The Secret History of Nuclear Proliferation

Source DC Bureau.org

DC Bureau Editor and Public Education Center President Joe Trento is presenting National Security News Service’s investigation into The Secret History of Nuclear Proliferation to the International Conference on the Streets and in Court Justice and Faith Against Nuclear Risks in Frankfurt, Germany. The presentation is the culmination of decades of work by Trento and his colleagues at NSNS. We especially acknowledge the work of NSNS reporter David Armstrong, who co-authored America and The Islamic Bomb (Steerforth Random House 2007) with Trento.

National Security News Services work on Japan’s secret nuclear weapons program under the guise of nuclear power was presented at the 2015 conference and that reporting along with other presentations at that conference help convince Pope Frances to announce his moral opposition to nuclear power.

It had been cold and overcast in London all in the fall of 2004. Dark clouds were rolling in as British customs agent Atif Amin headed home for the weekend. Amin, a tall, native-born British citizen of Pakistani descent was then just thirty-five years old. Amin had already spent years tracking some of the world’s most sinister characters. From opium-smuggling warlords in Afghanistan, sanctions-busting arms dealers supplying weapons to paramilitary groups in Montenegro and Africa, and finally a shadowy international network of nuclear arms traffickers. While he could claim real and meaningful successes, he was also frustrated by the degree to which politics interfered with his investigations.

Amin flipped on the TV to watch the Presidential debate between George Bush and Senator John Kerry. Kerry began by offering his vision for protecting Americans in the post-9/11 world. As Bush defended his policies the president said something that caught Amin by surprise. Bush described his “policy of disrupting those who proliferate weapons of mass destruction.” Bush declared that the black market nuclear arms network headed by Pakistani scientist P had been “brought to justice.”

Amin couldn’t believe what he had just heard. The President was taking credit for exposing A.Q. Qadeer Khan’s illicit trade in nuclear weapons. Amin found Bush’s claims outrageous. He knew from his own investigations that Khan’s sales of nuclear technology had taken place while US and British intelligence had the Pakistani nuclear smuggling network under close surveillance. Yet there had been no serious attempt by either government to halt Khan’s activities. In fact, Amin knew that the opposite of what Bush was now claiming was true.

Several years earlier his superiors, with the encouragement of British intelligence, had pulled Amin off an investigation just as he began to uncover evidence of Khan’s nuclear sales. Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6, had even warned Amin not to go near a company that was involved in Khan’s nuclear trafficking.

The implication was that Mi6 and the CIA had the situation under control and that Amin should steer clear to avoid exposing their monitoring operation. Now, however, years later, with the smuggling network belatedly exposed and the proliferation damage strewn across the world, Bush was attempting to portray the Khan affair as an intelligence coup for which he could take credit. The picture he painted suggested that intelligence operatives had swooped in on the black market network at the first sign of trouble and headed off a potential disaster. In fact, Amin knew they had stood by and watched the disaster unfold, doing nothing to stop it.

Amin knew that if his investigation of A.Q. Khan’s smuggling network had been allowed to continue, it could have resulted in halting the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea years sooner. But that had not happened. The network was allowed to remain in place and the flow of nuclear equipment and know-how to rogue states continued.

Amin’s experience was not unique. Since the mid-1960s, numerous official European and American investigations had come close to fully exposing not just Pakistan’s nuclear smuggling operation but those tied to the  and others and time after time, those inquires fell victim to politics. Whitehall or the White House intervened in the investigations.  Short term foreign policy considerations trumped efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. A.Q. Khan and his cohorts were allowed to continue their deadly trade, and proliferation of nuclear technology went on unabated. The tragedy was that such activity continues to this day, and still the intelligence agencies follow the orders of the policy makers to protect the proliferators.

The obstacles Amin and other investigators ran into were the result of government policies adopted decades earlier. Policies that allowed for the creation of two track nuclear weapons policy – one track seemingly open and public – with President’s signing weapons treaties speaking out for nuclear weapons reduction. Then there is the other secret track rooted in cold war politics that would in the end create a threat to the world from terrorists not interested in treaties or agreements with the West.

It was in early 2004, when the world finally learned of a graver menace than 9/11 or the war in Iraq. News of the Pakistani black market network that had provided nuclear-weapons know-how and technology to the rogue states of Libya, Iran, and North Korea added to the public’s sense of insecurity. The implications were ominous. Headlines from Europe to Asia raised the nightmare specter of Third World despots — and possibly even terrorists — armed with atomic devices. Most foreign capitals reacted with alarm.

But in London and Washington the response was muted. Although the Bush administration had placed halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) at the top of its Iraq war priority list, US officials went out of their way to praise Pakistan’s handling of the scandal, even refusing to take issue with President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to pardon the leader of the nuclear smuggling ring, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. As a State Department spokesman explained, “I don’t think it’s a matter for the United States to sit in judgment on.”

Other American officials cast the Khan affair in a positive light. CIA director George Tenet, eager to convey good news in the face of continuing criticism over the faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMD programs that led to the invasion of Iraq, portrayed the exposure of Khan’s dealings as a triumph attributable to the US and British intelligence services. “Our spies penetrated the network through a series of daring operations over several years,” Tenet said. “Khan and his network have been dealt a crushing blow.” President Bush and other administration officials echoed that judgment. “The A.Q. Khan network is out of business,” the President claimed. “We have ended one of the most dangerous sources of proliferation in the world, and the American people are safer.”

But those upbeat appraisals were misleading. True, Khan had been exposed and placed under house arrest, several of his collaborators were in custody, and a few elements of their nuclear smuggling operation were shut down. But all of that could have been accomplished far earlier, before much of the damage was done. As Tenet himself noted, US and British intelligence maintained close surveillance of Khan’s activities for years. They knew exactly what he and his cohorts were doing. British and American spies had, in fact, monitored much of the transfer of nuclear technology. Yet they resisted taking action against Khan’s gang, arguing that moving “too soon” would harm efforts to corral the whole network and would endanger intelligence sources. Rather than act to dismantle large portions of a dangerous nuclear smuggling ring and expose the budding weapons programs of its rogue customers, Washington and London chose to wait and continue collecting information. Khan’s deadly trade was allowed to continue and the proliferation to multiply.

Even after the network was finally outed, the United States refused to push for an independent inquiry to ensure that all of the participants were accounted for and that their activities had ceased. Instead, Washington accepted President Musharraf’s assurances that his government had the situation under control. The Bush administration has not even challenged Musharraf ’s refusal to grant American and international investigators direct access to Khan, nor Pakistan’s declarations that the investigation had officially closed. The administration rolled over when Islamabad prevented an official US investigation into a recent nuclear smuggling case from going forward in Pakistan.

In what was surely a welcome outcome for both the Bush administration and Musharraf, A.Q. Khan became the sinister emblem of nuclear proliferation, an easily recognizable and convenient villain. The portrayal of Khan as a lone wolf operating outside of government supervision and control provided the media — and the public — with a major diversion from the truth. But the reality of the proliferation saga is far darker and more malign: Khan was just one part of a wide-ranging network. And although the public was not aware of it, the network operated for years with the full knowledge of Western authorities, who tolerated it to avoid losing to avoid Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s support for short-term foreign policy objectives, including the backing of anti-Soviet Muslim militants who became the precursor to al Qaeda.

The unpleasant truth is that what is now known as the A.Q. Khan scandal is, fundamentally, a scandal of US foreign policy. United States officials, and anyone else paying attention, knew for decades that Pakistan was trafficking in nuclear technology. Yet successive US administrations looked the other way as their sometime-ally first developed and then sold the building blocks for the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. The United States did so in pursuit of short-term, strategic policy goals, first in the Cold War and more recently in the war on terror. But in their efforts to counter the known threat posed by the Soviet Union, US Presidents from Dwight Eisenhower forward followed a path that would lead to a post-Cold War environment far more dangerous than that which had existed during the Cold War — a world in which rogue states and borderless militant groups can obtain nuclear weapons.

A critical moment came during the Carter administration. In 1979, National security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski convinced President Jimmy Carter to overlook Pakistani nuclear proliferation in exchange for Islamabad’s cooperation in supporting the Islamic holy warriors struggling against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s assistance in the US- and Saudi-backed anti-Soviet campaign carried a nuclear price tag. Carter’s decision to ignore Pakistan’s nuclear weapons development soon snowballed. The Reagan and Bush One administrations embraced the strategy as a cornerstone of America’s aggressive anti-Soviet efforts.

Pakistan took full advantage of the situation, using the US’ willingness to look the other way as an opportunity to develop full-fledged nuclear weapons capability. By the 1990s, with the Soviets routed from Afghanistan and official relations between Washington and Islamabad eroding, the nuclear technology Pakistan had developed with tacit US approval was being sold and traded to some of the world’s most dangerous regimes. In the meantime, the Afghan jihadists had begun their transformation into al Qaeda and would soon set their sights on the world’s lone remaining superpower, the United States.

Over the past three decades, official investigations in the United States and Europe came close on several occasions to pulling the lid off of Pakistan’s nuclear smuggling network. But to protect strategic relationships with Islamabad, and their Saud benefactors, those inquiries were scuttled by intervention at the highest levels of government. Any opportunity to roll up the network were lost and the spread of nuclear technology continued.

Suggestions by President George W. Bush and members of his administration that the Khan case is a success story would be laughable if the implications were not so dire. Many of the Khan network’s operatives remain free today and live openly in Europe, Asia, and even the United States. The underground trade in nuclear technology continues, and the opportunities for terrorists to get their hands on atomic weaponry are expanding. Many in Pakistan’s military, intelligence, and scientific communities are closely allied with the Taliban and al Qaeda, groups that US policy in the years before 9/11 helped foster. The lure of profits, combined with ideological, religious, and ethnic loyalties creates conditions for potentially deadly cooperation between those with access to nuclear technology and our bitterest enemies.

Leaders from across the political spectrum agree that the greatest danger facing the United States is terrorists armed with nuclear weapons, a threat that they suggest could materialize on American or European soil in the near future. But it is a threat the United States helped bring about. By turning a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear trafficking, and in some instances protecting the illegal activity, the United States unleashed a nuclear juggernaut that it could not control. In pursuit of its Cold War objectives, Washington — with Islamabad’s assistance — helped fortify the radical Islamic forces that would grow into the terrorist threat we face today. The gravest dangers now confronting the West — Islamic terrorism and nuclear proliferation — are, in short, the bastard children of foreign policy decisions made long ago.

I can tell you what happened in the United States but I suspect the stories in other capitals are similar. America’s interest in halting the spread of nuclear weapons has always been tempered by political, economic, and foreign policy considerations. In the aftermath of World War II and the unleashing of the revolutionary destructive power of the atom against the Japanese US officials began seriously debating America’s nuclear policy. Although the United States had emerged from the war as the world’s lone nuclear power, it was a position that could not last. Advisors to President Harry Truman understood that the technical knowledge required to produce an atomic bomb would not remain the sole possession of the United States indefinitely. America’s wartime allies — the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and Canada — were well poised to develop nuclear arsenals.

Within Truman’s administration, two distinct schools of thought emerged about the appropriate disposition of the bomb. Both were heavily influenced by concerns about America’s postwar relationship with Moscow. Truman’s secretary of War, Henry Stimson, and undersecretary of State, Dean Acheson, believed it was vital that the United States maintain cooperative relations with the Soviets. Failure to do so in the newly emergent age of nuclear weapons was simply too dangerous. The key to preserving trust between the two nations, Stimson and Acheson asserted, lay in Washington’s handling of the nuclear question. They recommended that as a gesture of good faith, the US share information about peaceful applications of atomic energy with its World War II partners, including the Russians. In a memo to Truman, Acheson dismissed suggestions that the US develop the bomb in partnership with Britain and Canada — both of which had joined in the American-led wartime effort to build an atomic weapon — arguing that the Soviets would interpret such an arrangement as “unanswerable evidence of an Anglo–American combination against them” and would feel compelled to take action to restore the balance of power.

That line of reasoning met fierce opposition from Navy Secretary James Forrestal. A virulent anticommunist, Forrestal viewed the bomb as “the property of the American people” and rejected any notion that the Soviets could be trusted. He urged Truman to retain US nuclear monopoly. Many in Congress and in the press echoed Forrestal’s call.

The President, while sensitive to the political mood of the country and, himself, increasingly distrustful of Soviet intentions, nevertheless adopted a stance that was broadly in line with the approach proposed by Stimson and Acheson. In an address to Congress on October 3, 1945, Truman declared that, “The hope of civilization lies in international arrangements looking, if possible, to the renunciation of the use and development of the atomic bomb, and directing and encouraging the use of atomic energy and all future scientific information toward peaceful and humanitarian ends.”

While making clear that there would be no sharing of information about the development of nuclear weapons, Truman proposed opening discussions with Britain and Canada, and then with “other nations,” including the Soviet Union, aimed at reaching an agreement on “the conditions under which cooperation might replace rivalry in the field of atomic power.” Although acknowledging that there would be great difficulties in following such a course, he insisted they would have to be overcome. The alternative, he said, would be “a desperate armament race which might well end in disaster.”

Truman’s speech was notable on several counts. Coming at a time when the United States maintained exclusive control over the power of the atom, it held out a vision of peaceful East-West collaboration. Had such a strategy been pursued, it might have not only warded off the nuclear arms race that Truman feared but also, in the process, eliminated the source of much of the mistrust that fueled the Cold War. His speech also marked the first formal proposal for the sharing of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, a concept that — however well intentioned — would have disastrous long term repercussions, including, predictably, the proliferation crisis we face today. Before any of that could transpire, however, the concepts imbedded in Truman’s speech would be transformed by Cold War politics.

Truman’s lead negotiator on the issue of international control of atomic energy was Secretary of State James Byrnes, a political conservative who took a dim view of the Soviets. Unlike the president, Byrnes opposed dealing directly with Moscow. As talks with Britain and Canada got underway in November 1945, Byrnes latched on to a proposal for debating the nuclear question in the newly formed United Nations. Although Truman had explicitly rejected such a concept in his address to Congress, Byrnes pressed ahead. For Byrnes, the plan — originally floated by Vannevar Bush, a top government scientific advisor who had been one of the primary organizers of the atomic bomb program — held the dual virtues of avoiding politically difficult discussions with the Soviets and of allowing the United States to maintain its hold on nuclear secrets until Moscow’s intentions became clear. But Byrnes’s proposal also eliminated the gesture of good faith inherent in Truman’s speech and thereby risked inflaming tensions with the Soviets. As Dean Acheson noted, by moving the discussion of nuclear control to the UN, Byrnes was following a path directly opposite the one he and Stimson had laid out.

In other quarters, Byrnes’s concept received a more favorable reception. The British, who by then were preparing to develop their own bomb, and the Canadians both embraced the UN strategy as the best means for dealing with the nuclear question. With them on board, Byrnes traveled to Moscow and, surprisingly, won the Russians’ agreement to help establish a UN commission on atomic energy. The Soviets’ only stipulation was that the commission be placed under the jurisdiction of the UN Security Council, where both Washington and Moscow held veto power. Although angered by Byrnes’s backroom maneuvering, Truman reluctantly accepted the U.N. scheme.

While Byrnes had succeeded in shifting the nuclear discussion to the UN, American objectives remained unclear. Neither Truman nor Byrnes nor anyone else had articulated a formal strategy. To solve the problem, Byrnes turned to Acheson, appointing him to head a committee charged with drafting a US policy. As its starting point, the committee was charged with conceiving an international arrangement aimed at preventing the use of atomic energy for destructive purposes while promoting its use “for the benefit of society.” Recognizing the need for technical expertise, Acheson convened a board of scientific consultants to develop a proposal. To serve as chairman he selected David Lilienthal, the former head of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The panel’s most influential member was J. Robert Oppenheimer, the former scientific director of the Manhattan Project.

After more than seven weeks of intense effort, in March 1946 Lilienthal’s panel presented its findings to Acheson’s committee. The Acheson-Lilienthal report, as it became known, offered a stark and prescient appraisal of the dangers of nuclear weapons development and the risks of proliferation. The report concluded that because atomic energy programs could easily be diverted into nuclear weapons initiatives, any effort to ban the bomb exclusively through a system of international inspections would inevitably fail. “There is no prospect of security against atomic warfare in a system of international agreements to outlaw such weapons controlled only by a system which relies on inspection and similar police-like methods,” the report said. “National rivalries in the development of atomic energy readily convertible to destructive purposes are the heart of the difficulty.. . . a system of inspection superimposed on an otherwise uncontrolled exploitation of atomic energy by national governments will not be an adequate safeguard.” Nuclear energy programs as a means of halting development of atomic weapons was precluded by the committee’s mandate to promote the peaceful use of nuclear power. As a result, the committee instead recommended that the United states voluntarily relinquish its nuclear monopoly and invest its hopes for controlling the bomb in a system of international cooperation administered by a single authority — namely, the UN. Whatever prospects for success such an arrangement may have had, they were quickly undone by Truman’s choice of salesman for the plan.

On the very day that Acheson submitted his committee’s final report, Byrnes informed him that Truman had selected Wall Street mogul and political contributor Bernard Baruch to market the plan to the world. Acheson and Lilienthal were shocked. A former member of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust,” and later shunned by FDR.

Dean Acheson protested the Baruch appointment, but to no avail. Truman and Byrnes believed that Baruch’s substantial influence with members of both parties in Congress — stemming largely from his extravagant campaign contributions — would help the administration push through legislation related to the nuclear initiative.

Lilienthal wrote in his diary that he became “quite sick” upon learning of Baruch’s involvement. He viewed Baruch as a vain self-promoter whose overt contempt for international cooperation threatened to scuttle the entire initiative by convincing soviets that he was simply out to “put them in a hole.”

Baruch made clear from the start that the plan submitted to the UN would be his own, not that of Acheson and Lilienthal. He insisted that he could divine an appropriate course of action purely by instinct and, as if to prove his point, refused to consult scientific advisors.

Baruch ultimately set forth his vision at the inaugural session of the UN’s Atomic Energy Commission in New York on June 14, 1946. It differed from the Acheson-Lilienthal report’s recommendations in several significant respects. It scrapped, for example, the call for international control over the means of producing nuclear fuel as being inconsistent with American free-market values. Under the Baruch Plan, the United States would retain its nuclear arsenal, which at the time totaled nine warheads, until it had received assurances that no other nation could develop a bomb. Iin the meantime, the US would continue to expand its atomic stockpile. Baruch also tacked on two provisions that— deliberately or not — proved to be poison pills for the Soviets. One was the inclusion of “immediate, swift, and sure punishment” for those who violated any agreements that were eventually reached. When asked by Truman what that punishment would be, Baruch answered, “war.” The other was a stipulation that such sanctions not be subject to Security Council veto — a direct contradiction of the agreement Byrnes had previously worked out with the Soviets.

Baruch was unwilling to negotiate and demanded a vote on his plan by the end of the year. The results were predictable. The UN commission approved the Baruch Plan, with only the soviets and Poland abstaining. The Soviets then killed it with a veto in the Security Council. The best hope for meaningful cooperation on the control of nuclear weapons had been lost. Truman later described his selection of Baruch as the person to lead the effort as “the worst mistake I have ever made.”

The fact that Truman had not been close to FDR also meant that Truman did not know that President Roosevelt had shunned Baruch not because of his legendary ego but because Baruch was part of a Wall Street cabal that attempted to remove Roosevelt from office in 1933. The fact that Truman was never told about the failed plot resulted in President Truman having no real understanding of the damage Baruch could inflict.

Just weeks after Baruch presented his plan, Truman signed legislation that enshrined secrecy and the retention of America’s nuclear monopoly as official US policy.

The Atomic Energy act of 1946, signed by Truman on August 1 of that year, established the terms by which the United States would manage and control its nuclear weapons and technology. First and foremost, the act transferred control of all nuclear matters out of the hands of the military and placed it under civilian authority. For that purpose, it created the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a five-member board of civilian nuclear governors, along with a Congressional panel known as the Joint Committee on atomic Energy (JCAE) that would wield authority over nuclear legislation. The activities of both the AEC and the JCAE were shielded from public view, placing all aspects of America’s nuclear program— from uranium mining to the production of nuclear fuel and weapons— behind a heavy veil of secrecy. The act also prescribed the death penalty for anyone found guilty of passing nuclear secrets to any foreign power, whether enemy or allied.

The secrecy provisions of the Atomic Energy Act provided the clearest indication to date of America’s determination to maintain its exclusive hold over nuclear weapons and technology. Rather than ensuring US security, however, this stance only heightened the concerns of foreign governments and spurred their efforts to develop their own atomic bombs. Realizing that the United States would neither give up its weapons nor place them under international control, the British resolved to press ahead with their nuclear weapons program. More ominously, the Soviet Union now redoubled its bomb-building efforts. The nuclear arms race, and with it the Cold War, were on.

The American nuclear monopoly ended on August 29, 1949, just four years after the United States leveled Hiroshima. Coming years earlier than even the most prescient American analysts had predicted (thanks in part to information Russia’s atomic spies had pilfered from the Manhattan Project) the Soviet test sent shock waves through America’s military and policy-making communities. In response, the United States began a major expansion of its capacity to produce and stockpile nuclear weapons and launched a crash program to develop a thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb.

Atoms for Peace

In December 1953, President Eisenhower unveiled his “atoms for Peace” concept in an address to the UN. It was an arms control plan that held out a hopeful vision to a world frightened by the prospect of nuclear war. In his speech, Eisenhower mixed dark warnings with optimistic vision. Acknowledging the grave danger of nuclear war and the spread of nuclear technology, he went on to declare that the United States sought “more than the mere reduction or elimination” of nuclear bombs. “It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers,” he said. “it must be put in the hands of those who know how to strip it of its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.” specifically, Eisenhower proposed that the United states and the soviet Union transfer uranium and other nuclear materials from their stockpiles to a newly created International Atomic Energy Agency under the auspices of the UN. That new agency would be responsible for developing safeguarded methods for making the material available “to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind” in fields such as agriculture and medicine. Eisenhower placed special emphasis on the goal of quickly providing “abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world,” Regions where the Soviets had, not coincidently, made significant inroads. Eisenhower’s speech offered a none-too-subtle accounting of America’s nuclear arsenal that sent a clear message to the Soviets about US military power.

Eisenhower’s speech was well-received both at home and overseas, thanks in large part to a massive public relations campaign orchestrated by master marketer C.D. Jackson. The Soviets, however, viewed the uranium bank initiative as a propaganda vehicle. While agreeing to talks on the subject, they faulted the underlying concept. Four months after Eisenhower’s address, the Soviets sent the United States a note pointing out that because plutonium is produced in the generation of nuclear power, using atomic energy for peaceful purposes would do nothing to reduce the amount of material available for weapons, the very point made by the Acheson-Lilienthal report years earlier. Despite this concern, the Eisenhower administration continued to promote atoms for Peace.

Atoms for Industry

C.D. Jackson’s media blitz for Eisenhower’s speech galvanized public interest in civilian uses of atomic energy. Companies already involved in America’s nuclear weapons program now saw an opportunity to parlay their technical ability into potentially lucrative commercial ventures, particularly in the field of nuclear power generation. The fledgling industry objected, however, to the provisions of the 1946 Atomic Energy act that would have required government ownership of nuclear power facilities. Both the business-friendly Eisenhower administration and the Republican-dominated Congress shared the industry’s view. To facilitate commercial nuclear energy production, therefore, Congress rewrote the rules of the game. In doing so, it also opened the floodgates of nuclear proliferation.

The Atomic Energy act of 1954 eased many of the restrictions originally put in place to protect America’s nuclear monopoly. Under the revised law, commercial utilities could own and operate nuclear power reactors using fuel supplied by the Atomic Energy Commission. In a further boost to industry, the act also prohibited the government from selling power generated by its military and research nuclear facilities.

The 1954 act also allowed the transfer of nuclear technology to foreign countries. Many government and industry officials viewed the Atoms for Peace initiative as an opportunity for the United States to establish itself in the international nuclear power market. Industry executives saw this as a business opportunity. The Eisenhower administration considered it a Cold War priority.

The administration hoped that demonstrating the commercial viability of nuclear power, particularly in the developing world, could offset soviet efforts to establish civilian nuclear programs in Cold War battle zones. To accommodate those interests, the 1954 Atomic Energy Act allowed the transfer of nuclear material and technology to foreign countries for civilian purposes. The transfers would take place through agreements arranged by the AEC, and the United States would retain the right to ensure that materials involved were not used for military purposes.

The Atoms for Peace program that emerged from this process was far different from the one Eisenhower had originally envisioned. Gone was the concept of a uranium bank overseen by an international agency. In its place stood a series of state-to-state agreements for direct transfers of nuclear materials and technology. Each participating country would have an autonomous nuclear program, reined in only by a system of international inspections and so-called safeguards. This, of course, was the very arrangement that the Acheson-Lilienthal report had warned would be unable to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

In the years that followed, the United States would enter into nuclear technology sharing agreements with dozens of countries. American companies sold nuclear technology for use in US-sanctioned programs that allowed foreign scientists and engineers to learn the secrets of nuclear energy. Many of those scientists and engineers received training in the United States or with US funding. And several of the countries that participated in the program used it as a springboard for developing nuclear weapons and became the source of the proliferation crisis we face today.

Turkey was the first country to sign an agreement with the United States to participate in the atoms for Peace program. The country would eventually become a central hub in A.Q. Khan’s nuclear black market network. Israel became the second country to join the atoms for Peace initiative. Tt is now known that Israel’s chief weapons scientist at that time viewed atoms for Peace as an opportunity to obtain a reactor from the United States that could be modified to generate plutonium for use in a nuclear weapons development effort. By 1962 President Kennedy was so worried about Israeli proliferation his inquiries caused the Israeli government to take extreme measures to convince Kennedy’s representatives that Israel was not building a bomb.

India and Pakistan also entered into nuclear sharing agreements with the United States as part of Atoms for Peace. Legions of Indian and Pakistani scientists flocked to the US for training in nuclear technology. The US also supplied both countries with equipment, financing, and technical assistance, helping them establish nuclear programs that quickly became the basis for efforts to build nuclear weapons. As A.Q. Khan himself later noted, this was the inherent risk in the Atoms for Peace strategy. “Knowledgeable and sane people never overlooked the fact that there was a grave danger of nuclear weapons proliferation with the spread of peaceful uses of nuclear energy,” Khan wrote in 1986. “Once you know how to make reactors, how to produce plutonium and reprocess it, it becomes a rather easy task to produce nuclear weapons” and yet the United States blithely ignored this danger.

By the late 1950s, France, China, and Israel had each initiated nuclear weapons development programs. A National Intelligence sEstimate prepared in the final days of the Eisenhower administration found that other countries might soon follow suit in an attempt to keep pace. As a result, the estimate warned, nuclear proliferation would be one of the major problems facing the world in the coming decade. It was a prophetic warning, one that would be echoed repeatedly in the years ahead. But it would be heeded, unfortunately, only after it was too late.

Today, the world must confront the consequences of America’s failure early on to adequately address the risks associated with the widespread diffusion of nuclear technology. In its eagerness to promote the benefits of civilian nuclear energy out of a combination of idealistic, commercial, and political motives, the United States became the Johnny Appleseed of a technology that could easily be channeled into the development of atomic weapons. The results were predictable. Atoms for Peace helped establish nuclear programs in some of the world’s least stable, most trouble-prone regions. Those ostensibly civilian programs allowed ambitious leaders seeking power and prestige to develop nuclear weapons that would otherwise have remained far beyond their reach. Smaller, threatened states soon sought the same capability. Thus, a program intended to promote the “peaceful” application of nuclear energy became a major spur for the rapid spread of nuclear weapons. Those weapons have now become so ubiquitous that there is a significant risk that they will fall into the hands of a terrorist organization. The greatest threat we face today is, in short, the upshot of a policy devised over a half century ago.

That lone British Customs agent, Atif Amin, should have received a medal for what he achieved on nuclear proliferation. Instead he was accused of being the source David Armstrong and I used to report for America and The Islamic Bomb. This was a lie perpetuated by British and American intelligence anxious to preserve the fiction that they had the A.Q. Khan network under control.

Our sources were in fact, high-level officials in American, French and British intelligence who had read Amin’s reports and were outraged by the political decision not to break up the Khan network and allow the proliferation to continue for years.

The irony is that while no one in the Khan network suffered for what damage they had done, the British intelligence community destroyed Atif Amin’s professional life to shift attention away from the fact that the Khan network would never be brought to justice.

First they raided his home. They took away his security clearances and threatened to prosecute him under the Officials Secret Act. The problem was, despite a multi-year investigation, they had no proof he had done anything wrong. They repeatedly sent investigators to the United States to try and force Armstrong and I to confirm Amin was our source. The truth did not matter to the British. Amin was stitched up and his credibility systematically destroyed so he could never get a job requiring a security clearance again.

So you would think that once Amin’s heroism was known the major peace foundations would want to help him uncover the truth. I went to the big American peace foundations — to try and get Amin funding so, together, we could finish his work on tracking down the companies, many of them based in the United States and Europe involved in the Pakistan nuclear smuggling effort. Those companies operate today. The foundations said they were not interested in pursuing the network or helping Amin. They turned their collective backs on this lone hero of non-proliferation. One foundation, based in San Francisco told us that such reporting might offend Iran.

The experts who run these institutions are often from the same governments who have secretly aided in proliferation. The desire to get back in power as government appointees creates kind of revolving door between foundations and governments.  Helping Atif Amin expose the truth about nuclear proliferation is not helpful in that world. As A.Q. Khan said himself “one cannot separate civilian nuclear power from potential military applications.”

For my friends in the peace community that have worked tirelessly to control these terrible devices facing the current reality of proliferation is very difficult.  Because it requires one to strip away the veneer of international agreements and protections we thought we had put between mankind and these devices that could kill us all. Only until we face the fact that the treaties are nothing more than placeholders and international pacifiers can we get to the heart of the problem: By embracing these weapons humankind has given power to a nuclear establishment that refuses to relinquish control. An establishment that has long proven it cannot demonstrate the economic or safety efficacy of nuclear weapons or nuclear power. The fact that just building these weapons leaves a deadly legacy of waste that contaminates huge swathes of our world is a sacrifice we are expected to accept in exchange for the inherently false security of having such weapons or procuring electric power.  The entire rationale for nuclear weapons had been based on a series of fictions created in the 1950’s to get the public to accept the idea of leaving in an age of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons were sold to the American people after the fact. After Japan surrendered Americans were told that the power of the atom offered not only protection from the Soviets but the promise of a utopian world with cheap nuclear power that our old Atomic Energy Commission promised would be “too cheap to meter.”  We in turn encouraged Britain and France to join the nuclear club with the Soviets and United States. Once that club was formed the United States began a crusade for the world turning to nuclear power. We sold the public the idea that that nuclear weapons and nuclear power and are distinct and separate. In fact, the nuclear industry was just as much a government creation as the weapons.

Political and economic forces have resulted in major nations expanding the nuclear weapons club through covert transfer of nuclear technology — as the United States did with Israel. Third state financing of nuclear weapons design and production was used by Saudi Arabia to assist Pakistan to create what A.Q. Khan called “the first Islamic Bomb.”  The Pakistan government then proliferated to North Korea and Libya. As President Kennedy said once the genie of nuclear weapons is out of the bottle there is no going back. My own country not only deliberately ignored Israel’s proliferation to South Africa and India but encouraged it. The expansion of the nuclear club also meant the vast expansion of a deadly nuclear waste stream that none of the club members has ever successfully.

Huge government entities, often dominated by even bigger corporate interests, dictate the illusion that nuclear power is different than the nuclear weapons establishment. One cannot exist without the other. With government backing nuclear power is a money losing pipedream and always has been. The nuclear industries in America, Japan, France and Britain are nothing but corporate welfare programs. Unproven technology liked Mixed Oxide Fuel — or MOX — are sold by politicians before they are scientifically proven and entire non-proliferation efforts are based on such technological fiction. For example, at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, sits a giant white elephant that will never produce nuclear fuel and has cost American taxpayers tens of billions. Only the French and American contractors have profited from yet another nuclear disaster.

Even the Nobel Peace Laureate, President Barach Obama, has given in to those that believe nuclear weapons and nuclear fission are the ultimate statements of national power. In his nearly eight years in office he has given many billions to the American agency most responsible for protecting the institution of nuclear weapons, the National Nuclear Security Administration. In the process of doing that he has helped sell the idea that this same agency within the American Department of Energy can actually clean-up the massive contamination of high level nuclear weapons manufacturing that exists around the world today.  No government, including that of the United States, has that capability. It does not exist. This is an empty political promise. The Russians have not done any better, neither have the French, the British, nor the Japanese.

We face not just the prospect of nuclear proliferation through poor security and theft, but the possibility that a terrorist attack on a high level nuclear waste facility or weapons grade storage facility will be successful. Our responsibility is to safeguard the nuclear weapons production legacy because it cannot be cleaned up. It can only be segregated as we wait out the thousands of years it will take for these stockpiles of death to fade away. We can only pray we are up to the task.