* speaking of the usual suspects, meanwhile:
"A senior Pakistani official said that the US continued to press Islamabad for more information on Mr Khan’s network, "but we have told them in no uncertain terms that he is off-limits".and let's not forget this:
He insisted that Pakistan had shared all it knew with the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as putting questions to Mr Khan on behalf of US investigators. Pakistan should be trusted with the investigation and anything else would be violation of national sovereignty, he added.
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But Washington believes the Khan network may still be active. The US Congress has been told how Swiss police recently foiled a plot to ship 60 tons of specialised aluminum tubes — used for building parts of a centrifuge cascade to enrich uranium — through Europe to Pakistan.
According to Andrew Koch, a defence expert, this involved using a middleman in Britain who was not previously known to be a Khan associate. The tubes, which he said could have ultimately been sent to Khan network customers, were eventually seized in the UAE by government authorities."
"Over the past year Swiss officials have requested at least four times that the Bush administration share documents and evidence related to Khan's nuclear black market. But the United States has never responded.
Swiss officials maintain it needs U.S. assistance in order to convict three Swiss men accused of helping AQ Khan set up a secret Malaysian factory to make components for gas centrifuges.
Last week U.S. weapons expert David Albright testified before Congress and said, "I find this lack of cooperation frankly embarrassing to the United States and to those of us who believe that the United States should take the lead in bringing members of the Khan network to justice for arming our enemies with nuclear weapons.""
8 comments:
A senior Pakistani official said that the US continued to press Islamabad for more information on Mr Khan’s network...
Or is the US continuing to plant stories about their repeated efforts to get more information about the Khan network?
Reminds me of Al Qaeda prosecutions in Germany. US officials wouldn't cooperate by providing witnesses to testify. Isn't that strange (he writes with a tinge of sarcasm)? Why wouldn't the US government want all the successful prosecutions they could get for 9/11 perpetrators?
I would confidently state that the same US officials involved in preventing Al Qaeda operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from testifying in trials are preventing more aggresive investigations into the Khan network's activities.
Really went on a limb there huh? :)
noise - lol. careful you dont fall off!
i agree that the americans are suspiciously uninterested in understanding the khan network...
Lukery,
I know the Andrew Koch quoted in this article, though I'm not sure if he remembers me or not, since its been 10 years since we knew each other. Whilst getting my Masters at Monterey Inst. of International Studies, Mr. Koch and I were interested in the same Venezuelan translator (this was well before I met my wife! )
It does not say in this article who Koch works for. He used to work for the Center for Defense Information, but that was a while back.
miguel - interesting!
i suspect that you weren't the first or last to be interested in a venezuelan woman
and i can *guarantee* you werent the last to be interested in translators. i have a particular fascination of my own :-)
can we learn anything from mr koch? do you want to try to track him down? or will i?
I will try and track him down. He went to George Washington University for his Masters (which is where I believe Sibel got hers, though at a later date) and interned in the State Department, so I would not be surprised if he knows someone like Grossman.
If I remember correctly, he did not like Republicans very much. On the other hand, if he has friends at State, he might be protective of "certain foreign relations". Anyway, it doesn't hurt to ask.
One last point. This translator from Venezuela was brilliant; very highly intelligent girl. Which is one reason I have more of an appreciation for the analytical ability of translators than the average person, which, in turn is why I think Sibel's ability to parse and understand what she was translating was far greater than people give her credit for.
Translators probably know more about what is going on in the FBI than the agents do.
Luke, interesting I found this link where Andrew recently testified with David Allbright before a house committee on Nonproliferation and International Terrorism (his name, though spelled Koch is pronounced "coke")
http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/109/itn052506.htm
It does not appear that he is affiliated with any organization now. I am not sure if he is in the DC area, but perhaps we could look him up in the White Pages.
"one reason I have more of an appreciation for the analytical ability of translators than the average person, which, in turn is why I think Sibel's ability to parse and understand what she was translating"
i hope to be able to add more to this conversation soon
this too: "Translators probably know more about what is going on in the FBI than the agents do."
(his name, though spelled Koch is pronounced "coke")
Ummm... any relation to these Kochs?
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