.Report says China offered widespread help on nukes
China gave Pakistan the blueprint for an atomic bomb, testing the finished product in 1990, and unveiled a sophisticated nuclear weapons complex to visiting U.S. scientists in the last decade, report former weapons lab officials.
Former Air Force secretary Thomas Reed, a former weapons lab scientist, paints a portrait of China as a reckless distributor of nuclear weapons know-how in a report released Thursday in PhysicsToday magazine. He charges the Chinese with giving extensive weapons support to Pakistan in detail far beyond a 2001 Defense Department report that acknowledged such links.
"The Chinese nuclear weapons program is incredibly sophisticated," Reed says. "The scary part is how much Pakistan has learned from them." The Chinese and Pakistani embassies in Washington did not reply to requests for comment on the report.
Reed is the co-author with Danny Stillman, former Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory technical intelligence director, of a book coming out in January on the Chinese nuclear weapons program.
Stillman sued the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense after they classified 23 of the book's pages, preventing their publication. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan upheld the classification last year.
By interviewing Stillman on his 1990 trips to China and doing his own reporting, Reed says Physics Today avoided a similar classification review. Among his points:
• China detonated a neutron bomb on December 19, 1984.
• China gave Pakistan blueprints for a simple uranium atomic bomb in 1982 and later tested a Pakistani version of the weapon in China on May 26, 1990.
• France conducted underground nuclear weapons experiments, though not full-scale explosions, with China at the Lop Nur testing ground. Stephane Charreau, a press officer at the French Embassy in Washington, called the suggestion "very strange," and denied it.
Some experts expressed similar skepticism. "I simply don't believe the French need the Chinese to do non-explosive testing. They have a very strong program and I can't see them exposing it to the prying eyes of the Chinese," says Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"I think it is extremely unlikely that China tested a Pakistani bomb," he added.
Harold Agnew, a former director of Los Alamos, confirmed that he and lab officials, including Stillman, had visited Chinese weapons facilities as early as 1981. "I believed they just wanted to show that they were competent. They were very open to me," he says in an e-mail.
A spokesman for Los Alamos, Kevin Roark, called Stillman's 28-year role at the lab "minor."
The report "is old news since it largely pertains to historical developments," says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. "On the other hand, it has important implications for our current understanding of China's nuclear program
USAToday
Former Air Force secretary Thomas Reed, a former weapons lab scientist, paints a portrait of China as a reckless distributor of nuclear weapons know-how in a report released Thursday in PhysicsToday magazine. He charges the Chinese with giving extensive weapons support to Pakistan in detail far beyond a 2001 Defense Department report that acknowledged such links.
"The Chinese nuclear weapons program is incredibly sophisticated," Reed says. "The scary part is how much Pakistan has learned from them." The Chinese and Pakistani embassies in Washington did not reply to requests for comment on the report.
Reed is the co-author with Danny Stillman, former Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory technical intelligence director, of a book coming out in January on the Chinese nuclear weapons program.
Stillman sued the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense after they classified 23 of the book's pages, preventing their publication. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan upheld the classification last year.
By interviewing Stillman on his 1990 trips to China and doing his own reporting, Reed says Physics Today avoided a similar classification review. Among his points:
• China detonated a neutron bomb on December 19, 1984.
• China gave Pakistan blueprints for a simple uranium atomic bomb in 1982 and later tested a Pakistani version of the weapon in China on May 26, 1990.
• France conducted underground nuclear weapons experiments, though not full-scale explosions, with China at the Lop Nur testing ground. Stephane Charreau, a press officer at the French Embassy in Washington, called the suggestion "very strange," and denied it.
Some experts expressed similar skepticism. "I simply don't believe the French need the Chinese to do non-explosive testing. They have a very strong program and I can't see them exposing it to the prying eyes of the Chinese," says Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"I think it is extremely unlikely that China tested a Pakistani bomb," he added.
Harold Agnew, a former director of Los Alamos, confirmed that he and lab officials, including Stillman, had visited Chinese weapons facilities as early as 1981. "I believed they just wanted to show that they were competent. They were very open to me," he says in an e-mail.
A spokesman for Los Alamos, Kevin Roark, called Stillman's 28-year role at the lab "minor."
The report "is old news since it largely pertains to historical developments," says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. "On the other hand, it has important implications for our current understanding of China's nuclear program
USAToday
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