Bush feared al-Qaeda may use Pak nukes to attack US

Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 21, 2002
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?artid=28864189&sType=1

Based on US intelligence reports, President Bush believed that al-Qaeda operatives were planning a crude nuclear attack on Washington last October-November after obtaining radioactive material from Pakistan, a new book on the war on terrorism has revealed.

"We began to get serious indications that nuclear plans, material and know-how were being moved out of Pakistan," President Bush tells Washington Post Managing Editor Bob Woodward in his latest book Bush at War that hit the book stores on Wednesday. "It was the vibrations coming out of everybody reviewing the evidence."

The evidence of a radiological attack was presented to Bush at an intelligence briefing on October 29 last year under the Top Secret/Codeword Threat Matrix, when all kinds of signals gathered by the US suggested an imminent follow-up to 9/11.

Some of the intercepts revealed discussion of a radiological device- the use of conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material. Other intercepted discussions mentioned "making lots of people sick." Some said that good news would be coming, perhaps within a week, or that the good news would be bigger and better than September 11.

In spite of the threat, Woodward says Bush refused to move out of Washington. "Those b******* are going to find me exactly here," the US President is quoted as saying. "And if they get me, they are going to get me right here."

In the face of Bush’s vehemence, it is vice-president Dick Cheney who decides to move to a "secure, undisclosed location," to avert a leadership vacuum. "This isn’t about you," Cheney tells the President. "This is about our Constitution."

Bush later explains his stand to Woodward, who interviewed him for nearly two and half hours (besides talking to many other US officials) in writing a riveting book that is the talk of Washington.

"Had the President decided he too is going," Bush recalls, "you would have had the vice-president going one direction and the president going another, people are going to say, ‘What about me?’ I wasn’t going to leave. I guess I could have, but I wasn’t."

However, despite openly expressing doubts about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, Bush later allays Pakistan military leader Pervez Musharraf’s fears that the US is going to take out that country’s nuclear weapons with help from Israel.

Woodward writes that at a meeting with Bush on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Musharraf brought up an article in the New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, saying such a plan is in the works.

"Seymour Hersh is a liar," Bush replies.

Musharraf also expresses his deep fear that the United States would in the end abandon Pakistan, and that other interests would crowd out the war on terrorism.

"Bush fixed his gaze," Woodward writes, and quotes him as saying to Musharraf, " ‘Tell the Pakistani people that the President of the United States looked you in the eye and told you we wouldn’t do that.’"

However, top Bush administration officials press-ganged Pakistan’s military ruler into falling in line with Washington’s war on terrorism with strong-arm methods that did not brook any defiance or denial, the book reveals.

The book, formally released on Tuesday to wide advance acclaim, describes in great detail how the US cracked the whip to get Islamabad to fall in line at a time when Pakistan was a pariah country because of its support for Taliban, and insisted on backing the fundamentalist regime even after the 9/11 incidents.

In doing so, Washington appears to have conformed to the often cited American foreign policy dictum about tyrants and despots who serve its purpose: He’s a SOB but he is OUR SOB.

It was Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage who put Musharraf on notice by conveying Bush’s "either you are with us or against us" policy, which Woodward says was arrived at by the President without consulting his cabinet colleagues or their departments.

The sequence of events related by Woodward suggests the Pakistani General had little choice but to fall in line, so wrathful was Washington’s mood in the days immediately following 9/11.

Woodward borrows from baseball lexicon to describe Powell’s tactic to soften up Musharraf. "Powell had in mind a pitcher’s brushback pitch to a particularly dangerous batter," he says. "High, fast, and hard to the head."

In cricketing terms, it would be a beamer or bouncer that bends back into the batsman.

Woodward says in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Powell decided that Pakistan was bound to be the linchpin if the US was to take on the al-Qaeda on its turf. He and his deputy Richard Armitage then draw up a list of seven demands from Pakistan.

• Stop al-Qaeda operatives at your border, intercept arms shipments through Pakistan and end ALL logistical support for Bin Laden

• Blanket overflight and landing rights

• Access to Pakistan, naval bases, air bases and borders

• Immediate intelligence and immigration information

• Condemn the September 11 attacks and "curb all domestic expression of support for terrorism against the

United States, its friends and allies

• Cut off all shipments of fuel to the Taliban and stop Pakistani volunteers from going into Afghanistan to join the Taliban

• Break diplomatic relations with the Taliban and assist us to destroy Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network

"In so many words," says Woodward, "Powell and Armitage would be asking Pakistan to help destroy what its intelligence service had helped create and maintain: The Taliban."

Ironically, the bearer of this bad news for Musharraf would be his intelligence supremo Gen Mahmoud Ahmed. By sheer coincidence, the ISI chief was visiting Washington at the time of the 9/11 attacks and was called into to the CIA headquarters.

In a meeting with CIA Director George Tenet and his deputies, Ahmed defends Taliban leader Mullah Omar, saying he is a religious man, "a man of humanitarian instincts, not a man of violence, but one who had suffered greatly under the Afghan warlords."

"Stop!" Tenet’s Deputy Jim Pavitt says. "Spare me. Does Mullah Omar want the United States military to unleash its force against the Taliban? Do you want that to happen? Will you go and ask him?"

Later, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage invites Mahmoud to the State Department to crank up the heat. He begins by saying it is not yet clear what the US would ask of Pakistan, but the requests would force "deep introspection."

"Pakistan faces a stark choice, either it is with us or it is not. This is a black and white with no gray," Armitage tells him.

Mahmoud, sounding utterly defensive, says his country had faced tough choices in the past but "Pakistan was not a big or might power." Pakistan is an important country, Armitage cuts in. Mahmoud returns to the past.

"The future begins today," Armitage says. "Pass the word to General Musharraf – with us or against us."
After his deputy has softened up Musharraf through his emissary, Secretary of State Powell calls him up in

Islamabad. "As one general to another we need someone on our flank fighting with us," he says, and then adds meaningfully. "Speaking candidly, the American people would not understand if Pakistan was not in this fight with the United States."

To Powell's surprise, says Woodward, Musharraf promises to support the US with each of the seven actions.

An elated Powell then conveys his achievement at a National Security Council meeting in the White House Situation Room, saying "I’d like to tell you what we told the Pakistanis today," before loudly and proudly reading out the seven demands. When he finishes, he tells the meeting that Musharraf has already accepted them.

"It looks like you got it all," Bush says. Others in the room ask for a copy of the US charter of demands.

Woodward’s book also indicates that the US and Indian intelligence agencies work closely and exchange information.

At one point during the critical days after 9/11, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card draws Bush aside in the precincts of the Presidential mansion and warns him of another threat to the White House.

The information, which the US deems as credible, had been sent to the CIA from the Indian intelligence service that Pakistani jihadists were planning an imminent attack on the White House. Woodward says the threat was consistent with other intelligence that established immediate danger. The Indian intelligence, he says, was well wired into Pakistan.

Woodward’s narrative also reveals that the Bush administration was constantly seized of the effect a collapse in Afghanistan would have on Pakistan, Pakistan’s own instability, and its tensions with India, and the need to be sensitive to India’s concerns. At one point in a cabinet meeting, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says "We’ve got to avoid the image of a shift to Pakistan."

Secretary of State Colin Powell agrees, saying, "Whenever we talk about the Paks, we have to talk about the
Indians as well."