Libya inquiry uncovers nuke-parts 'supermarket'

By Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin
The Washington Post

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Libya's quest for atomic weapons was aided by a sophisticated nuclear black market that offered weapons designs, real-time technical advice and thousands of sensitive parts, some of them apparently manufactured in secret factories, according to diplomats and experts familiar with the investigation of Libya's weapons program.

The scale of the black-market operation — described by one expert as an "international supermarket" for nuclear parts — exceeds anything seen before, and it was undetected by Western intelligence agencies until recent months, the officials said. The same operation also is believed to have aided Iran, they said.

"A moral barrier has been breached," said one Europe-based diplomat familiar with the investigation. "Always, in the past, what we saw were single states, acting in their interests, looking to make nuclear weapons. Now we have atomic-bomb factories."

The smuggling enterprise supplied Libya with thousands of parts for gas centrifuges — machines that enrich uranium for nuclear weapons — and machine tools for making additional centrifuges, the sources said. It also provided Libya with designs for making a nuclear bomb, said officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Investigators said some centrifuge parts came from factories built expressly to manufacture nuclear components for the black market. U.S. and IAEA officials are investigating one possible manufacturing site in Malaysia with the help of that country's government, officials said. The site has been visited by U.S. officials in the past two weeks, the sources said.

The identities of the people behind the smuggling operation have not been revealed, but investigators said the centrifuges provided to Libya are of the same design as machines used in Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program. Senior Pakistani officials have concluded that at least two of the country's top nuclear scientists provided unauthorized technical assistance to Iran's nuclear-weapons program in the late 1980s.

Most of the technical assistance sent to Libya was aimed at helping it produce enriched uranium, which can be used in weapons or in nuclear power plants. But the discovery of bomb designs strongly indicates an intention to build weapons, the officials said. The IAEA said the designs had been turned over and would soon be removed from the country.

"The bomb designs have been placed under seal in Libya," said IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky.

Details about suppliers to Libya's clandestine nuclear program have emerged from a monthlong investigation by U.S., British and U.N. inspectors who have been given access to once-secret nuclear facilities in and near Tripoli. The visits were allowed in December after Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi said he would renounce weapons of mass destruction.

While Libya's overall nuclear progress was described as modest — most parts it obtained were still in boxes — the revelations about Libya's procurement network surprised nonproliferation officials in the U.S. and Europe.

"The fact that Libya could go out and buy an entire centrifuge plant without anyone detecting it is startling," said David Albright, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "It represents a failure of the export-control system and most certainly a failure of intelligence."

Much of the information about Libya's black-market suppliers came from interviews with Libyan scientists and physical inspections of crate after crate of nuclear parts. The interviews and inspections revealed nearly a decade of efforts by Libya to master the difficult arts of uranium enrichment and weapons design, with increasing assistance from outsiders.

In the late 1990s, Libya began purchasing components for a relatively simple gas centrifuge made mostly of aluminum. But after acquiring parts for about 100 machines, Libya's scientists decided to switch to a more sophisticated centrifuge design made of a high-strength metal called maraging steel, officials said. Both types of centrifuges were developed by Pakistani scientists in the 1970s and 1980s.

Officials said Libya had arranged to purchase 10,000 of the more-advanced centrifuges, enough to produce fuel for several bombs a year. Some crates examined by inspectors this month contained what officials described as ready-to-assemble "kits" for centrifuges.

"Everything you needed was there," one source said. "Someone had gathered the parts from all over and put them together. The boxes even had company nameplates and quality-control stamps."

Other boxes contained machines and precision tools Libya would need to build its own centrifuges, including lathes for metalworking, the officials said.

Libyan scientists told inspectors the parts came with a customer-support service: The scientists were given the names of contacts who provide technical assistance on any matter, at any time. "They could get answer to questions, not scientist-to-scientist but through an intermediary," Albright said.

Libyan authorities have indicated they are prepared to cooperate further, revealing their suppliers and delivery routes, said one U.S. official, who added: "They seem to have no issues or problems with this. They've seen the light. Having said that, it's trust but verify."

The Bush administration believes it has considerable leverage over Libya, which wants a return of U.S. oil companies and renewed investment in the North African desert nation.

The chance to learn more about the shadowy world of manufacturers, middlemen, shippers and couriers is one of the most tantalizing aspects of Gadhafi's turnaround.

One veteran analyst, commenting on the early phase of a debriefing process likely to last months or years, described Libya's revelations as the most remarkable he has seen in his 30 years of experience.

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