US ’79 memo: Let’s sell Pakistan F-16s and prevent nuclear proliferation

[Lankan Ranger]

US ’79 memo: Let’s sell Pakistan F-16s and prevent nuclear proliferation

18 December 1975

A Special National Intelligence

Estimate, Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Since 1972, the Pakistanis have been operating a natural uranium power reactor. We estimate that there could be as much as 200 kilograms of plutonium in irradiated fuel elements being stored in the site’s cooling ponds.

Pakistan plans to construct a small chemicals reprocessing facility with French assistance, but negotiations have locked over the issue of safeguards and no contract has yet been signed. The French are insisting on stringent conditions which include IAEA safeguards and a prohibition against re-transfer of material and against replication of the technology.

Strict adherence to these conditions would severely circumscribe the facilities value for a nuclear weapons program. We believe that the facility could be completed within two or three years after construction begins.

Assuming an early start, as well as completion of HE and weapons research and development (R&D) concurrent with construction of the reprocessing plant during this time period, the Pakistanis could develop a device as early as 1978.

5 December 1978

Monthly warning report: Nuclear Proliferation by National Intelligence Officer for Nuclear Proliferation

Pakistani Uranium Enrichment Acquisition: Pakistan’s efforts to acquire foreign equipment for a uranium enrichment plant now under construction have been more extensive and sophisticated than previously indicated. Despite the best efforts of nuclear supplier states to thwart these activities, Pakistan may succeed in acquiring the main missing components for a strategically significant gas centrifuge enrichment capability.

To the extent Indians learn about or suspect Pakistani progress toward a nuclear weapons capability, and there are signs of heightened concern, their aversion to intrusive safeguards on nuclear facilities and their interest in more nuclear weapons-oriented activities may be strengthened.

Libyan-Indian Nuclear Cooperation: Prime Minister Desai has reportedly promised Libya nuclear assistance, including training and technology transfer in certain previously proscribed fields, presumably reprocessing.

This unprecedented decision was apparently taken in response to an offer by Major Jallud (Libya’s number two man) of $1.5 billion for a number of Indian-manned projects in Libya, along with nuclear cooperation. During his visit to India in July, Jallud expressed his government’s concern with Israeli nuclear weapons capability.

While one leading Indian nuclear official seems to believe that the agreement, if fully implemented, could lead to a Libyan nuclear weapons capability, the precise terms of agreement are not known, may not yet be decided, but could be settled within the next few months.

June 1979

US Ambassador Robert Goheen’s report on conversation with pm morarji Desai In line with instructions, I met alone for 55 minutes this afternoon with Prime Minister Desai. The atmosphere was relaxed, even at times chatty, but I made no progress along any of the lines suggested in reftels...

The PM will not accept the idea of a joint non-development, non-use agreement with Pakistan. He said when they had suggested that he had told them that he had already made a unilateral pledge; if Pakistan did likewise, the two pledges would be as good as a joint statement.

When I said that governments change, and more formal agreements may have greater influence on future governments than unilateral pledge, he laughed, said that was not necessarily so, and added, “Look at you and Tarapur”. He could not bind a future government in any case but he hoped the course he had laid down would have influence.

 

[Lankan Ranger]

When I asked what then he proposed to do about the danger, not only to India but much more widely, should the Pakistanis develop an explosives capability, he said that he proposed to take Zia at his word for now. But if he discovered that Pakistan was ready to test a bomb or if it exploded one, he would act at on(c)e “to smash it”.

(“If” I take to be the Pak explosives capability”.) He said he had recently assured Pak fonsec (foreign secretary) that India had only good intentions toward Pakistan and wished to do nothing to cause it any difficulties, but also that “If Pakistan tries any tricks, we will smash you.” I gather that he went on to remind Shahnawaz of 1965 and 1971 in order to emphasize India’s readiness to react forcibly when sufficiently provoked.

March 5, 1979

A memorandum to the Secretary of State by state dept officials

We are urgently in need of a comprehensive strategy for Pakistan. We face two major issues: (1) an increasing requirement for security and stability in the South Asia region in which Pakistan is a key actor and (2) the need to deal with Pakìstan’s nuclear weapons program.

To deal alone and separately with the nuclear weapons problem is likely to push us into a punitive and restrictive policy toward Pakistan thus ignoring the major need also to enhance through assistance programs its security and stability. Similarly, ignoring Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions is likely to set off a nuclear arms competition with India rekindling its “explosives” program.

The key to our success will be in the quality of the stability and security package which we are prepared to offer. The most important item which we can provide is conventional armament to deal with deep security concerns regarding India, Afghanistan, Iran and Baluchistan.

We will have to make a hard decision, in the face of the collapse of Iran, that provision (for cash) of modern conventional weapons in Pakistan, such as the F-16, should take priority over the proliferation of a nuclear weapon there.

Iran’s shift would help with the arms ceiling problem and India’s acquisition of the Jaguar (ground attack aircraft) might reduce, but will not eliminate traditional Indian concerns with arming Pakistan. Some provision of American technicians to maintain the weapons for a reasonable period of time should also serve to reassure Zia of our continuing support.

In addition to the F-16s, we should consider favorably the provision of Cobra helicopters with TOM missiles, some sophisticated air defense and other modern weapons. FMS (foreign military sales) credit at about the $50 million level for FY 1980 and FY 1981 should be part of the military package.

In sum the package would include: a) willingness to sell for cash F-16s (2-3 squadrons - 36-48 aircraft) and other modern weapons (Cobra and TOW): b) $50 million in FMS credits; $30 million in immediate DA and ESF reprogramming, with $60 million in an ESF supplemental for FY80 and $100 million in FY81.

 

[Lankan Ranger]

29 June 1979

Note by Richard Lehman, National Intelligence Officer for Warning

I called attention to the potential dangers arising out of the Pakistani nuclear program. The more attention is called to it, the more alarmed the Indians will become. Given that they have fought two wars with Pakistan in the last 15 years and that the military balance is even more in their favor than before, they will be strongly motivated to prevent Pakistani acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability by military force.

24 July 1979

Memorandum from CIA director

Pakistan’s apprehensions about Indian intentions will rise as India’s intensified preparation for preemptive air strikes or nuclear arms competition become more perceptible.

Pakistan’s resistance to foreign pressure on its nuclear development plans will thus tend to harden, at least initially. While Pakistan’s leadership is almost certainly unwilling to transfer any nuclear explosives abroad, it could be tempted by possible offers of political and financial support from sympathisers in the Islamic world, particularly among the oil rich Arab states.

Indeed, it might already have been induced to share with unidentified foreigners some sensitive nuclear equipment and to propose terms for possible future nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Libya or Iraq.

US ’79 memo: Let’s sell Pakistan F-16s and prevent n-proliferation

 

[Kompromat]

And we got F-16s and Nukes both - isn't it called a Victory ?

 

[ajtr]

Botched calculations​

I read the recently declassified account of former US Ambassador Robert F. Goheen’s interview with Morarji Desai on June 7, 1979, as a person then involved with the Indian side of decision-making (‘US ’79 memo: Let’s sell Pakistan F-16s and prevent n-proliferation,’ IE, December 24). I wonder whether this was an input sought by the US national security establishment before the issue of the infamous national security presidential directive of July 3, 1979, authorising joint US-Pakistan operations in Afghanistan, which, in due course, triggered the Soviet intervention in December 1979. In retrospect, it would appear that the presidential directive instigated by national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski led to the biggest-ever setback to American national security. First, it led to the rise of jihadism, as a result of the combined strategy adopted by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This has recently been admitted by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It also resulted in the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Pakistan, which enabled Islamabad to develop the nuclear deterrent derivative of terrorism as an instrument of state policy, to be used not only against India but the US as well. The link between the CIA and Dr A.Q. Khan, even before he arrived with all his purloined documentation in Pakistan, has been exposed by the disclosures of Ruud Lubbers, the former Dutch prime minister. The fact is that in spite of his known record, not only was he allowed to move freely between China, Pakistan and Europe, but he was also rescued for the second time from Dutch authorities in 1986 by CIA intervention. That would indicate that the CIA had an interest in Khan throughout the period. The issue that has not so far been explored by American as well as Indian scholars of proliferation was, firstly, the connection between the CIA and Khan and, secondly, the US interest in permitting nuclear proliferation to Pakistan. Brzezinski has since come out with the disclosures that permissiveness of nuclear proliferation was the price to be paid to obtain Pakistani support for the anti-Soviet campaign. In 1982, in discussions between Alexander Haig, the US secretary of state, and the Pakistani team led by Agha Shahi and General K. M. Arif (referred to in General Arif’s book, Serving with Zia), Haig agreed that the Pakistani nuclear programme would not come in the way of US-Pakistan collaboration. The extensive proliferation activity by China to Pakistan during this period has been disclosed in Khan’s letters to his wife, when he feared that he was going to be proceeded against, copies of which have been made available by the correspondent Simon Henderson. Most of the information on Khan being set up with a Manhattan Project-type exclusive military programme under an engineering general, and data on the imports, were all available even in India at that time. The Indian Joint Intelligence Committee chaired by me concluded in January 1979 that Pakistan was on its way to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The intelligence-gathering effort at that time was ably headed by K. Santhanam as deputy director of R&AW. The JIC’s report was considered by the cabinet committee on political affairs in March 1979. During the course of the discussion, I was told by the then cabinet secretary, Nirmal Mukarji, that while Morarji Desai and Atal Bihari Vajpayee were against any immediate action, the other three cabinet members — H.M. Patel, Jagjivan Ram, and Charan Singh — were clearly in favour of initiating appropriate action. On the basis of the information given to me, I wrote out a manuscript minute, in my capacity as additional secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, that appropriate directions were issued to the chairman. Morarji Desai approved this minute and the cabinet secretary asked me to deliver it in person to Homi Sethna in Bombay, which I did. The meeting itself was attended by the five ministers, the cabinet secretary, the secretary to the prime minister, V. Shankar, and Sethna. All the other secretaries were kept out of the meeting. Therefore, there are unlikely to be any records on those events in the Cabinet Secretariat. Reflecting over those developments in hindsight, and with the wisdom and information of the last 30 years, I am left with a number of very puzzling questions on US policy and conduct. The enormous amount of material available on Chinese proliferation help to Pakistan has been referred to in the Santhanam’s deposition to the Kargil Review Committee. We have so far been speculating on Chinese proliferation to Pakistan. If we take into account the Cold War situation then, and the policies pursued by people like Carter and Reagan, it is today a legitimate issue to investigate whether A.Q. Khan and Pakistan were used by the US as a conduit to deliver centrifuge technology to China. Centrifuge technology was developed by Gernot Zippe, a German prisoner of war in Russian hands, in the 1950s. After his release, it was developed by the Germans and transmitted to Almelo where Khan was employed. Were the Americans interested in improvising and increasing the efficiency of the Chinese nuclear weapons programme as one of the countervailing elements in their Cold War against the Soviet Union? Just as they used Catholicism in Eastern Europe, Islam in Brzezinski’s “Arc of Crisis”, and the Star Wars programme to increase the burden on the Soviet Union, were they also trying to strengthen the Chinese nuclear programme vis-à-vis the Soviet Union by using Khan and Pakistan as conduits? It is to be recalled that there was–– major debate in the US establishment at that stage. Already by 1977, views emerged in sections of the CIA that the Soviet economy was declining and the Soviet Union was heading for a crisis. At that time, the deputy director of the CIA in charge of the Soviet Union was Robert Gates. This view was challenged by hardliners — including Brzezinski — who then set up a “Team B” which included people like Paul Wolfowitz, who came to a different conclusion: that the Soviet Union did constitute a very serious and major threat. The US has committed strategic blunders like mistaking Vietnamese nationalism as an extension of Chinese communism, not understanding the risks in the use of jihadism, and being permissive of Pakistani proliferation. Could there have been yet another major US blunder in trying to convey centrifuge technology to China using Pakistan and Khan? The US may have calculated that Pakistan and Khan would be under their effective control, just like these other previous miscalculations. This is an issue that needs to be pursued.

 

[SQ8]

according to a blog..
Nawaz sharif was prepared to hold off the 1998 tests..for about 72 "latest" F-16's as a start..with co-production at a factory at raiwind.
Followed by some 70 odd M1A2's..40 or so Cobra's...and Howitzers..

 

[somebozo]

The fact that Pakistan designed, planned and executed the world most organized and secretive profiltration network and gave an oar up the western intelligence buttocks.

In the end we got the nukes, the F-16 and everything in between. Win-Win for all except uncle SAM stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq chasing ghost of Osama and Saddam.

 

[sensenreason]

The fact that Pakistan designed, planned and executed the world most organized and secretive profiltration network and gave an oar up the western intelligence buttocks.

In the end we got the nukes, the F-16 and everything in between. Win-Win for all except uncle SAM stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq chasing ghost of Osama and Saddam.

Well done.If you havent read it correctly, the network was allowed to proliferate.Its anyone's guess what would have happened if US had decided to not allow nukes to Pakistan.Thats not to prejudge the outcome..but a statement of facts.

 

[JonAsad]

^^ Alright, did some one stop you? why it took you so long?