Did U.S. Intelligence Fail On Islamabads Nuclear Proliferation Too?
By Andrew Tully U.S. concern about Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons was heightened after the terrorist attacks in America on 11 September 2001. Shortly afterward, President George W. Bush even sent his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to Islamabad to make certain that Pakistan was keeping its weapons secure. At that time Rumsfeld concluded that the program was safe. But now the founder of Pakistan’s atomic-bomb program has admitted sharing nuclear-weapons secrets with Iran, North Korea, and Libya. RFE/RL spoke with military and intelligence experts about how such a proliferation could escape the scrutiny of both the Pakistani authorities and the United States. Washington, 3 February 2004 (RFE/RL) — Rumsfeld did not wait until he returned to Washington to reassure the world that Pakistan’s government took its nuclear weapons seriously and was not about to use them without good reason — or share them. Speaking with reporters in New Delhi, India’s capital, nearly two months a
