Swiss case against Pakistani nuclear smuggling ring could expose CIA role

When a Swiss Magistrate recommended bringing nuclear smuggling charges against Friedrich Tinner and his two sons Urs and Marco this week, he could have only guessed at the ripple effect that the case would have in two faraway countries – Pakistan and the United States. The Tinners, who are Swiss nationals, allegedly ran the most notorious nuclear smuggling ring in history – the shadowy web of disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

While Khan, who was released from house arrest in early 2009 despite confessing to illicit nuclear sales, is well known for smuggling nuclear products to states such as North Korea and Libya, what is likely to cause a stir in the United States is the fact that the Swiss case frustrates a “seven-year effort by the Central Intelligence Agency” to keep their own relationship with the Tinners secret.

According to reports in the American media, the Bush administration officials admitted that the Tinners not only worked for Khan but also secretly served as double agents for the CIA. In their latter capacity, the New York Times reported, the Tinners gave the U.S. spy agency information about Khan’s activities and helped the agency “introduce flaws into the equipment” sold by Khan to other countries.

Magistrate Andreas Müller, who held a news conference in Bern on Thursday to announce the charges, attacked the Swiss government for having “massively interfered in the wheels of justice by destroying almost all the evidence.”

While Mr. Müller criticised the government for ordering federal criminal police not to cooperate with him, what was left unsaid was that alleged CIA break-ins in Switzerland, and an “unexplained decision by the agency not to seize electronic copies of a number of nuclear bomb designs found on the computers of the Tinner family,” might also be exposed during the course of the forthcoming investigation.

According to the NYT,investigators from several countries said that one such blueprint “came from an early Chinese atomic bomb; two more advanced designs were from Pakistan’s program.”

Commenting on the murky involvement of the CIA and Swiss authorities, Mr. Müller said, “There are many parts. It is like a puzzle and if you put the puzzle together you get the whole picture.”

The possibility of official charges against the Tinners came even as a new book, “Fallout,” is on the verge of being released – a book that was said to describe “previously unknown details of the CIA’s secret relationship with the Tinners, which appears to have started around 2000.”

The book reportedly tells how the CIA agents sent the Tinners “coded instructions, spied on their family, tried to buy their silence and ultimately had the Bush administration press Switzerland to destroy evidence in an effort to keep the Tinners from being indicted and testifying in open court.”

In particular it is reported to describe how the Bush administration “grew so alarmed at possible disclosures of CIA links to the family that in 2006 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lobbied Swiss officials to drop their investigation.” Reports suggested that the next step would be for the Swiss Attorney General to decide whether to accept Mr. Müller's recommendations. The case continues.