Swiss Gov't and CIA destroy thousands of documents on nuclear bomb smuggling ring
Why destroy evidence that could help investigators find illicit nuclear arms dealers and their customers?
Or is this evidence the smoking gun that leads back to the smuggling of and sales of nukes and their technology that the brave and courageous Sibel Edmonds warned about and for which she got a "State Secrets" gag order slapped onto her?
What is Sibel's crime? Knowledge of the Truth about traitors within the American government selling out our country and truth behind the 9/11 cover-up, as Dave Lindroff points out in this story:
If a new article just published Saturday in the Times of London based upon information provided by US government whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, we have not only solid evidence of prior knowledge of 9-11 by high up US government officials, but evidence of treasonous activity by many of those same officials involving efforts to provide US nuclear secrets to America's enemies, even including Al Qaeda.
Do these documents lead back to Israel and Turkey, reportedly to be into the theft and sales of nuke technology?
In short, just what in the hell is going on here?
Do or rather, did these documents prove what Iran has been saying all along, that they are not interested in pursuing nuclear weapon technology?
And why do I get a sneaky suspicion that the blood-stained, money grubbing fingers of the world's Biggest "Dick", Cheney, that his fingerprints are all over this security breach?
While the Swiss government maintains the treasure trove of nuclear intelligence was destroyed for reasons of national security, the Americans may have been involved because Tinner is believed to have also been working for the CIA. Albright said Tinner was recruited by the American agency from 1999-2000.
"The Swiss were doing other people's dirty work," said an international official familiar with the investigation into the Khan network. "The allegation is that Urs was on the CIA payroll for a very large sum of money."
Olli Heinonen, deputy director general at the IAEA, has led the investigation into the Khan network for years. Last year his office sought and gained access to the Tinner files and some of his officials were also summoned to witness their destruction.
The Americans were also present, according to the international official. "The Americans were involved in the destruction. They were calling the shots," he said. The IAEA refused to comment publicly on the case. A former senior IAEA official said: "I am quite astonished. It's very unusual to see people destroying documents like this. They should be put somewhere very safe.
Nuclear bomb blueprints for sale on world black market, experts fear
May 31, 2008
Nuclear bomb blueprints and manuals on how to manufacture weapons-grade uranium for warheads are feared to be circulating on the international black market, according to investigators tracking the world's most infamous nuclear smuggling racket.
Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under US pressure, secretly destroyed tens of thousands of documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation.
The information was seized from the home and computers of Urs Tinner, a 43-year-old Swiss engineer who has been in custody for almost four years as a key suspect in the nuclear smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who in 2004 admitted leaking nuclear secrets and is under house arrest in Islamabad.
The Khan network trafficked nuclear materials, equipment and knowhow to at least three countries: Iran, Libya, and North Korea.
President Pascal Couchepin stunned his Swiss compatriots last week by announcing that the Tinner files, believed to number around 30,000 documents, had been shredded. The extraordinary move, prompting demands for a parliamentary inquiry, was warranted to prevent the documents "getting into the hands of a terrorist organisation or an unauthorised state", according to Couchepin.
However, there are widespread fears this has already happened or still could. "We know that copies were made," said Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on the illicit networks at the British-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). "Both US intelligence and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog] had been pursuing this with great urgency and diligence. But what happened to the other copies that [Tinner] made? It is worrisome that there are other plans floating around somewhere out there."
Testimony at the 2006 trial of another Khan network suspect in Germany alleged that Tinner told investigators he had nuclear bomb designs at his office in Switzerland. The blueprints were in digital form and are believed to have been copied on to the network's computers in Dubai, the hub for the Khan operation.
"It's amazing these people had so much information, incredibly sensitive stuff on nuclear weaponisation and gas centrifuges," said David Albright, a Washington-based former UN weapons inspector. "I'm sure the US got a copy. But who else got the documents? Can you believe these two, the brothers [Marco Tinner is also in custody] were the only ones who got the stuff?"
In his first interview since 2004 with the western media this week, Khan told the Guardian that the Swiss case proved that anyone seeking a nuclear bomb could easily obtain the wherewithal in the west.
He pledged he would never assist western or UN authorities and asserted that his "confession" of February 2004 was coerced by the Pakistani regime.
While the Swiss government maintains the treasure trove of nuclear intelligence was destroyed for reasons of national security, the Americans may have been involved because Tinner is believed to have also been working for the CIA. Albright said Tinner was recruited by the American agency from 1999-2000.
"The Swiss were doing other people's dirty work," said an international official familiar with the investigation into the Khan network. "The allegation is that Urs was on the CIA payroll for a very large sum of money."
Olli Heinonen, deputy director general at the IAEA, has led the investigation into the Khan network for years. Last year his office sought and gained access to the Tinner files and some of his officials were also summoned to witness their destruction.
The Americans were also present, according to the international official. "The Americans were involved in the destruction. They were calling the shots," he said. The IAEA refused to comment publicly on the case. A former senior IAEA official said: "I am quite astonished. It's very unusual to see people destroying documents like this. They should be put somewhere very safe.
"The real question is how many copies of these documents existed. If copies were made, where did they go. That's the main issue."
The documents unearthed in the Tinner investigation were so "explosive", said the government in Bern, that it was obliged to destroy them as a non-nuclear state that is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
President Couchepin said: "There were detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium as well as for guided missile delivery systems."
Had the evidence been presented in court, compromising and embarrassing information about the CIA's activities with the Khan network could have surfaced, say experts and officials.
However, destroying the evidence will jeopardise a successful prosecution of Tinner, whose brother, Marco, and father Friedrich have allegedly long been associated with the Khan network.
Friedrich Tinner's relationship with Khan goes back to the 1980s. He was also investigated for aiding Saddam Hussein's alleged nuclear bomb projects.
"The Swiss family headed by Friedrich Tinner was key to the Khan network for many years," wrote Fitzpatrick of the IISS in a study last year of the Khan network.
So.. the CIA was paying a group that gave away nuclear/uranium weaponization technology,
including the missles to deliver it!!
I'd bet that since the usa already had said technology, that the flow was TO pakistan, let alone north korea, china and whomever else had the money for armageddon.
But that's the plan, isn't it.