Hersh claims US nuke team already in Islamabad

By Muhammad Saleh Zaafir

ISLAMABAD: Pulitzer prize winning American journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed that an elite US special forces squad which operates covertly and includes terrorism and non-proliferation experts from the US intelligence community — the Pentagon, the FBI, and the DOE — is already present in Pakistan and could well be housed in the US embassy in Islamabad.

The startling disclosure was made in Hersh’s candid interview with Pakistan’s most popular TV channel Geo News’ widely viewed current affairs programme ‘Meray Mutabiq’, hosted by Dr Shahid Masood. The programme was aired on Saturday late evening.

Seymour Hersh said that the Americans had been constituting such crack teams for various purposes and the team in question here was to deal with any eventuality including any fear of takeover by Taliban or any other ‘development’ with regard to Pakistani nukes.

Group Editor of The News Shaheen Sehbai taking part in the programme expressed the view that Musharraf’s remarks about President Asif Zardari, as attributed by Hersh, could not be casually ignored. He said it must be investigated why Musharraf accused Zardari of not being a patriot, because, according to Sehbai, Hersh had some inside information given to him in interviews with Musharraf and Zardari which he did not reveal in his report. But Sehbai said journalists always attribute information given to them by responsible people to “reliable sources” if these people ask them to refrain from quoting them directly.

Former Director General, Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, Lt Gen Hamid Gul also participating in the programme, verified the credentials of Hersh and gave a detailed account of US presence in the sensitive areas in Pakistan. He opined that the US wanted to delegate the role of proxy super power of the region to India and for that Pakistan had to be denuclearised.

Former Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad Khan expressed his apprehensions about the alleged activities but he ruled out any possibility of the US team being in a position to gain access to Pakistan’s nuclear facilities.

The programme (to be telecast again at 2:05pm today - Sunday), host Dr Shahid Masood had raised the question about the action that the team/squad could take in any eventuality. He referred to previous reports of Hersh which appeared in New Yorker magazine last week in which Hersh disclosed that after the US authorities received a report by their embassy in Islamabad indicating that a Pakistani nuclear component had gone astray, a highly classified US military and civil-emergency response team was put on alert. The team which operates clandestinely is reportedly under standing orders to deploy from Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland (Washington), within four hours of an alert.

When the report turned out to be a false alarm, the mission was aborted but by the time the team got the message, it was already in Dubai while on its way to Pakistan. Hersh quoted a consultant of the US Defence Department in his write-up and later he discussed the role of the US embassy in ‘Meray Mutabiq’ last week, which was hosted by Dr Shahid Masood and participated by Group Editor The News Shaheen Sehbai.

It was the maiden interview of the US investigative journalist in the wake of his thrilling write-up about the US plans towards Pakistan’s nuclear programme and the controversial observations of former President Musharraf regarding his successor. Seymour Hersh while standing by his report, pertaining to the comments offered by former President General (R) Pervez Musharraf about incumbent President Asif Zardari, has disclosed that the former president had given some harsher comments about his successor but in the ultimate scrutiny he allowed the remarks that he made part of his article.

General Hamid Gul disclosed in his talk with Dr Shahid Masood that former president General Pervez Musharraf allowed the US planes to land in Pakistan to pick Osama bin Laden about whom they had an inkling that he was present in a remote village of Balochistan. He said that when Hersh visited him to verify the veracity of the information, “I requested him to publish the story and he obliged. I was of the opinion that the Americans want to get in Pakistan under the pretext of the story that had yet to appear and it could open the way for future US incursions,” the General added.

US given a ‘computer look’: Hersh

WASHINGTON: The United States sought ‘some control, some insight’ into Pakistan’s nuclear command and control system as a means to encourage India to reduce troops at the eastern border, journalist Seymour Hersh told Dawn.

In an interview in Washington, Mr Hersh said that such an arrangement was needed to allow Islamabad to focus on the fight against the extremists along the Afghan border.

In his article in The New Yorker magazine, Mr Hersh claimed that the United States had a covert team ready to fly into Pakistan at a moment’s notice and defend nuclear installations from possible militant attacks.

Mr Hersh’s claims caused an angry reaction in Islamabad where Pakistani officials and the US Ambassador, Anne Patterson, rejected his report as ‘false and baseless’.

Mr Hersh also wrote that he had evidence the US administration had been working on ‘highly sensitive understandings’ with Pakistan’s military that would let the US military provide ‘added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis’.

Mr Hersh claimed that a ‘highly classified’ emergency response team had already been activated within the past few months in response to a report that a Pakistani nuclear component had ‘gone astray’.

He pointed out that a good look at the US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen’s recent testimonies at Congress showed that the US and Pakistan had had three years of contacts on this issue.

‘We were given access, a computer look. I am not saying Americans were running around with cameras and were checking out things with their eyes.’

Mr Hersh claimed that this computer access was given in March or April, after the Obama administration finalised its Af-Pak policy.

The policy required Pakistan to deploy more troops at the Afghan border to go after the Taliban.

The Americans, he said, wanted the Indians to pull away first, so that Pakistan could focus on the Afghan border. ‘The Indians said, no. We have 80 nuke weapons pointed at us, we cannot pull back.’

The Americans thought they could encourage the Indians to do so if somehow they had ‘some control or insight into Pakistan’s nuclear command and control system,’ Mr Hersh said.

‘The idea is to reassure the Indians that we are in a position to prevent someone from doing something crazy,’ he said. ‘If the Indians are satisfied, it will allow Pakistan to focus on the Afghan border.’

To enable the Indians to reach that point of comfort, the Americans needed to ‘reassure India that nothing crazy will not happen. After all only target of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons is India, not America,’ said Mr Hersh.

The new arrangement would also allow Pakistani military commanders to ‘call us if they are worried about the loyalty of some their troops’ deployed at the nuclear installations, he said.

The Americans also told the Pakistani commanders that ‘if a group of crazies gets hold of a warhead, you can call us’.

Mr Hersh admitted that from the American point of view, it would be better if Pakistan had no nuclear bombs, but this arrangement was not about disarming Pakistan.

Mr Hersh rejected the suggestion that he was anti-Pakistan and that’s why he was writing such articles.

‘I am not anti-Pakistan. There’s a difference between policy and people. The Pakistanis are unhappy with American policies. American people are always welcomed in Pakistan.’

Asked about his claim that a Pakistani nuclear component had recently ‘gone astray’, Mr Hersh said he heard ‘about something going missing, a loose nuke, a trigger missing’.

He said there’s a special US team which provided guidance to the US ambassador in Islamabad and used a highly classified code. ‘But they are no shooters. They just provide guidance.’

Mr Hersh said he met President Asif Ali Zardari twice while he was in Islamabad working on his article, ‘once for a background talk, then at a dinner. Both meetings took place at the presidential palace in Islamabad’.

At the dinner, ‘we talked about a lot of stuff’, he said. ‘Did he confirm your findings on Pakistan’s nuclear installations?’ he was asked.

‘Obviously, at some point I discussed exactly what I was doing and what I learned. He said what he said. We have to please the big brother.’

‘But the government later rejected your story as baseless?’ ‘I understand that a story like this gets denied,’ said Mr Hersh.

The journalist, who also interviewed Gen Pervez Musharraf for the article, said he believed the former Pakistani president was ‘a disarming fellow, very direct. I liked him, liked him a lot. He is a very likeable man, straightforward. More than I thought’.

‘Did Mr Musharraf say he allowed Washington access to Pakistan’s nuclear installations?’ ‘I wrote what I wrote. Are the words that came out are the words I meant? Yes, of course.’