Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Abdul Qadeer Khan	Abdul Qadeer Khan	Khan Research Labratories	India-Pakistan				20040225
	Abdul Qadeer Khan	Khan Research Labs	Afghanistan/South Asia				20050825
	Abdul Qadeer Khan	Khan Research Laboratory	India-Pakistan				20040205
	Abdul Qadeer Khan	Khan Research Laboratories	India-Pakistan	Pakistani	Arrested	Big Shot	20031211
		Father of Pakistan's nuclear program, midwife to several other countries'.
	Abdul Qadeer Khan	Kahuta Research Laboratories	Afghanistan/South Asia				20040411
Hashim Qadeer Khan	Hashim Qadeer Khan	Al-Qaeda	Afghanistan/South Asia				20050808

-Short Attention Span Theater-

CIA operative reveals mental disorder agency 'actively seeks to hire' because it makes for better spies

2025-01-23

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A former CIA operative has revealed the agency pursues people with a certain mental disorder as it makes them the best agents.

John Kiriakou, who had a 14-year career as a CIA officer, said the agency 'actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies,' but avoids individuals with a full-blown disorder.

A 'sociopath' is someone who lacks empathy, disregards the feelings of others and may manipulate or harm people without remorse, often for their own personal gain.

'Sociopaths are impossible to control,' said Kiriakou. 'They slip through the cracks because they have no conscience and they pass the polygraph very easily because they don't feel guilty.

Someone who has some of these qualities tend to rise to the highest levels of the CIA.

'People who have sociopathic tendencies do have a conscience but are still perfectly happy to work in moral legal and ethical gray areas,' said Kiriakou.

Kiriakou admitted that he falls into the category of having sociopathic tendencies, explaining how he was 'happy to break into people's houses and plant bugs.'

The former officer used the idea that he was part of the good guys and that his country needed him as a way to feed his sociopathic tendencies.

The CIA has admitted that spies have pathological personality features that help them with their espionage efforts, such as a sense of entitlement or a desire for power and control.

While employed by the CIA, Kiriakou was involved in critical counterterrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He was involved in the capture of terrorist Abu Zubaydah.

However, he refused to be trained in so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'

Kiriakou has claimed that he never authorized or engaged in these techniques.

After leaving the CIA, he appeared on ABC News where he said the CIA waterboarded detainees and labeled the action as torture.

The interview led to Kiriakou being arrested in 2012 and charged with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for allegedly illegally disclosing the identity of a covert officer.

He was also charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it, and one count of making false statements for allegedly lying to the Publications Review Board of the CIA in an unsuccessful attempt to trick the CIA into allowing him to include classified information in a book he was seeking to publish.

He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

'A CIA psychiatrist told me one time that the CIA looks to hire people with sociopathic tendencies–not sociopaths because sociopaths have no consciences,' said Kiriakou, speaking to The Real News Network.

When asked if he thinks that is what the CIA saw in him, he responded: 'I think they probably did.'

Kiriakou provided a question he was asked during the CIA hiring interview.

'They said, 'You know that Mr X has something in his house that you need, whether it’s a file or whatever. You need it. And you work on him to recruit him so that eventually he turns that file over to you.'

'But he’s not recruitable. And in the end, when you ask him for the file, he tells you, no. What do you do?'

'I said, I break into the house and take the file.' Seemed like a perfectly logical answer to me.'

The former CIA officer explained that because he believed he was part of the good guys, Mr X was surely a bad guy, such as a Russian scientist.

Another former CIA agent, Jim 'Mad Dog' Lawler, has echoed Kiriakou's remarks about sociopathic tendencies in the agency.

Lawler had a 25-year career with the agency as a nuclear weapons expert and spy.

He was a specialist in the recruitment of foreign spies, and he spent over half of his CIA career battling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

During his career, Lawler served as chief of the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Takedown Team, which resulted in the disruption a nuclear weapons network led by Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The network was active in the 1980s and 1990s and involved countries including Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

Lawler recently said the CIA wants people who are dangerously on the line or straddling the line of being a sociopath.

'A good friend of mine he was an operational psychologist at the CIA and he would review the criteria for hiring more folks like me and he wondered you know how much sociopathy are we dialing in to, he said while speaking on the Julian Dorey Podcast.

'What I did is rather sociopathic. I'm manipulating people. I'm exploiting people. I found out doing it against foreigners was as hell of a lot of fun.

'Its that sociopathic part where we enjoy breaking people's laws because that's what we do we break foreign countries laws. We are convincing people to become Traders.'

He also explained that he would do virtually anything that's legal to get people in foreign countries to be spies for the US.

Lawler admitted that he had only used his 'special skills' three times, including to avoid a traffic ticket and get an upgrade to first class on an airplane.

The former CIA officer shared that he is also extremely empathic, which is the complete opposite of a full-blown sociopath.

Link

India-Pakistan

ANF Recovers 1,750g Heroin, Arrests 6 Persons

2022-03-20

[NATIONPK] The Anti Narcotics Force (ANF) in its operations conducted in different areas on Saturday managed to recover over 1,750 grams heroin and 2,500 Xanax tablets besides netting six accused.

According to ANF Headquarters front man, ANF Rawalpindi and ANF Intelligence conducted an operation at an office of a courier company in Airport Housing Society, Rawalpindi and recovered 1750 grams heroin from a parcel booked for United Kingdom and arrested three accused namely Ismail, owner of the company, Nabeel and Raza Hussain. In another raid, ANF conducted an operation at entry gate of Islamabad International Airport and recovered 2500 Xanaz (Alprazolam tablets). The ANF also arrested three accused namely Abdul Qadeer Khan, Sanaullah and Adnan Khan. Qadeer Khan was going to Dammam via Dubai from Islamabad..

Link

Afghanistan

ISIS extracting Talc worth millions of Dollars from Nangarhar Mines: Report

2018-05-23

[Khaama Press] The Global Witness organization has reported that the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
of Iraq and Syria Khurasan (ISIS-K) is extracting Talc from the deposits/mines in eastern Nangarhar
The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country..
province of Afghanistan.

According to a new report by the Global Witness, citing unnamed sources, the group has brought in foreign engineers from Pakistain and Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
and installed heavy machinery at the mining sites in Nangarhar province.

The sources have also added that phones are banned and locals are searched and monitored by the groups near the mines.

The report also adds that the majority of talc extracted from Nangarhar mines are smuggled across to Pakistain at the Torkham border where it can eventually be shipped out to other markets.

Nick Donovan, a campaign director at Global Witness, has said "The vast majority of minerals from krazed killer-controlled mines in Nangarhar openly goes through government-held territory on the main roads to Pakistain."

"It is all but certain that individuals and companies in China, Europe

...also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
and the U.S. are effectively, if inadvertently, funding krazed killer groups," Donovan added.

Qadeer Khan Mutfi, a front man for the ministry of mines and petroleum of Afghanistan quoted in the report said the government has shut down at least a hundred illegal mines in the past year.

Link

India-Pakistan

Musharraf’s N-technology disclosure embarrassed Pakistan: Foreign Office

2017-08-15

[DAWN] The disclosure made by retired General

Pervez Perv Musharraf
... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ...
in his 2006 autobiography that Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan transferred sensitive nuclear material to North Korea had come as a big embarrassment to the country, an official of the Foreign Office said on Friday at a meeting of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.

The disclosure had forced the Foreign Office on the defensive and left it with no choice but to regurgitate the standard response that Pakistain was firmly against nuclear proliferation, the additional secretary said.

Foreign diplomats viewed the statement with scepticism and disbelief, he added.

The Foreign Office reply came in response to a question by Senator Farhatullah Babar as to what was North Korea’s official reaction to Pervez Musharraf’s revelation in his memoir, In the Line of Fire, that a clandestine proliferation network operating from Pakistain had transferred nearly two dozen centrifuge machines, a flow meter and some special oils to North Korea.

Link

India-Pakistan

Pakistan 'forced' scientist to trade secrets

2012-09-18

Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's renegade nuclear scientist, claims he was ordered to sell nuclear secrets by Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister.

Mrs Bhutto's allies have rubbished the claim but, if true, his revelations raise fresh questions about Pakistan's role in the spread of nuclear weapons and brings the threat of sanctions.

Dr Khan is known as the father of Pakistan's atom bomb but was also at the centre of a proliferation network that sold secret technology to rogue states around the world, including Libya and Iran. In 2004 he signed a confession claiming he acted without the consent of the government and was pardoned, an account he has now contradicted.

''The then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, summoned me and named the two countries which were to be assisted,'' Dr Khan said in an interview with the Jang media group, without naming the two nations. He said he had no option but to obey Mrs Bhutto, who was prime minister from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 to 1996. She died in a suicide attack in 2007.

''The prime minister would have certainly known about the role and co-operation of the two countries, mentioned by her, in our national interest,'' he claimed.

Dr Khan, 76, who was released from house arrest in 2009, remains a national hero for his role in helping develop a nuclear warhead, which was successfully tested in May 1998 - the first in the Islamic world.

The US has repeatedly asked to question him about his role in selling nuclear secrets but has been rebuffed.

He has admitted selling centrifuge technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He is also suspected of offering secrets to Iraq, as part of a covert operation that ran for about 10 years until 1999.

Members of Mrs Bhutto's political party and government officials all denied that she - or her government - was involved in nuclear proliferation and criticised Dr Khan for making allegations against a woman who could not defend herself. A government statement said the matter had been investigated.

''It had been clearly established that the proliferation activity was an individual act, and did not carry authorisation of any Pakistani government, at any stage,'' it said.

Link

Europe

Swiss charge three men in nuclear smuggling case

2011-12-14

[Pak Daily Times]

Three Swiss engineers - a father and his two sons - have been charged with breaking arms export laws by aiding a Pak-led nuclear smuggling ring that supplied Libya's atomic weapons programme, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The men's formal indictment follows almost a decade of politically-charged investigation that lifted the veil on one of the most successful international intelligence operations to stop nuclear proliferation to rogue states.

Urs Tinner, 46, his brother Marco, 43, and their father Friedrich, 74, are suspected of providing technology and know-how to the nuclear smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistain's nuclear weapons programme, the federal prosecutors office in Bern said in a statement.

"Based on the results of the inquiries, offences of forgery, money laundering and pornography - in the case of one person only - were investigated," prosecutors said. "The criminal proceedings were further expanded to include a fourth person suspected of offences against the War Material Act, although this person played only a subordinate role."

Prosecutors said the Tinners have agreed to request a shortened legal procedure that could ensure politically sensitive aspects of the investigation aren't discussed in court. The unidentified fourth defendant will be charged in separate legal proceedings with breaking Swiss arms exports laws, prosecutors said.

The Tinners, from eastern Switzerland,
...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, banking, and William Tell...
have been under investigation by Swiss authorities for almost a decade over their involvement in the Khan smuggling ring. Khan sold key equipment such as centrifuges for uranium enrichment to various countries until his operation was disrupted in 2003.

Urs Tinner, who was released on bail in December 2008 after almost five-year in investigative detention, claimed in a 2009 interview with Swiss TV station SF1 that he had tipped off US intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons programme. Their father had been earlier released in 2006, according to prosecutors.

Marco and Urs lodged a claim with the European Court of Human Rights over the lengthy period behind bars but the Strasbourg court ruled in April that their rights had not been violated.

The shipment was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

The CIA has declined to comment on the Tinner case. But the agency has said in the past that "the disruption of the AQ Khan network was a genuine intelligence success, one in which the CIA played a key role."

A book by US investigative news hounds Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, titled "The Nuclear Jihadist" and based on interviews with sources in the US intelligence community, backs Urs Tinner's claim that he was recruited by the CIA as early as 2000.

Swiss prosecutors said in their statement on Tuesday that the question of the Tinners' cooperation with the CIA remained unresolved, because the Swiss government denied a request to open a criminal investigation into the issue.

In 2007, the Swiss government ordered evidence in the case destroyed, citing national security concerns. The decision prompted outrage in Switzerland and accusations the government had acted under pressure from Washington.

Prosecutors said they were able to recover copies of some of the files, but others - including all electronic records - have been "definitively lost."

Link

Europe

3 Swiss to avoid trial in nuclear case

2011-11-14

[Dawn] Swiss prosecutors will opt to avoid a public trial for three Swiss men suspected of giving nuclear weapons technology and supplies to a rogue network in Pakistain, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The case is politically sensitive for Switzerland
...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell...
and the United States because of alleged national security implications, the men's alleged CIA ties, and repeated instances of evidence being destroyed. It involves charges of violating Swiss nonproliferation laws.

The Federal Prosecutors Office in Bern was quoted as saying it plans to use a shortened procedure to require a penalty but no trial if the nation's top criminal court doesn't object and the men plead guilty, the Zurich weekly newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported.

Bern prosecutors' office did not immediately respond to an News Agency that Dare Not be Named request for comment.

Urs Tinner, his brother Marco and their father Friedrich have been under investigation by Swiss authorities for almost a decade for supplying equipment and technical know-how to an international smuggling ring led by Pak scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Urs Tinner was released in December 2008 after almost five years in investigative detention without being charged.

As the creator of Pakistain's atomic bomb, Khan sold the centrifuges for secret nuclear weapons programs in countries that included Libya and Iran before his operation was disrupted in 2003.

A spokeswoman for the federal prosecutors, Walburga Bur, has previously told AP that a shortened procedure was possible under which the Swiss engineers admit the basic charges against them but face no more than five years imprisonment. Normally, anyone who breaks Swiss laws banning the export of nuclear material faces up to 10 years imprisonment.

Urs Tinner, who like his brother and father has been released on bail pending charges, claimed in an 2009 interview with Swiss TV station SF1 that he had worked with US intelligence. He said he had tipped off the CIA about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program.

The CIA has declined to comment on the case.

The shipment was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, which forced Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, and helped expose Khan's smuggling ring.

The case against the Tinners sparked a political outcry in Switzerland after it was revealed that the Swiss government repeatedly ordered evidence destroyed, allegedly under pressure from senior US officials.

The Swiss government cited national security concerns, but a parliamentary investigation found there had been no immediate danger to Switzerland's security.

A Swiss investigating magistrate, Andreas Mueller, who oversaw the last three years of a six-year federal probe against the Tinners, recommended last December that the government bring charges against the three men.

Mueller said his recommendation, contained in a confidential report to federal prosecutors, was based on an exhaustive probe. He said the Tinners had worked for the CIA since June 2003 and did not deny also working for the Khan network.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syria enlisted help of 'father' of Pakistan's atom bomb

2011-11-01

Syria enlisted the services of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist, in a covert programme to develop a nuclear weapon, it has been claimed.
United Nations investigators say they have identified a previously unknown complex in the far north-east of Syria that bears a striking resemblance to a uranium enrichment plant Mr Khan planned to build in Libya, officials were reported as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

Further bolstering long-held suspicions over the scientist's connections with Syria, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained correspondence between Mr Khan and a Syrian official proposing co-operation, the officials said.

The twin disclosures provide the most compelling evidence linking the "father" of Pakistan's atom bomb and Syria. They also appear to confirm that the Syrian regime followed two separate tracks in its attempts to develop a nuclear weapons programme.

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has always denied links with Mr Khan, whose nuclear black market is thought to have supplied blueprints and technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

The president insisted that the only communication he ever had came in a letter from Mr Khan in 2001 offering Syria help to build an atom bomb. Mr Assad said he rejected the proposal.

Link

China-Japan-Koreas

N. Korea 'Tapped Black Market for Nuke Development'

2011-09-06

North Korea, like Iran, may have dealt with black market suppliers to set up a uranium enrichment plant, a report from the UN nuclear agency claims.

According to the confidential report by the International Atomic Energy Agency made available to AP, the layout of equipment for the plant in Yongbyon is "broadly consistent" with designs sold by a "clandestine supply network" led by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The observation was made by American scientist Siegfried Hecker, who was invited to inspect the facility last year.

Gosh, how very unexpected, to be sure.

The report said the purchases were likely made before the Khan network was dismantled in 2003

As opposed to afterward. No time machines there, quite obviously.

and added it has information suggesting that the North bought other enrichment-related technology from the same black market network.

Link

India-Pakistan

Pakistan denies bribe from N.Korea for nuclear technology

2011-07-08

[Dawn] A Pak general strongly denied
No, no! Certainly not!
on Thursday a report that he took $3 million in cash in exchange for helping smuggle nuclear technology to

North Korea in the late 1990s, while the nation's foreign office called the story "preposterous."
Mahmoud! Bring my limo around! NOW!
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistain's nuclear bomb, had released a copy of a letter from a North Korean official dated 1998 detailing a $3 million payment to Pakistain's then-chief of army staff, General Jehangir Karamat.

"I was not in the loop for any kind of influence and I would have to be mad to sanction transfer of technology and for Dr Khan to listen to me," Karamat told Rooters in an email. The story, he said, is "totally false."

In addition to the payment to Karamat, the letter says former lieutenant general, Zulfiqar Khan, was given a half-million dollars and some jewellery. He also denied the accusation.

"I have not read the story," Khan told Rooters, "but of course it is wrong."

The Pakistain Army declined to comment. But Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua told news hounds at a weekly press briefing that "such stories have a habit of recurring and my only comment is that this is totally baseless and preposterous."
Still, kinda funny such stories have a habit of recurring, ain't it, Tehmina? Why do you think that is?
Despite Pak protests, Western intelligence officials said they believed the letter was authentic, the Post reported.

It appears to be signed by North Korean Workers Party Secretary Jon Byong, the newspaper said, and other details match classified information previously unrevealed to the public.

In exchange for the money, generals Karamat and Khan were to help Khan give documents on a nuclear program to North Korea, the Post said.

The newspaper said it was unable to independently verify the account.

Khan has admitted giving centrifuges and drawings that helped North Korea begin making a uranium-based bomb. It already has nuclear weapons made with plutonium.

Former military leader General

Pervez Perv Musharraf
... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ...
wrote in his memoir that Pakistain and North Korea were involved in government-to-government cash transfers for North Korean ballistic missile technology in the late 1990s, but he insisted there was no official policy of reverse transfer of nuclear technology to Pyongyang.

"I assured the world that the proliferation was a one-man act and that neither the government of Pakistain nor the army was involved," Musharraf wrote. "This was the truth, and I could speak forcefully."

Link

India-Pakistan

Pakistani nuclear chief says North Korea bribed officers for technology

2011-07-07

Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, released documents that he said proves that North Korean officials paid millions of dollars to top members of the Pakistani military establishment in exchange for nuclear technology.

One of the documents provided by Khan included a North Korean letter dated July 15, 1998, which reported that $3 million had been paid to Jehangir Karamat, then the chief of staff of the Pakistani army. The letter also stated that $500,000, as well as three "diamond and ruby sets," had been paid to Lt. Gen. Zulfiqar Khan. Both officials denounced the letter as a fake.

A senior U.S. official said that the signature on the letter appeared authentic, and that the account was consistent with the U.S. government's knowledge of events. The former IAEA official charged with investigating Khan said that he had also heard similar accounts of bribes paid by North Korea to Pakistani military officials.

Link

India-Pakistan

'We May Be Naive, But We Are Not Idiots'

2011-06-28

He built Pakistan's nuclear bomb and is accused of having sold his knowledge to Libya and Iran. Since 2004, Abdul Qadeer Khan has been under a state of house arrest. In an e-mail interview, he now explains why he accepted sole blame for the accusations at the time and points a finger at the Pakistani army

Link

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