A congressional hearing
was told by a former head of the CIA that Dr Abdul Qadeer
Khan “may yet be responsible for millions and millions
of deaths because of what he did”.
James Woolsey, former director
of the CIA, was testifying this week before the House
Select Intelligence Committee. Asked by Rep John Tierney,
Democrat of Massachusetts, if it was damaging to the US
that
it was not “engaging” with Dr Khan, who may
have “distributed nuclear materials or information
around the world,” the former CIA chief replied,
“I would have far preferred to have seen AQ Khan
and - some
more disclosures about the network and AQ Khan dealt with
very severely. This man may yet be responsible for millions
and millions of deaths because of what he did. But politics
is - international politics
is a matter in which one has to make compromises. And
President Musharraf found it, I’m sure, necessary
to deal with the matter the way he did in order to maintain
his own position in Pakistan and in order
to take other steps that are in Pakistan’s and our
mutual interest. I share the frustration very much, but
...”
The congressman asked if
there were “many other AQ Khans are there out there,”
and was told by Woolsey, “Well, the world has to
hope there aren’t any, but I’m afraid there
may be at least one or two derivative
AQ Khans, people who get access in Libya, perhaps, or
in Iran, to some of this technology of capable gas centrifuges,
for example, and then find a way that they can further
sell it. Khan himself probably got
this in Europe - in the Netherlands, I believe. So what
you’re really worried about, even if there’s
no other country that’s doing what Pakistan was
doing back years ago, is that there are individuals in,
you know, Iran or Korea, other places, that are figuring
out even as we speak ways to sell models of this kind
of gas centrifuge.”
Others who testified before
the Committee were: Richard Perle, American Enterprises
Institute, Gregory Treverton, Rand Corporation, Michael
Swetnam, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and Kurt
Campbell, former deputy assistant secretary of defence
policy.
