(Aug. 4) - Investigators examine the wreckage of a bus destroyed in a 2007 suicide attack at Pakistan's Sargodha air base, a suspected nuclear missile storage site. The United States is preparing for a potential operation to take control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons should they appear vulnerable, NBC reported (Arif Ali/Getty Images).
Relying on official congressional remarks, military documents and interviews with present and ex-U.S. officials, NBC News said this planning is taking place amid repeated statements by senior U.S. military officials that they have confidence in the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
"It's safe to assume that planning for the worst-case scenario regarding Pakistan nukes has [already] taken place inside the U.S. government," ex-White House Deputy Counterterrorism Director Roger Cressey said. "This issue remains one of the highest priorities of the U.S. intelligence community ... and the White House."
The specifics of the planning for any potential "snatch-and-grab" scenario, including if U.S. special forces would try to dismantle or eliminate the weapons, are a tightly held government secret, NBC reported.
A U.S. Congressional Research Service report last month concluded that terrorists would have the best chance of acquiring a Pakistani nuclear weapon following the collapse of the government in Islamabad.
The United States has worried about the security of the South Asian nation's atomic assets since before the September 11 attacks and has provided advice to Islamabad in the years since on best practices for protecting the arsenal, which is thought to number between 90 and 110 warheads.
Militants in 2007 and 2008 reportedly attempted assaults on three Pakistani installations that house nuclear-weapon storage and production facilities.
Fears about the ability of the Pakistani security establishment to guard its nuclear arsenal and materials increased following the early May U.S. Navy SEAL raid on al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's hideout in the town of Abbottabad. The Pakistani military was further humiliated this spring by a Taliban attack on a naval base in Karachi.
Current and ex-U.S. officials said that scenarios have been developed for responding to any major crises that could affect nuclear security in the South Asian state.
Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview with NBC that any U.S. move to steal his country's nuclear weapons would result in a "total confrontation by the whole nation against whoever comes in."
"These are assets which are the pride of Pakistan, assets which are dispersed and very secure in very secure places, guarded by a corps of 18,000 soldiers," the former general said.
Pakistani physicist and human rights activist Pervez Hoodboy, who typically disagrees with Musharraf, said a U.S. attempt to seize the nuclear weapons would backfire.
"They are said to be hidden in tunnels under mountains, in cities, as well as regular army force and army bases," Hoodboy said. "A U.S. snatch operation could trigger war; it should never be attempted."
"An American attack on Pakistan's nuclear production or storage sites would be extremely dangerous and counterproductive," the physicist said. "By comparison the bin Laden operation [into Abbottabad] involved only minor risks. Even if a single Pakistani nuke (out of roughly 100) escapes destruction, that last one could be unimaginably dangerous."
Princeton University Pakistan academic Zia Mian, though, was not unduly alarmed by the reported U.S. planning for such an effort, pointing out that the CIA and Defense Department frequently conduct advance preparations for theoretical operations.
"The U.S. exercised global nuclear wear. They've exercised attacking Iran. You've got to be ready," Mian said. "It suggests to me there are people whose job is to be worried. So when someone asks you, you say you're worried. But when you're reading the WikiLeaks disclosure, when you read the embassy talking points, the nuclear weapons barely figure."
In his 2009 book "Defusing Armageddon" intelligence scholar Jeffrey Richelson wrote that then-U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace five years ago outlined two kinds of situations -- "elimination operations" and "interdiction operations" -- by the United States to secure another nation’s nuclear weapons from terrorist acquisition.
Elimination activities were described in the U.S. military's National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction" as "operations systematically to locate, characterize, secure, disable and/or destroy a state or nonstate actor's WMD programs and related capabilities." Interdiction activities were described as locating and capturing nuclear material or systems after they have been taken from a state weapons depot but not yet handed over to extremists.
While the document and a similar PowerPoint report did not name Pakistan as the focus of the strategy, Richelson said it was evident that the emphasis was on the South Asian state.
"The focus on Pakistan is the result of its being both the least stable of the nine nuclear-weapon states and the one where there has been significant support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, not only among the general population but also within the military and intelligence forces," Richelson stated in his book.
While Islamabad in the last decade is estimated to have received roughly $100 million in U.S. aid for atomic safety and security, the Pakistani government has never allowed U.S. officials to tour its weapon depots or to check how the U.S.-provided security technology was operating.
Hoodboy noted that safeguards equipment cannot guarantee the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
"Ultimately it depends upon the men who have control over nuclear weapons. ... Governments come, governments go. But all nuclear matters are controlled by the army. The important question is whether the army has total, absolute control over its nukes. I have no idea whether this control is absolute, and doubt how anyone can know for sure" (Robert Windrem, NBC News, Aug. 23).
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