Fallout by Catherine Collins

Author:Catherine Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2011-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JOHANNESBURG, FRANKFURT, BERN, AND WASHINGTON

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was fresh in the minds of officials in South Africa, Malaysia, and even some European countries. Because the Bush administration had relied on bad intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction to justify its invasion of Iraq, American credibility on nuclear issues was at an all-time low, even though the stakes seemed to be at an all-time high. Still, with time and hard evidence emerging from other sources, law enforcement and intelligence officials outside the United States were beginning to act.

South Africa had voluntarily given up nuclear weapons more than a decade earlier. Officials there believed that they had attained the moral high ground on the topic. At IAEA board meetings, the strong-willed South African ambassador, Abdul Minty, was an outspoken leader of the nonaligned movement. He was fond of buttonholing American diplomats to lecture them about their double standard. So when the Americans came knocking on South Africa’s door with a request to go after a major arm of the Khan network in early 2004, they had been cautious.

When the South Africans asked for proof, the Americans provided them with details about a flow-forming lathe that they said had been imported illegally by a South African company to manufacture centrifuge rotors. The lathe had been built in Spain, shipped to Dubai, and forwarded to South Africa through the network’s shipping hub. The Americans turned over the names of the participants—two veterans of South Africa’s defunct nuclear program, Gerhard Wisser and Johan Meyer, and their companies, Krisch Engineering and Tradefin Engineering, both of which operated in suburbs of Johannesburg. South African export officers questioned Wisser about the lathe. He acknowledged importing it from Dubai, but he said it had nothing to do with any nuclear project. And he insisted that it operated at specifications below those that required an import license. Wisser explained that the project for which he planned to use the lathe had not worked out, so he had returned it to Dubai months earlier. Without evidence, the South Africans dropped the inquiry.

The Americans had also provided the German intelligence service with extensive information about the involvement of Gotthard Lerch, a German living in Switzerland, and Wisser, a German citizen who had lived for years in South Africa. In August, Wisser had gone to Germany for a holiday. As he was leaving the country on August 25, he was detained by the police and taken into custody for questioning. He was confronted with a detailed recitation of his work for the Libyans, his involvement with Lerch and other members of the Khan network, and the Swiss bank accounts where he deposited his payments. Told that he faced charges of trafficking in nuclear technology for Libya and accessory to treason, Wisser waived his right to an attorney and offered an answer for every accusation. Certainly he knew Lerch, he said. They had worked together many years earlier and Wisser managed some real estate for him. Yes, he had done some work for B.

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