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I, Dr. Iftikhar Khan Chaudhry, permit the U.S. government to disclose the contents of my asylum application with the appropriate British authorities and with Dr. Altaf Hussein in order to establish the veracity of my claimed identity, former employment, and my claimed contact with Dr. Hussein during January–May 1998.
It is my understanding that Dr. Hussein has left Pakistan and has applied for political asylum in the United Kingdom.
—Confidentiality Waiver to USCIS
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Recent news is very depressing. North Korea is provocatively running nuclear bomb tests while complaining that President Trump has declared war on them via Twitter. The U.S. president is threatening to decertify the multilateral treaty with Iran regarding its nuclear program and impose new sanctions on that country for failing to adhere to the spirit of that agreement. In both cases, the root of the problem goes back more than forty years and can be traced to a single man, a man whose name few Americans have ever heard.
In April 1974, the world had five official nuclear powers: the United States, the USSR, Britain, France, and China. That turned out to be an April Fool’s paradise, because a month later the club gained a new member when India detonated its first nuclear device. That was a big day for India, but a dark moment for Pakistan, India’s long-time antagonist in South Asia. President Ali Bhutto announced that Pakistanis would “eat grass, if necessary,” to develop a nuclear deterrent.
In the years since 1947, when the British holdings on the Indian sub-continent were divided into Hindu and Muslim nations, Pakistan and India have engaged in three major conflicts: in 1947 and 1965 over the state of Kashmir, and in 1971 when Indian forces intervened in a Pakistani civil war and East Pakistan became the independent Bangladesh, costing the Pakistani government nearly half of its former population. In the face of such defeats and humiliations, Pakistan began a nuclear project.
This clandestine effort continued for more than two decades and brought a Pakistani scientist, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, to prominence as the father of the Islamic bomb. Khan was ready to use fair means or foul to accomplish his goal. An early coup involved stealing the plans for a centrifuge, a device necessary to concentrate enriched uranium for nuclear reactors—or bombs. The 1980s saw several Pakistani efforts to create subcritical nuclear devices. But the djinni really came out of the bottle in 1998, after the Indian government went ahead with a set of five nuclear tests in quick succession. The Pakistanis responded with five nuclear explosions of their own, and a sixth for good measure, officially announcing the existence of an “Islamic bomb.”
This was a situation of grave concern for the international community, whose efforts were to limit, not encourage, nuclear proliferation. The sad fact of the matter was that Pakistan did not have the most stable government. Ali Bhutto had taken office after the failure of a military government. He was overthrown by a military coup and subsequently executed. His daughter, Benazir Bhutto, became prime minister after the death of a military dictator but lost the next election, which was rigged by the country’s intelligence service. She went into exile, and another military coup took place. When elections were allowed again, Bhutto returned to become prime minister, only to be assassinated by a suicide bomber. In its seventy year history, Pakistan has had three constitutions, which often have been suspended by the military. In fact, the military has governed for a good half of the country’s history.
Despite these many problems, Washington has cut Pakistan a lot of slack. Pakistan has been one of the few developing countries that has supported U.S. policies. During the Cold War, it was a bulwark against the expansion of Soviet influence in South Asia. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan was an important conduit for aid to the mujaheddin freedom fighters. When the mujaheddin morphed into the Taliban and U.S. troops went to fight in Afghanistan, Pakistan offered an important supply line for the war against terror. As an ally, however, Pakistan definitely had shortcomings. After al Qaeda was driven out of Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden hid out very comfortably in a compound in Pakistan.
After the 1998 nuclear tests, the Clinton administration established sanctions to punish the Pakistani government’s actions. With the arrival of a new administration in 2000, however, the sanctions and investigations into Pakistan’s nuclear program were halted. Then came 9/11, and the need to placate an important strategic partner in the war on terror eclipsed any lingering interest in checking out any wrongdoing. The highest levels of our government chose to turn a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear dealings, but that became impossible when a Pakistani defector arrived in the United States in May 1998—a man who claimed to work in Pakistan’s nuclear program. In Iftikhar Khan Chaudhry’s application for asylum, he revealed secrets about China’s role in developing Pakistan’s bomb and Iran’s payment of billions of dollars for Pakistani nuclear technology. He also raised the specter of a real nuclear nightmare.
A new, more nationalistic administration took over after the Indian elections in March 1998, and it was expected to take a harder line on the Kashmir problem. As Pakistan prepared its own nuclear arsenal, a top-level meeting was held in April among military leaders and members of the Pakistani atomic energy commission. Among the conferees was Chaudhry, a young physicist working for one of the chief researchers. Chaudhry had spent most of his life believing Pakistan needed nuclear weapons as a deterrent, a defensive weapon to maintain a balance of power. However, when representatives of Inter-Service Intelligence discussed the possibility that India would use atomic weapons on the disputed dividing line in Kashmir, he was horrified to hear plans for a first strike being debated that would use Pakistan’s new nukes to attack the Indian capital, creating huge civilian casualties.
Along with four other similar-minded colleagues, Chaudhry drafted a letter to his superior, begging restraint and warning that if the proposed attack remained unchanged, he and his cosigners would go public to try and save people from “such a huge atomic collision of two countries.” Perhaps some good came from this stand, and the attack did not take place. On a personal level, however, Chaudhry’s life blew up. His superior, Dr. Hussein, warned that “you could get killed if you reveal your political beliefs.” Pakistan’s bomb was important to the whole Islamic world, and his young assistant had put himself in considerable danger. This became increasingly clear in the following days.
Chaudhry was dismissed from his position, along with the others who’d signed the letter of protest, and had his assets frozen. He received a threatening phone call at his home from an agent of Inter-Services Intelligence and immediately went on the run. He had come to fear a nuclear showdown between India and Pakistan months earlier and had arranged for visas to take his family on a visit to Kenya. That plan was short-circuited when government agents kidnapped Chaudhry’s wife. He discovered this painful information in a phone conversation with his father’s family, when his four-year-old son reported that several men had searched his house, “looking for Papa,” and then “they took Mama.” He realized he’d have to flee alone. Through friends he was able to get a Canadian visa and was smuggled into the Islamabad airport, where he boarded a plane for Dubai, continuing on to Frankfurt, and then to Montreal. Chaudhry arrived in Canada on May 9, 1998. The Indian nuclear tests began on May 11.
Those tests represented one of the great failures of U.S. intelligence, coming as a complete surprise. The Indian government managed to hide its preparations from U.S. spy satellites by dressing its physicists in army uniforms to camouflage their visits, working at night, and carefully contouring excavations to make them look like wind-created sand dunes.
On May 22, Chaudhry set off on a train to New York City. The first Pakistani nuclear test was detonated on May 28. By June 15, Chaudhry had obtained legal representation, and on June 18 he approached the FBI. We went public with our request for asylum on July 1, giving a press conference in which Chaudhry revealed that he had seen paperwork about funding for nuclear experimentation coming from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. During tours of Pakistani nuclear sites, he had seen Chinese visitors in civilian clothes but with military demeanor on site, as well as visiting Iranian scientists apparently eager to learn about Pakistani progress toward a bomb.
The government of Pakistan was quick to dismiss Chaudhry’s credentials. The Pakistani UN ambassador claimed that Chaudhry was in fact a low-level nuclear engineer who had worked in Pakistan’s atomic program in the 1980s before disappearing. That would have meant that Chaudhry had been handling nukes while he was in high school. Government sources also described the defector as a disgruntled physics graduate student who refused to return home from abroad. The Pakistani foreign minister, Ayub Gohar Khan, described Chaudhry as “an impostor . . . well tutored in the recent past by an intelligence agency.” Then a businessman, Gulzar Sheikh, appeared on Pakistani television claiming that he recognized my client as an assistant accountant for a company making ceramic tiles and bathroom fixtures. That company made a statement shortly afterward saying that neither Sheikh nor Chaudhry had worked there.
Chaudhry simply stuck to his story as a variety of tales came out of Pakistan, each one a new attempt to discredit him. At the same time, considerable pressure was aimed at the Chaudhry family, who was told, “your son is leaking state secrets to the enemy.” Chaudhry’s father lost his job, was arrested, and was coerced into appearing on Pakistani television to help discredit his son. The day after our asylum request went public, Chaudhry’s wife was released, but she was raped by government agents before she left their custody.
In New York’s close-knit Pakistani community, Chaudhry was a pariah because of his opposition to what the Pakistani on the street considered a great step forward for their nation and for their religion. It was bad enough that crowds chanted for his death in his hometown, but the friend who had sheltered him in his apartment discovered a shocking voice mail message. “We will burn your house. We will kill Dr. Iftikhar Khan,” a voice announced in Urdu, the Pakistani language. “We will kill you all.”
It’s understandable that Chaudhry was under considerable stress when he was interviewed by a pair of visiting Pakistani researchers to establish his bona fides. The idea was to question his knowledge in his native tongue. Whatever the reason, his responses were not impressive during the phone interview. The Washington Post and the New York Times both ran damaging stories after this. The other four scientists who had signed the warning letter with him could not be found. They had apparently also fled Pakistan, finding refuge in Europe. Based on his own experiences, Chaudhry thought they were probably wise to keep their heads down.
Concern for his safety led Chaudhry to leave New York for Pennsylvania, where he was contacted by a person with Pakistani intelligence to try and arrange a “sit-down” with ISI agents. Chaudhry moved again, this time to Minnesota, where his prospects seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer. The U.S. government, initially interested in what he had to say, felt that they could develop better sources. In his homeland, yet another coup put a military government in place, with martial law. Chaudhry’s family warned him that they were under increased scrutiny. It seemed as though the new government was especially interested in cracking down on any security risks connected with the country’s nuclear program. His father warned that he could at least expect to be severely beaten if he returned home. Legally speaking, he could be prosecuted for divulging state secrets or for antistate activities, both charges punishable in a military court.
As time dragged on, Chaudhry remained in legal limbo, supporting himself by working in a convenience store. Our contact became more sporadic, and I could see his spirits were falling. As he put it in one email, “Life is getting terrible for me day by day.” He seemed to have no future in the United States, but what was his alternative? “Go back to Pakistan and spend the rest of my life in Pakistani military jails.” With the events of September 2001 and the heightened anti-Muslim feeling, he found his situation even more precarious. Lacking any legal documentation, he felt that any sort of travel had become dangerous.
Then came another blow to his hopes when his asylum claim was rejected early in 2002. According to the INS, “[you were] unable to satisfactorily establish your claimed identity as a highly placed nuclear scientist. Further it has been determined from a field investigation that several of the documents that you submitted in support of your claim appear to have been fraudulently produced. This includes the letters from your alleged former professor and medical doctor.”
His only hope was to go before an immigration judge, and a date was set for a court appearance in New York City. However, Chaudhry felt this was not a good idea both for financial and personal security reasons. After getting our help to draft a request for a change of venue to a nearby city, he ended his connection with us. This, I’m afraid, is a fairly common situation in the immigration field. Like old soldiers, clients have been known to fade away. In our last communication, Chaudhry seemed to be weighing his chances of getting immigration sponsorship in either Canada or Germany. I can only hope that he succeeded and remains safe.
This case raised more questions than answers. It may be easy—too easy—to shrug off Chaudhry as some sort of con man or fraud. But the fact remains that his passport lists him as working in the Pakistan Government Service. Although his grasp of physics seemed a little shaky, the factual information he gave the U.S. government was certainly more than an accountant in a toilet factory would know. He provided me with detailed diaries with very specific missile specifications and original documents, which were later authenticated. Years later investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer prize winner, investigated his credentials for a profile, authenticating his claims. As I said at the time, “to take on a government as he has, you’d have to be crazy unless the charges were real.”
Chaudhry certainly didn’t enjoy any great rewards from his defection, and his life remained precarious. The government spent years trying to discount the story he told, but subsequent events tended to support the facts he’d revealed. In 2003, Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, attempted to normalize relations with Western nations. Part of this effort involved revealing Libya’s secret attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon. It also brought Pakistan’s role in nuclear proliferation to light. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan hadn’t merely managed to build a bomb, he had pioneered the way for a country without a lot of high tech to outsource the creation of a nuclear weapon. Blueprints for bombs, blueprints for the centrifuges needed to concentrate the fissionable material, even tips for finding tech companies in countries such as Malaysia to do the necessary nuts-and-bolts work—all could be found in the Pakistani Bomb Bazaar.
Did Khan profit from these transactions? Undoubtedly. But this was no individual effort. Pakistan received shipments of oil from Iran in return for nuclear know-how. It received aid in developing long-range missiles from North Korea when Khan visited that country to help develop weapons-grade uranium. In 2004, Khan, the father of Pakistan’s A-bomb, made a tearful confession on national Pakistani television that he had embarrassed his homeland by selling nuclear knowledge and technology to North Korea, Libya, and Iran. The Pakistani government promptly pardoned him, although they placed him under house arrest for four years. Khan subsequently denied his confession.
As for Iftikhar Khan Chaudhry, I can only hope he’s in the wind somewhere.