by Kingston Reif Published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Online on July 14, 2011 Article summary below; read the full text online By Kingston Reif and Emma Lecavalier In a recent speech in Brussels, departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized European members of NATO for allowing defense obligations to fall increasingly upon the […]
Senate defense bill much better than house bill on nuclear weapons
Laicie Olson and I have put together an analysis of the Senate Armed Services Committee version of the Defense Authorization Bill. Head over to the mothership for the main course.
In the meantime, here’s an appetizer:
The House version of the defense bill (H.R. 1540) includes many objectionable limitations on nuclear and missile defense policy matters that would 1) constrain the Pentagon’s ability to implement the New START treaty and 2) undercut the Constitutional authority of the President and senior military leaders to determine U.S. nuclear force structure and engage in discussions with the Russians on missile defense cooperation. See our full analysis of H.R. 1540 here.
The Senate bill contains a number of reporting requirements on nuclear policy issues, but it does not impose policy or funding limitations. The Committee significantly watered down the bad House provisions without compromising Congress’ important oversight responsibilities over U.S. nuclear policy.
It remains to be seen when the full Senate will take up the bill. Could happen this month, I’m told. To date the Senate has declined to do much of anything until the debt ceiling impasses is resolved.
A Review of the Senate Armed Services Committee Version of the Fiscal Year 2012 Defense Authorization Bill
by Kingston Reif and Laicie Heeley On June 16 the Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously approved the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1253). The committee approved $682.5 billion, including $553 billion for the Pentagon base budget, $117.8 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $18.1 billion for Department of Energy nuclear programs. […]
Did North Korea really bribe Pakistan?
The Washington Post revealed yesterday accusations and alleged evidence of North Korean bribes for nuclear “know-how” in an article that if true, will prove extremely damning for Pyongyang, Islamabad, and Washington. Any iota of faith left in North Korea’s desire to ever denuclearize would disappear among any of the remaining believers, for it would confirm that Pyongyang was pursuing a uranium path to nuclear weapons simultaneous to the steps it was taking towards denuclearization in the late 1990s. The reputation of Pakistan’s former Chief of Army Staff, General Jehangir Karamat (also ex-U.S. Ambassador and Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Commissioner) would be in tatters, raising serious questions in Washington about nuclear security in a country increasingly plagued by terrorism.
In essence, The Post’s story suggests that Abdul Qadeer Khan personally handed over North Korean money to a Pakistani general in 1998 in exchange for nuclear know-how. To corroborate, Khan provided The Posts’ source (Simon Henderson) with a letter he allegedly received from North Korean Workers’ Party Secretary, Jon Bong-ho, which detailed payments of cash and jewelry intended for two Pakistani generals. Henderson received the backstory and letter “in the years after [Khan’s] 2004 arrest by Pakistani authorities”, deciding to pass them onto The Post in 2011 “because he lacked the resources to authenticate it himself”. But despite The Posts best efforts, the articles author R. Jeffrey Smith admits he was unable to confirm the allegations, instead providing argument and counter-argument from U.S. and Pakistan officials respectively. Given the serious allegations contained in the article and the potential ramifications if proved true, it is important to look closer at both source and evidence before making any hasty conclusions.
This A.Q. Khan leak is not the first that appeared in The Post via Simon Henderson, with a piece last year (also written by Smith) drawing criticism in some areas for the faith then in Khan’s proliferation narrative. As Jeffrey Lewis explained of Khan at that time, “he is not an historian, attempting to document the operation of a proliferation network for future scholars, or a journalist with a big scoop. He’s a perp, trying to save his own skin and repair his reputation.” In 2009, another Khan-leaked story appeared in The Post which drew similar reactions from ISIS. On that occasion, Albright et al suggested that, “many of his assertions are self-serving and highly dubious… He has proven that he is unable to honestly relate the facts fully as he knows them and has many reasons to deceive, obfuscate or suppress the truth.” Whether we can take Khan’s word on this occasion as being authoritative, is thus difficult to gauge.
Another interesting aspect to The Posts’ story is timing. From the reference to Henderson having received the letter from Khan in the years following 2004, one must ask why then it was only passed on in summer 2011. The information would have been much more relevant to release in 2002, when allegations were rife that North Korea was simultaneously pursuing a uranium enrichment program (the form of nuclear technology AQ Khan was most knowledgeable of). Could political reasons be behind the timing, perhaps to discredit Pakistani officials further in the aftermath of the Osama Bin Laden debacle? Or is this because The Post needed significant time to check the credibility of an otherwise highly damaging letter and story.
Of the letter – which provided the main evidence to yesterday’s story – The Post spoke to former IAEA staffer Olli Heinonen and an unnamed Pakistani embassy official to get their opinions on its authenticity. According to yesterday’s article, Heinonen claimed that the letter was similar to other North Korean notes that he had seen or received over the years, lacking a letterhead and bearing similarities “of clandestine payments by North Korea to Pakistani military officials and government advisers.” Unsurprisingly the Pakistani official explained, “it is not on any official letterhead and bears no seal… The reference to alleged payment and gifts to senior Pakistani military officers is ludicrous.” So what should we make of this difference in testimony?
Regardless of whose side you take, several things do nevertheless seem unusual for correspondence emanating from such a senior North Korean political figure in 1998, as Peter Hayes has already pointed out. To start, all DPRK correspondence received after 1997 was dated according to the Juche calendar, with (on occasion) the regular format date alongside it. Interestingly, the letter published by The Post only features the standard format date. Secondly, with the degree of secrecy required by nuclear bribery, it would have been highly imprudent for Jon Byong Ho to make reference to any payments or gifts in writing – especially so when the reference in question is both casual and secondary to the main contents of the letter, reporting on a transaction that had already took place. Another suspicious element is the quality of the photocopy of the letter itself – would its source, AQ Khan, only have had access to a photocopier so evidently on its way out (note the grainy texture and distortion).
With regards to the actual content of the language, it would seem that tonality of the English in the letter doesn’t quite seem right. Even the works of North Korea’s finest translators at the Foreign Language Publishing House sound awkward to a native ear, so it is surprising that the language found in Jon Byong Ho’s writing sounds as natural as it does. Today, Mark Fitzpatrick of IISS added to this point, noting the repeated unnecessary use of the present progressive tense in the letter (“I am hoping”), in his experience “more akin to South Asian usage than what those schooled in British or American English would use”. In addition, he observed the absence of an apostrophe in “Korean Workers’ Party”, something he claims to have never seen in communications emanating from North Korea.
Despite the unusual characteristics of the letter, some have nevertheless suggested that because The Post seems to have established that Simon Henderson did indeed receive the materials from Khan, inconsistencies with Khan’s own proliferation narrative prove the letter might well be real. This is because it includes details that Khan himself would not have chosen to invent or publicize after his arrest in 2004. As Arms Control Wonk explained, “the letter depicts [Khan] as primarily responsible for dealing with the North Koreans and shipping centrifuge parts and components abroad. This undercuts Khan’s recent claims that various foreign black-market suppliers were acting autonomously.” Nevertheless, by naming Jehangir Karamat and Zulfiqar Khan, A.Q. Khan is buttressing “his claims about the role of senior Pakistani military officials in sanctioning his activities,” something he might presumably have been motivated to do not long after his 2004 arrest.
While it appears more than likely that the letter and notes behind The Posts’ article were willingly passed from Khan to Henderson, the evidence to suggest the letter might be authentic from a North Korean perspective is a lot harder to ascertain. However, North Korea’s recent uranium enrichment revelations suggest that the country has almost certainly had foreign technical assistance in this domain. Whether that dates back to 1998 will only be answered if and when Pyongyang’s diplomatic archives become available.
Tad Farrell runs NKNews.org – a North Korea News and Information Resource
Tough Choices Facing the IAEA and the Non-Aligned Movement
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) stand at a crossroads over the nuclear ambitions of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
On June 9, the Board of Governors at the IAEA declared Syria in noncompliance with IAEA safeguards.
Notably, the resolution was predicated not on information from unbiased IAEA inspections, but on intelligence provided by the United States and verified by data in the public domain. Eleven NAM countries chose to abstain from the vote to report Syria, in part because they were hesitant to rely on intelligence provided by the U.S. and its allies. The resolution stands no chance in New York as Russia and China, both of which possess veto power over possible sanctions as permanent members of the UN Security Council, will certainly oppose it.
India in particular faces a dilemma that typifies the choices facing the NAM. On October 1st, 2008 the U.S. Senate approved HR 7081: the United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act. Championed by the Bush administration, the “123 agreement” elevated India to a de-facto internationally recognized nuclear weapons state despite New Delhi’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
A “123 agreement” is a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement that includes the transfer of U.S.-origin nuclear material; it requires Congressional approval according to nine nonproliferation criteria stipulated in Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act. The Henry J. Hyde U.S.-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006 exempted the nuclear cooperation deal with India from some of these requirements. The deal therefore allows India to import nuclear materials and technology to fuel its nuclear power program without renouncing its nuclear arsenal, effectively reversing three decades of non-proliferation policies designed to punish India for the first ever illegal use of civilian nuclear facilities and materials in 1974.
As Michael Krepon has outlined in great detail, the U.S. appears to have received very little in return for the deal, while nuclear stability in South Asia and nonproliferation norms have suffered. Most recently, India was one of the eleven states on the IAEA Board of Governors that voted to abstain from referring Syria to the UN Security Council.
It is now obvious that the U.S.-India deal legitimized an expanding nuclear power, allowed New Delhi to operate outside the NPT standards fundamental to the global nonproliferation regime, and failed to win India’s cooperation on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
India’s noncooperation on the Syria vote illustrates the challenges facing the international non-proliferation community. The vote was complicated and politicized by wariness over an American conflict of interest in the region. Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Program, made a perceptive assessment of the political concerns facing the NAM, which included:
1. The credibility of information was called into question, since IAEA inspectors on the ground never actually verified the suspected nuclear reactor at Dair Alzour. The NAM countries are wary of relying on superpower intelligence that operates with an inherent bias.
2. The lack of a decisive judgment by IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano exacerbated the credibility issue. Mr. Amano was only willing to assert that Dair Alzour was “very likely” a reactor, and urged that “reasonable inferences must be drawn.”
3. The destruction of the installation at Dair Alzour by an Israeli air raid in 2007 has severely reduced the urgency of a Syrian nuclear threat.
4. Non-Aligned countries continue to express their outrage over the gross breech of national sovereignty constituted by the 2007 Israeli strike.
5. The resolution for noncompliance was been presented at a time when popular uprisings threaten the stability of the Assad regime, engendering the suspicion that the resolution is motivated by a desire for regime change.
Given these extraneous political considerations, our failed attempt to purchase the cooperation of an NAM leader is crippling.
In another astute commentary, Mr. Hibbs suggests that reliance on combined U.S. and public domain intelligence could become a new paradigm for verifying noncompliance with IAEA safeguards. Given that most NAM countries remain at best skeptical and self-interested actors in the non-proliferation community, this paradigm would severely undermine IAEA credibility and trust unless a clearer definition of noncompliance is established. If the increasing politicization of the IAEA board of governors can be separated from clearly defined technical requirements for a resolution on noncompliance, then NAM countries may be more willing to overlook “biased” sources of intelligence or disregard offensive unilateral action like the 2007 Israeli air strike.
Later this year, the board of governors at the IAEA may vote on a resolution to once again declare Iran in noncompliance with IAEA safeguards. The evidence that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability will probably be decisively more convincing than the case against Syria. Nevertheless, the political thicket that hampered the Syria resolution may foreshadow the political impediments that will need to be surmounted vis a vis Iran.