Vital Nuclear Parts Missing
Investigators worry that some components of a weapons
factory
ordered by Libya have fallen into the hands of another nation.
By Douglas Frantz
Times Staff Writer
April 22, 2005
ZURICH, Switzerland — Critical components and specialized tools
destined for Libya's nuclear weapons program disappeared before arrival
in 2003 and international investigators now suspect that they were
diverted to another country, according to court records and
investigators.
Efforts to find the missing equipment have led to dead ends,
raising what investigators said was the strong likelihood that the
sophisticated material was sold to an unidentified customer by members
of the international smuggling ring that had been supplying nuclear
technology and weapons designs to Libya.
The equipment — components for advanced centrifuges, along with
material and precision tools to manufacture more of them — does not
constitute an immediate threat, but nuclear experts said it would cut
years off an effort to enrich uranium for an atomic bomb.
The mystery of the missing high-tech equipment illustrates both
the extensive knowledge investigators have gained about the smuggling
operation and the troubling gaps that remain. It also raises the
question of whether a rogue nation or group might be secretly building
a nuclear weapon.
Two senior international investigators said that the illicit
technology had been shipped to Turkey, Malaysia and Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, before it disappeared and that it remained unaccounted for.
The equipment was initially meant for a $100-million, clandestine
uranium enrichment plant and bomb factory being built for Libya by
Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and a network of middlemen on
three continents.
The seizure by the United States and Britain of a separate
shipment of nuclear-related components from a freighter headed for
Libya in October 2003 crippled the network and led to Khan's admission
that he had been selling know-how and technology to Iran, North Korea
and Libya.
Since then, the biggest concerns for international inspectors and
intelligence agencies examining Khan's operation have been whether an
unidentified customer is also pursuing a nuclear weapon or whether Iran
might have received the missing technology and, potentially, designs
for an atomic weapon.
Investigators said business records and interviews with some
participants in the ring suggested the existence of a customer other
than Libya. They said the vanished equipment, though not proof,
constituted the strongest clue yet.
The list of potential clients for a nuclear weapons program is not
long, but it extends to countries in the Middle East, Africa and
Southeast Asia. Khan traveled extensively and had contacts worldwide.
Investigators have identified at least 30 companies and middlemen who
sold goods to his network.
"For sure there were other customers," said one of the senior
investigators, who spoke on condition that his name be withheld because
the inquiry is ongoing. "We just don't know who and we don't know how
far along they might be."
U.S. and Israeli government officials have publicly accused Tehran
of operating a nuclear weapons program, and intelligence officials from
both countries have suggested that Iran might have hidden installations.
A non-Western intelligence official said it was possible that the
missing centrifuge components and other material was sold secretly to
Iran by someone in the Khan network as the operation started to unravel
after the seizure of the shipment in 2003.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is intended only to generate
electricity and that it has opened all of its atomic-related
installations to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy
Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog.
The IAEA has been inspecting Iranian installations for nearly two
years and says it has uncovered no proof that Iran is working on
weapons.
But concerns remain. Last month, the agency's deputy director
complained publicly that Tehran had not turned over all information
related to a 1987 meeting in which Khan's associates offered to sell
weapons designs to Iran.
The complexity of enriching uranium makes it likely that an
unknown customer would be a country rather than a terrorist group.
Intelligence officials said it was unlikely that even a sophisticated
terrorist group would have the resources for such an undertaking,
though they could not rule it out.
The primary investigation of the Khan network is being conducted
by a small team of nuclear experts from the IAEA's headquarters in
Vienna. Intelligence officials and prosecutors from other countries,
including the United States, Germany, Britain, France, South Africa and
Switzerland, are involved.
Seven people alleged to have ties to the ring have been taken into
custody in Dubai, Germany, Malaysia, South Africa and Switzerland, but
none has gone to trial.
Khan, 68, regarded as a national hero for helping build his
country's atomic weapons, was pardoned by Pakistan for selling its
nuclear secrets. He remains under house arrest, outside the reach of
foreign investigators.
Those involved in the inquiry said it was unclear whether members
of the network might have sold the missing equipment. Some key members
have remained silent.
Tens of thousands of documents and computer files have been
recovered from suspected participants in the ring. Other records were
destroyed after members suspected that they were under surveillance in
late 2002.
The first confirmation that sensitive technology had disappeared
was in court records filed this year by German prosecutors trying to
extradite Gotthard Lerch, a German engineer who lives outside Zurich.
Lerch was not charged in connection with the missing equipment,
but German prosecutors accused him of helping Libya obtain restricted
technology for uranium enrichment. He is being held without bond in
Switzerland.
His lawyer, Adrian Bachmann, denied that Lerch had any connection
to Khan or Libya. "The German authorities are under huge international
pressure to produce something and Lerch is the last chance for them to
get any result," Bachmann said in an interview. "He wouldn't even know
how to build a centrifuge plant."
In a previously undisclosed meeting June 17 in Vienna, Olli
Heinonen, the senior IAEA investigator, told German prosecutors that
Lerch had helped the Khan network develop the Libyan plant.
Heinonen said nine rotors for an advanced type of centrifuge had
been delivered to the network's base of operations for the Libyan plant
in Dubai and he said records showed two of them were later shipped to
Libya, according to an account of the meeting written by the
prosecutors and filed in the Lerch case.
Heinonen told the prosecutors that the other seven rotors remained
unaccounted for. He did not say when the rotors had arrived in Dubai,
according to the account. But previous IAEA reports and other
interviews indicate that they were shipped there from Pakistan in early
to mid-2000.
Libyan officials later told the IAEA that two of the rotors had
arrived in Tripoli in September 2000 as samples for an order of 10,000
that was never filled, according to an IAEA report in February 2004.
The rotors are slim cylinders, about 6 feet high, manufactured to
exact measurements. The missing ones were for P-2 centrifuges, and
experts said they would be extremely valuable prototypes for an
enrichment plant.
In addition to the rotors, a shipping container of centrifuge
components and a ton of high-strength aluminum intended for
manufacturing parts for Libya's centrifuges also vanished, Heinonen
said. Those parts, last seen in Turkey and Malaysia, disappeared after
the seizure of the separate shipment to Libya in 2003, according to the
account.
Mark Gwozdecky, chief spokesman for the IAEA, and Frauke-Katrin
Scheuten, spokeswoman for the German federal prosecutor's office,
declined to comment on the meeting or other elements of the
investigations.
Another international official, who refused to permit his name to
be used because he is directly involved in the investigation, said the
rotors, components and aluminum are still missing.
In addition, he said, a separate container filled with precision
tools and key parts for two specialized lathes that were supposed to
manufacture the 10,000 rotors for Libya also disappeared at some point
after the 2003 seizure.
The components and tools were either manufactured by the network
or purchased by it from suppliers for use in the Libya enrichment
project. The account by the prosecutors did not provide precise dates
about the acquisition of the material or its disappearance.
The most common way to produce fissile material, the biggest challenge
in building a nuclear weapon, is to use centrifuges.
The complicated process involves converting uranium ore to a gas
and pumping it into an array of thousands of interconnected
centrifuges. Rotors inside the centrifuges spin at up to twice the
speed of sound to separate isotopes and concentrate the uranium to
produce weapons-grade material.
Centrifuges must be manufactured to precise tolerances so they
remain balanced as they spin rapidly for long periods. Years of testing
and experimentation are usually required before an array of 1,000 or
more centrifuges can produce enough material for a single weapon.
Khan used blueprints that he allegedly stole from a European
consortium to help build Pakistan's enrichment plant in the late 1970s
and early 1980s. He developed a network of suppliers in Europe and
elsewhere to secretly provide much of the equipment.
In 1987, with Pakistan well on its way to its first bombs, the
scientist began selling centrifuge know-how and equipment to Iran. The
scheme lasted until at least the mid-1990s and remained secret until
August 2002, when elements of Iran's hidden program were exposed by an
Iranian exile group.
Since then, Iran has grudgingly drawn back the curtain on its
nuclear program in the face of evidence uncovered in a series of IAEA
inspections.
Iranian authorities confirmed to IAEA experts this year that
Khan's associates had first provided a written offer to supply both
centrifuges and designs for a nuclear weapon in 1987 at a meeting in
Dubai.
The Iranians said they had bought centrifuge designs and
components and a list of suppliers, but rejected the weapons technology.
Pierre Goldschmidt, deputy director of the IAEA, told the agency's
board last month that Iran showed the IAEA a one-page offer for
centrifuges, but he said Tehran refused to produce other documentation
from the meeting.
In addition to the sales to Iran, Khan is suspected of
transferring enrichment technology to North Korea in return for help
developing missiles for Pakistani nuclear warheads.
But the network's most ambitious — and now most transparent —
transaction involved engineering and manufacturing the $100-million,
off-the-shelf plant in Libya to produce nuclear weapons.
U.S. and British intelligence agencies seized five crates of
centrifuge components from a ship bound for Libya in October 2003. The
components had been manufactured at a Malaysian factory affiliated with
the Khan network.
The seizure helped persuade Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi to give
up his nuclear program later that year. Along with equipment and
designs for a nuclear warhead obtained from Khan, Libya turned over
records of six years of dealing with the network to the U.S. and IAEA.
Tucked among thousands of documents were four pages outlining the
journey of two specialized lathes, each of which weighed several tons.
Following that trail led investigators to the discovery that critical
components and machinery produced for Libya were missing, according to
documents and investigators.
Khan and his associates had struck the deal with Libya in 1997. To
avoid attracting attention, elements of the engineering and production
were farmed out to separate locations. The entire plant was then to be
shipped to Libya and reassembled.
An operating system for the plant was being manufactured in South
Africa. German prosecutors alleged that Lerch used contacts in South
Africa to set up that part of the project. The system eventually filled
11 huge shipping containers.
The centrifuges themselves were to be produced in Dubai, the
Persian Gulf port where the network operated quietly from a computer
firm and several nondescript warehouses.
On July 7, 2000, two lathes bought from a Spanish manufacturer
left the port of Barcelona bound for Dubai, according to the shipping
invoice.
Production of some components of the centrifuges was undertaken at
a factory in Malaysia. For help on the rotors, according to court
papers in South Africa and interviews there, the network turned to
Tradefin, a company outside Johannesburg, South Africa, that was
already producing the plant's operating system. Its owner, Johan A.M.
Meyer, had worked for South Africa's nuclear program before it was
closed down in the early 1990s.
Meyer agreed to try to make the rotors and records show that one
of the lathes was shipped to his company from Dubai in late 2000.
The rotors had to be made from maraging steel, a high-strength
alloy that is under export controls because of its use in weapons. A
lawyer for Meyer, who was charged with helping the Libyan project and
is cooperating with authorities, said he was unable to buy the steel,
so the lathe sat unused.
In December 2001, the lathe was shipped back to Dubai. Both lathes
later were discovered in Libya along with two of the nine P-2 rotors
initially shipped to Dubai. The other seven rotors are still missing.
Heinonen told the German prosecutors that four supposedly had been
destroyed and three were still somewhere in Dubai, according to the
prosecutors' account. But investigators have found no evidence that the
rotors were destroyed, and searches of the network's facilities in
Dubai did not locate them or other missing equipment.
The senior investigator who suspects the existence of an
unidentified network customer said the rotors and other equipment could
have gone directly to the other customer or to an undiscovered
manufacturing site operated by the network.
The P-2 rotors in particular are too valuable to have been
destroyed, even as investigators closed in on most of the network's
operations, he said.
