Daddy's Girl.

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Author: Ansari, Massoud

On February 4, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, admitted he had sold nuclear technology to rogue states like North Korea and Libya. The United States responded by praising Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for having exposed Khan's wrongdoing. Last month, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told reporters that Musharraf is "the right man [for Pakistan] at the right time." Even after Musharraf publicly pardoned Khan and refused to allow international inspectors to investigate Pakistan's nuclear program, the Bush administration still refrained from any criticism. Politically, the Bushies argued, Musharraf had done the best he could--after all, Khan was one of the most popular men in the country.

Yet Musharraf's motives for the pardon may have been less political and more personal. High-level sources in the Pakistani government say Khan's daughter Dina possesses highly incriminating documents and audiotapes showing that senior army officials, including Musharraf himself, knew for years about Khan's nuclear black market. Dina, they say, has wielded these documents as a weapon, using them to prevent the Pakistani government from jailing her father.

Khan was taken into Pakistani custody in early February after intelligence reports suggested he had sold nuclear centrifuges to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Once in custody, Khan quickly confessed, and Musharraf told Western reporters that no one in the Pakistani military or government had been involved in his proliferation efforts. "Gen Musharraf reiterated that he had heard nothing of A. Q. Khan's nuclear smuggling" until now, Financial Times reported last month after a lengthy interview with Musharraf. The White House seemed to take the general at his word, with Secretary of State Colin Powell continuing to praise Musharraf for his cooperation in counterproliferation efforts.

But Musharraf should not be taken at his word. Pakistani government insiders say that, as international pressure mounted on Islamabad in late January to do something about Khan, Musharraf decided to initiate legal action against the scientist and some of his associates. In fact, they say, Musharraf's government began building a case against Khan for violating Pakistan's Official Secrecy Act by selling the country's nuclear know-how to foreign bidders. Pakistani officials had even found a former Khan associate willing to testify against the scientist in a potential trial.

At the eleventh hour, however, these plans were derailed. The reason? Pakistani authorities discovered that Khan had given his daughter a variety of documents and tapes. The documents, Pakistani intelligence officials say, suggest that since 1977 all of Pakistan's army chiefs of staff, including General Musharraf, were aware of Khan's dealings with North Korea and other rogue states. Some of the documents, they say, contain the signatures of former top defense ministry officials. (Musharraf's office has refused to comment on these allegations.) What's more, Khan told interrogators that the documents show top military officials taking millions of dollars in cuts from his shadowy nuclear deals. If necessary, the scientist warned, his daughter would take the documents to the press. "Doctor Khan revealed the existence of these documents to his interrogators and told them that these are in the safe custody of his daughter," said one source. That millions of dollars could have been siphoned from the deals is hardly unfeasible: The New York Times reported this week that Khan's network received $100 million just for the technology it sold to Libya.

By the time Pakistani interrogators learned of the documents, Dina was safely out of Pakistan and back in London, where she lives. "She was asked to defend her father from abroad in case the country's military government initiated legal proceedings against him," said one intelligence source privy to the negotiations with Dina. Government insiders say that, after the document revelations, senior government officials, including the head of Pakistan's powerful internal security agency, InterServices Intelligence, held exhaustive meetings with Khan. Khan's threat terrified Islamabad: The government had already been embarrassed, in late January, when two former government ministers revealed to the local media that several senior army officials had, in the 1990s, advocated selling nuclear technology to Iran. What's more, says one government insider, Musharraf feared that, if the documents were publicly revealed, Pakistan's enemies, including India, would gain comprehensive knowledge of the country's nuclear program.

Frantic, Islamabad backed down. The government told Khan it would offer him a conditional pardon, as long as he apologized to the nation, and the audiocassettes and documents were handed over to the government. In the wake of the agreement, several intelligence sources said, Khan signed a paper admitting his guilt and recorded an interview in which he apologized to the nation, taking sole responsibility for his actions and seemingly shifting blame away from Musharraf and the army establishment. The following day, Musharraf held a press conference to announce Khan's pardon.

But not everything has gone according to plan. Though Khan promised to get the documents back, Dina has not returned them. No one knows for sure why. Some intelligence officials believe she is holding onto them because she is worried that the government might harm her father once it took possession of all the incriminating evidence.

Consequently, Musharraf has stepped up the pressure on Khan. Recently, a government spokesman announced that Khan had not received a blanket pardon and could still be prosecuted for crimes discovered since the initial pardon was granted. What's more, sources close to Khan say, the government has disconnected all of Khan's telephones, increased the police presence around his Islamabad home, essentially restricted him to his house, and prevented him from meeting with most visitors. "They have changed all his phone numbers. When I sent my son to find out about his health, he was not allowed to meet [Khan]," says one friend of the scientist. As a result of this pressure, friends of Khan say, the 68-year-old scientist recently suffered a minor heart attack and was taken to a military hospital in Rawalpindi, the Pakistani army compound. (The Pakistani government denies Khan had a heart attack.)

Even Bush administration officials appear to be growing suspicious of the machinations in Pakistan. This week, The New York Times reported that Powell admitted that the Pakistani military might have been more extensively involved in Khan's proliferation efforts than previously thought. If Dina spills the beans, we'll know for sure.

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By Massoud Ansari

Massoud Ansari is a frequent TNR contributor based in Pakistan.