A seven-year effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to hide its relationship with a Swiss family who once acted as moles inside the world’s most successful atomic black market hit a turning point on Thursday when a Swiss magistrate recommended charging the men with trafficking in technology and information for making nuclear arms.
The prospect of a prosecution, and a public trial,
threatens to expose some of the C.I.A.’s deepest secrets if defense lawyers try
to protect their clients by revealing how they operated on the agency’s behalf.
It could also tarnish what the Bush administration once hailed as a resounding
victory in breaking up the nuclear arms network by laying bare how much of it
remained intact.
“It’s like a puzzle,” Andreas Müller, the Swiss
magistrate, said at a news conference in Bern on Thursday. “If you put the
puzzle together you get the whole picture.”
The three men — Friedrich Tinner and his two
sons, Urs and Marco — helped run the atomic smuggling ring of A. Q. Khan, an
architect of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program, officials in several countries
have said. In return for millions of dollars, according to former Bush
administration officials, the Tinners secretly worked for the C.I.A. as well,
not only providing information about the Khan network’s manufacturing and sales
efforts, which stretched from Iran to Libya to North Korea, but also helping
the agency introduce flaws into the equipment sent to some of those countries.
The Bush administration went to extraordinary lengths to
protect the men from prosecution, even persuading Swiss authorities to destroy
equipment and information found on their computers and in their homes and
businesses — actions that may now imperil efforts to prosecute them.
While it has been clear since 2008 that the Tinners acted
as American spies, the announcement by the Swiss magistrate on Thursday,
recommending their prosecution for nuclear smuggling, is a turning point in the
investigation. A trial would bring to the fore a case that Pakistan has
insisted is closed. Prosecuting the case could also expose in court a tale of
C.I.A. break-ins in Switzerland, and of a still 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.
One of those blueprints came from an early Chinese atomic
bomb; two more advanced designs were from Pakistan’s program, investigators
from several countries have said.
Ultimately, copies of those blueprints were found around
the globe on the computers of members of the Khan network, leading
investigators to suspect that they made their way to Iran, North Korea and
perhaps other countries. In 2003, atomic investigators found one of the atomic
blueprints in Libya and brought it back to the United States for safekeeping.
Mr. Müller, the Swiss magistrate, investigated the Tinner
case for nearly two years. He said Thursday that his 174-page report
recommended that the three men face charges for “supporting the development of
atomic weapons” in violation of Swiss law.
They are accused of supplying Dr. Khan’s operation with
technology used to make centrifuges, the machines that purify uranium into fuel
for bombs and reactors. Dr. Khan then sold the centrifuges to Libya, Iran and
North Korea and perhaps other countries.
Mr. Müller’s recommendation comes as a new book describes
previously unknown details of the C.I.A.’s secret relationship with the
Tinners, which appears to have started around 2000.
The book, “Fallout,” by Catherine Collins and Douglas
Frantz, scheduled to be published next month, tells how the C.I.A. sent the men
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.
Ms. Collins is a freelance writer and investigator, and
her husband, Mr. Frantz, is a former investigations editor for The New York
Times and a former managing editor of The Los Angeles Times. He currently works
on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The C.I.A. has never commented on its relationship with
the Tinners. But the story has leaked out, in bits and pieces, after news
reports of Dr. Khan’s illicit atomic sales forced Pakistan’s government to expose
the atomic ring and place Dr. Khan under house arrest. But Pakistan never
allowed him to be interrogated by the C.I.A. or international nuclear
inspectors, perhaps out of fear that he would implicate other Pakistani senior
officials.
As a result, there has never been a full accounting of
his activities, few of his associates have been tried or jailed, and there are
strong indications that some of his suppliers are still operating.
But if the Pakistanis were worried about revelations
surrounding Dr. Khan and whom he might have worked with in the Pakistani
military and political hierarchy, the C.I.A. was worried about the Tinners.
The new book says the Bush administration grew so alarmed
at possible disclosures of C.I.A. links to the family that in 2006 Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice lobbied Swiss officials to drop their
investigation.
The book says the C.I.A. broke into a Tinner home in 2003
and found that the family possessed detailed blueprints for several types of
nuclear bombs.
Paula Weiss, a spokeswoman for the C.I.A., declined to
comment, and lawyers for the Tinners did not immediately respond to requests
for comment. The Tinners have said that they were not aware that the equipment
they supplied was intended for nuclear weapons projects.
Based on Swiss investigators’ findings, the book suggests
that the bomb designs may have spread to a half dozen outposts of Dr. Khan’s
empire around the globe — including Thailand, Malaysia and South Africa — and
sharply criticizes the C.I.A. for leaving those plans in the hands of people
suspected of being nuclear traffickers.
In late 2007, the Swiss government, under strong American
pressure, decided to drop legal proceedings on espionage charges against the
Tinners and other charges against a number of C.I.A. operatives who had
operated on Swiss soil in violation of the country’s laws.
In early 2008, the more limited investigation on
trafficking charges inched forward with great difficulty because the Swiss
government — again at the behest of United States officials — had destroyed an
enormous trove of computer files and other material documenting the business
dealings of the atomic family. That action led to an uproar in the Swiss
Parliament.
But in 2008 Swiss investigators discovered that 39 Tinner
files scheduled for destruction had been overlooked, giving the authorities
fresh insights into the ring’s operation — and new life for the legal case.
In his news conference on Thursday, Mr. Müller harshly
criticized the Swiss government for having “massively interfered in the wheels
of justice by destroying almost all the evidence.” He added that the government
had also ordered the federal criminal police not to cooperate with his
investigation.
If the Tinners are formally charged and their case goes
to trial in Switzerland, they face up to 10 years in prison if they are found
guilty of breaking laws on the export of atomic goods. All three men spent time
in Swiss jails pending the outcome of the espionage and trafficking inquiries.
The time they have already spent in jail would count toward any possible
sentence.
In early 2009, Marco Tinner was freed after more than
three years of investigative detention, and his brother Urs was released in
late 2008 after more than four years in jail. Their father, Friedrich, was released
in 2006.
Mr. Müller recommended that, in addition to charges of
atomic smuggling, Marco Tinner should be accused of money laundering.
The Swiss attorney general is now studying the
magistrate’s report and will decide next year whether to file charges against
the Swiss family of atomic spies and entrepreneurs.
*David Jolly contributed reporting from Paris.