THE SUNDAY TIMES

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extra­or­di­nary claims about how cor­rupt gov­ern­ment offi­cials allowed Pak­istan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old for­mer Turk­ish lan­guage trans­la­tor for the FBI, lis­tened into hun­dreds of sen­si­tive inter­cepted con­ver­sa­tions while based at the agency’s Wash­ing­ton field office.

She approached The Sun­day Times last month after read­ing about an Al-Qaeda ter­ror­ist who had revealed his role in train­ing some of the 9/11 hijack­ers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how for­eign intel­li­gence agents had enlisted the sup­port of US offi­cials to acquire a net­work of moles in sen­si­tive mil­i­tary and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape record­ings, she says she heard evi­dence that one well-known senior offi­cial in the US State Depart­ment was being paid by Turk­ish agents in Wash­ing­ton who were sell­ing the infor­ma­tion on to black mar­ket buy­ers, includ­ing Pakistan.

The name of the offi­cial – who has held a series of top gov­ern­ment posts – is known to The Sun­day Times. He strongly denies the claims.

How­ever, Edmonds said: “He was aid­ing for­eign oper­a­tives against US inter­ests by pass­ing them highly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, not only from the State Depart­ment but also from the Pen­ta­gon, in exchange for money, posi­tion and polit­i­cal objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gath­er­ing evi­dence against senior Pen­ta­gon offi­cials – includ­ing house­hold names – who were aid­ing for­eign agents.

“If you made pub­lic all the infor­ma­tion that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level peo­ple going through crim­i­nal tri­als,” she said.

Her story shows just how much the West was infil­trated by for­eign states seek­ing nuclear secrets. It illus­trates how west­ern gov­ern­ment offi­cials turned a blind eye to, or were even help­ing, coun­tries such as Pak­istan acquire bomb technology.

The wider nuclear net­work has been mon­i­tored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intel­li­gence effort. But rather than shut it down, inves­ti­ga­tions by law enforce­ment bod­ies such as the FBI and Britain’s Rev­enue & Cus­toms have been aborted to pre­serve diplo­matic relations.

Edmonds, a flu­ent speaker of Turk­ish and Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the after­math of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks. Her pre­vi­ous claims about incom­pe­tence inside the FBI have been well doc­u­mented in America.

She has given evi­dence to closed ses­sions of Con­gress and the 9/11 com­mis­sion, but many of the key points of her tes­ti­mony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that infor­ma­tion after becom­ing dis­il­lu­sioned with the US author­i­ties’ fail­ure to act.

One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to trans­late thou­sands of hours of con­ver­sa­tions by Turk­ish diplo­matic and polit­i­cal tar­gets that had been covertly recorded by the agency.

A back­log of tapes had built up, dat­ing back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into links between the Turks and Pak­istani, Israeli and US tar­gets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evi­dence that pointed to money laun­der­ing, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and con­ven­tional weapons technology.

“What I found was damn­ing,” she said. “While the FBI was inves­ti­gat­ing, sev­eral arms of the gov­ern­ment were shield­ing what was going on.”

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in mil­i­tary and aca­d­e­mic insti­tu­tions which han­dled nuclear tech­nol­ogy. Edmonds says there were sev­eral trans­ac­tions of nuclear mate­r­ial every month, with the Pak­ista­nis being among the even­tual buy­ers. “The net­work appeared to be obtain­ing infor­ma­tion from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Depart­ment offi­cial who pro­vided some of their moles – mainly PhD stu­dents – with secu­rity clear­ance to work in sen­si­tive nuclear research facil­i­ties. These included the Los Alamos nuclear lab­o­ra­tory in New Mex­ico, which is respon­si­ble for the secu­rity of the US nuclear deterrent.

In one con­ver­sa­tion Edmonds heard the offi­cial arrang­ing to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The pack­age was to be dropped off at an agreed loca­tion by some­one in the Turk­ish diplo­matic com­mu­nity who was work­ing for the network.

The Turks, she says, often acted as a con­duit for the Inter-Services Intel­li­gence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract sus­pi­cion. Venues such as the Amer­i­can Turk­ish Coun­cil in Wash­ing­ton were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.

Edmonds said: “I heard at least three trans­ac­tions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost cer­tainly more.”

The Pak­istani oper­a­tion was led by Gen­eral Mah­moud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Inter­cepted com­mu­ni­ca­tions showed Ahmad and his col­leagues sta­tioned in Wash­ing­ton were in con­stant con­tact with attach�s in the Turk­ish embassy.

Intel­li­gence ana­lysts say that mem­bers of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanc­tion­ing a $100,000 wire pay­ment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijack­ers, imme­di­ately before the attacks.

The results of the espi­onage were almost cer­tainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pak­istani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While run­ning Pakistan’s nuclear pro­gramme, he became a mil­lion­aire by sell­ing atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a net­work of com­pa­nies in Amer­ica and Britain to obtain com­po­nents for a nuclear programme.

Khan caused an alert among west­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden. “We were aware of con­tact between A Q Khan’s peo­ple and Al-Qaeda,” a for­mer CIA offi­cer said last week. “There was absolute panic when we ini­tially dis­cov­ered this, but it kind of panned out in the end.”

It is likely that the nuclear secrets stolen from the United States would have been sold to a num­ber of rogue states by Khan.

Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pak­istani con­nec­tions when it was revealed that one of her fel­low trans­la­tors at the FBI was the daugh­ter of a Pak­istani embassy offi­cial who worked for Ahmad. The trans­la­tor was given top secret clear­ance despite protests from FBI investigators.

Edmonds says pack­ages con­tain­ing nuclear secrets were deliv­ered by Turk­ish oper­a­tives, using their cover as mem­bers of the diplo­matic and mil­i­tary com­mu­nity, to con­tacts at the Pak­istani embassy in Washington.

Fol­low­ing 9/11, a num­ber of the for­eign oper­a­tives were taken in for ques­tion­ing by the FBI on sus­pi­cion that they knew about or some­how aided the attacks.

Edmonds said the State Depart­ment offi­cial once again proved use­ful. “A pri­mary tar­get would call the offi­cial and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The offi­cial said that he would ‘take care of it’.”

The four sus­pects on the list were released from inter­ro­ga­tion and extradited.

Edmonds also claims that a num­ber of senior offi­cials in the Pen­ta­gon had helped Israeli and Turk­ish agents.

“The peo­ple pro­vided lists of poten­tial moles from Pentagon-relat
ed insti­tu­tions who had access to data­bases con­cern­ing this infor­ma­tion,” she said.

“The han­dlers, who were part of the diplo­matic com­mu­nity, would then try to recruit those peo­ple to become moles for the net­work. The lists con­tained all their ‘hook­ing points’, which could be finan­cial or sex­ual pres­sure points, their exact job in the Pen­ta­gon and what stuff they had access to.”

One of the Pen­ta­gon fig­ures under inves­ti­ga­tion was Lawrence Franklin, a for­mer Pen­ta­gon ana­lyst, who was jailed in 2006 for pass­ing US defence infor­ma­tion to lob­by­ists and shar­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion with an Israeli diplomat.

“He was one of the top peo­ple pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion and pack­ages dur­ing 2000 and 2001,” she said.

Once acquired, the nuclear secrets could have gone any­where. The FBI mon­i­tored Turk­ish diplo­mats who were sell­ing copies of the infor­ma­tion to the high­est bidder.

Edmonds said: “Cer­tain greedy Turk­ish oper­a­tors would make copies of the mate­r­ial and look around for buy­ers. They had agents who would find poten­tial buyers.”

In sum­mer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI mon­i­tored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Ara­bian busi­ness­men in Detroit to sell nuclear infor­ma­tion that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She over­heard the agent say­ing: “We have a pack­age and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”

Edmonds’s employ­ment with the FBI lasted for just six months. In March 2002 she was dis­missed after accus­ing a col­league of cov­er­ing up illicit activ­ity involv­ing Turk­ish nationals.

She has always claimed that she was vic­timised for being out­spo­ken and was vin­di­cated by an Office of the Inspec­tor Gen­eral review of her case three years later. It found that one of the con­trib­u­tory rea­sons for her sack­ing was that she had made valid complaints.

The US attorney-general has imposed a state secrets priv­i­lege order on her, which pre­vents her reveal­ing more details of the FBI’s meth­ods and cur­rent investigations.

Her alle­ga­tions were heard in a closed ses­sion of Con­gress, but no action has been taken and she con­tin­ues to cam­paign for a pub­lic hearing.

She was able to dis­cuss the case with The Sun­day Times because, by the end of Jan­u­ary 2002, the jus­tice depart­ment had shut down the programme.

The senior offi­cial in the State Depart­ment no longer works there. Last week he denied all of Edmonds’s alle­ga­tions: “If you are call­ing me to say some­body said that I took money, that’s out­ra­geous . . . I do not have any­thing to say about such stu­pid ridicu­lous things as this.”

In research­ing this arti­cle, The Sun­day Times has talked to two FBI offi­cers (one serv­ing, one for­mer) and two for­mer CIA sources who worked on nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion. While none was aware of spe­cific alle­ga­tions against offi­cials she names, they did pro­vide over­lap­ping cor­rob­o­ra­tion of Edmonds’s story.

One of the CIA sources con­firmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the infor­ma­tion with Pak­istan and Israel. “We have no indi­ca­tion that Turkey has its own nuclear ambi­tions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowl­edge they became big play­ers in the late 1990s,” the source said.

How Pak­istan got the bomb, then sold it to the high­est bidders

1965 Zul­fikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s for­eign min­is­ter, says: “If India builds the bomb we will eat grass . . . but we will get one of our own”

1974 Nuclear pro­gramme becomes increased pri­or­ity as India tests a nuclear device

1976 Abdul Qadeer Khan, a sci­en­tist, steals secrets from Dutch ura­nium plant. Made head of his nation’s nuclear pro­gramme by Bhutto, now prime minister

1976 onwards Clan­des­tine net­work estab­lished to obtain mate­ri­als and tech­nol­ogy for ura­nium enrich­ment from the West

1985 Pak­istan pro­duces weapons-grade ura­nium for the first time

1989–91 Khan’s net­work sells Iran nuclear weapons infor­ma­tion and technology

1991–97 Khan sells weapons tech­nol­ogy to North Korea and Libya

1998 India tests nuclear bomb and Pak­istan fol­lows with a series of nuclear tests. Khan says: “I never had any doubts I was build­ing a bomb. We had to do it”

2001 CIA chief George Tenet gath­ers offi­cials for cri­sis sum­mit on the pro­lif­er­a­tion of nuclear tech­nol­ogy from Pak­istan to other countries

2001 Weeks before 9/11, Khan’s aides meet Osama Bin Laden to dis­cuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device

2001 After 9/11 pro­lif­er­a­tion cri­sis becomes sec­ondary as Pak­istan is seen as impor­tant ally in war on terror

2003 Libya aban­dons nuclear weapons pro­gramme and admits acquir­ing com­po­nents through Pak­istani nuclear scientists

2004 Khan placed under house arrest and con­fesses to sup­ply­ing Iran, Libya and North Korea with weapons tech­nol­ogy. He is par­doned by Pres­i­dent Per­vez Musharraf

2006 North Korea tests a nuclear bomb

2007 Renewed fears that bomb may fall into hands of Islamic extrem­ists as killing of Benazir Bhutto throws coun­try into turmoil