparking a series of brutal clashes that left hundreds of East Pakistanis dead and sent tens of thousands more fleeing across the border into India. From bases there, the refugees launched retaliatory attacks on the Pakistani military. When the army replied with strikes that reached into Indian territory, Pakistan found itself once again facing all-out war with its much larger neighbor. The Indians both outnumbered and outmaneuvered the Pakistanis, leading to a humiliating surrender in December of that year. One of the most stinging conditions of the cease-fire was the permanent division of Pakistan, with the eastern portion splitting off to form the new nation of Bangladesh.

  Khan wept as he watched the Pakistani surrender, sobbing over the images of thousands of Pakistani soldiers being kicked and caned by the Indian army. Memories of his childhood flooded back, and he prayed to Allah to help his country. For Khan, the division of Pakistan was the first step in India’s campaign to dismember and annihilate the Muslim nation, and he vowed to himself that his country would never suffer another humiliating defeat if he could help it. “All he thought about,” his biographer later wrote melodramatically, “was to make Pakistan so strong that it would never have to face such a trauma again.”

  The 1971 war marked Khan’s transformation from expatriate to patriot, the point at which he gave up the notion of becoming a European and made up his mind that he would return to Pakistan. After completing his dissertation, he enthusiastically began his job search by mailing out applications for a series of jobs in Pakistan, ranging from the steel industry to government and academic posts. But again, he was turned down without explanation, leaving him befuddled and disheartened. With two young children and a wife, he couldn’t wait until something came through in Pakistan, so he grudgingly sent out inquiries to universities and industries in Europe; again, he got no job offers.

  In the spring of 1971, Khan told Henk Slebos he was worried about how to make ends meet. Slebos mentioned that he had heard about an opening for a metallurgist at FDO, which was developing new centrifuge designs for the Dutch government. Khan’s dissertation on the ability of exotic metals to withstand the strains of the high speeds seemed to make him a natural candidate, so he sent in an application, accompanied by a strong recommendation from Brabers. Within days, he heard back—he had the job and could start as soon as he could get to Amsterdam. This was not Pakistan, and Khan wouldn’t be saving his country, but he would be able to provide for his family.

  Khan probably should not have been given the job at FDO, at least not that particular job. Security regu
lations adopted by the three Urenco governments stipulated that anyone who worked in the centrifuge program needed a top security clearance, a process that was designed to be particularly difficult for anyone who was not British, Dutch, or German. For employees from other countries, even a routine clearance required a complete background check and special clearance from a review committee representing all three countries. But the rush to hire new workers and bureaucratic missteps meant that Khan underwent little scrutiny, and his name was never submitted to the review group. He started work without the clearance, and receiving it turned out to be only a formality. When FDO submitted Khan’s name to the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs as the first step in the security process, the company specified that he would not work on centrifuges, which meant that his security clearance did not need to be higher than “restricted.” In addition, FDO specified that Khan’s wife was Dutch and that he was applying for Dutch citizenship. Whether the citizenship issues were the result of lies by Khan or bureaucratic blunders, they meant that he was given only a cursory check by Dutch authorities, and by the time his “restricted” clearance came through, he was already at work.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE MUSLIM ALLIANCE

  ON JANUARY 24, 1972, only five weeks after being installed by the military as Pakistan’s leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto stood beneath a gaily colored canopy on the lawn of a colonial-era mansion. Seated in front of him were fifty of the country’s top scientists and military officials, flown aboard military planes in the greatest secrecy to the remote town of Multan, about 250 miles southwest of Islamabad and close to the border with India. The setting reflected Bhutto’s flair for drama. His words were calculated to stir the nationalism of his audience.