Who Killed Daniel Pearl (49 page)

And on the al-Qaida problem, finally, specifically on the question of where bin Laden is, exactly, in his quest to acquire weapons of mass destruction, three pieces of information that I imagine Daniel Pearl had, plus two personal recollections . . .

The case of Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, the bin Laden lieutenant, co-founder of al-Qaida and involved as such in the bombing attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania: arrested in Munich on 25 September 1998 as he was trying to make a deal with Ukrainian intermediaries for nuclear material and enriched uranium.

The 1998 book by Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U.S. House of Representatives, which recounts how bin Laden paid $30 million cash plus the value of two tons of heroin to a group of Chechens who were supposed to provide him with the makings of one or more “dirty” bombs.

The statements from General Lebed revealing to American authorities, not long before his death, that the government of the Russian Federation had lost track of about a hundred nuclear explosive devices among the seven hundred that had been miniaturized by the Soviets in the 1970s: these bombs, he said, fit in a suitcase; they can be smuggled into any enemy territory, and therefore into the United States, through the exact same channels as any contraband goods; some have a shelf-life sufficiently long that they could be there already, sleeping, since the last years of the Soviet era, waiting to be reactivated; these micro-bombs, said Lebed, these atomic suitcases capable when they explode of killing several tens of thousands of people, maybe a hundred thousand, are the ideal weapon for a terrorist group.

And accordingly two personal recollections, which bring me back from the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia to Pakistan, and from Pakistan to bin Laden, corroborating the intuitions of Daniel Pearl . . .

A conversation in the spring of 2002 with Moshe Yaalon, nicknamed “Bogey,” who has just been appointed chief of staff of the Israeli army. I had met with Ariel Sharon the day before. I see Yaalon that morning at the Ministry of Defense—an enormous fortified complex, cheerful atmosphere, a very civilian aspect to the offices, few military emblems and female soldiers at reception. We talk about Arafat. I tell him about my indestructible commitment to the Israeli cause, and about the strong reservations I nonetheless have about the kind of response chosen to deal with the second Intifada. We also talk about Iraq, which seems to me, compared to the real threats that weigh upon our world, to have all the characteristics of a false target, a red herring. I put in a few words about Pakistan, naturally. I evoke, referring to the book that is taking shape, that nest of vipers, that powder-keg, about which I imagine Israel has an opinion: “The missile sites, for instance, the places where fissile materials are stored—are they not far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein's? As a result, hasn't the international intelligence community lost control of the situation?” And he, surprised, and then vaguely mocking, with a gleam in his eye that makes him look like the young Rabin: “So, you are interested in Pakistan? How about that, so are we . . . but don't get it wrong—the international community knows, down to the single unit, where the warheads are in that country . . . if one budges, if it moves a single millimeter”—he holds his thumb and index finger apart to indicate a millimeter—“we'll know how to operate.” And now me: “Does that mean there could be a Pakistani Osirak? Would that kind of operation— the destruction of a nuclear installation while under construction—be conceivable in the world of bin Laden and post–September 11?” He laughs: “That's a good question; but I don't have the answer.” An Osirak in Kahuta, Chagai, Khushab? An Israeli commando unit capable of parachuting onto a nuclear site if a hijacking were imminent? The thought is both reassuring and terrible. Because just the fact of contemplating it means that the problem could arise.

And furthermore, a few years earlier, when I visited the Panshir, that other even more explicit conversation with Mohammed Fahim, who was then the head of Massoud's secret service. We are in the Northern Alliance's guest house, at the entrance to the valley. We're waiting for Massoud. Fahim is thinner than he is today, less formal, outspoken in a way that is lost to the marshal-minister he has become.

“The West,” he tells me, “is once again underestimating the enormous danger that the Pakistanis represent. They created the Taliban. They're now creating bin Laden. Did you know that bin Laden has a laboratory near Kandahar where he's trying to make weapons of mass destruction, and that he's doing it with the full knowledge of the services, who are providing him with everything he wants—first-hand information, visits from scientists, samples of fissile materials, help with smuggling?” I don't pay very much attention to this information at the time. As with the revelation of bin Laden's Kandahar address, which I cite, but offhandedly, in my travel chronicle for the newspaper Le Monde—part of me attributes these disclosures to the Alliance's anti-Pakistani paranoia, and even more so their secret services. But I go back to my notes from that time. I read them again in the light of both Pearl's investigation, and of my investigation of his investigation. Fahim, that day, gave me the location of the laboratory: forty kilometers from the airport, west of Kandahar. The salary of the Russian or Turkmen engineers hired by bin Laden: $2,000 a month, double what the Russian Federation would pay them at the time. He also told me that one of those Turkmen scientists had worked in Baghdad in the '80s, on that same Osirak reactor; how strange . . . But most significantly he explained to me that all these weapons are too heavy, too hard to transport and then to maintain, that their locking mechanisms are too complex, for al-Qaida to get very far with the Ukrainian or Chechen networks.

“Maybe a dirty bomb,” Fahim told me. “Maybe from those countries they can make nuclear devices without launchers that they'll set off in Kabul the day we go in. And obviously we are taking that possibility very seriously. Except that for the serious business, they'll do it with them . . . ”

He points with his chin in the direction of Pakistan.

“It's only them, the ISI people, who can give them the know-how, and the maintenance, and the hardware necessary to put together an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.”

And he adds, “We have all the data on that; we know the process is ongoing . . . ”

Several hypotheses, from that point.

One can suppose that Danny found out more about this “ongoing process.”

One can suppose that he extended his investigation to Hamid Gul and his possible ties to the supposedly secular and Kamelist branch of the services.

One can imagine that he was establishing the list of ISI superior officers who, faithful to the Gul line, that is to say to the doctrine of the Islamist bomb, were busy proving Mohammed Fahim's analysis and were willing to close their eyes to a technology transfer to terrorist groups.

Was Pearl getting ready to give exact locations for the warheads and launchers of the Islamabad arsenal—and thus to provide the proof that the information was within the reach of the first terrorist to come along?

Did he have information that disproved the reassuring declarations that Musharraf kept making at that time, about his complete control over the nuclear chain of command and the deactivation of storage and launching facilities?

Had he seen in Peshawar one of those MK 47 nuclear suitcases marked “made in U.S.A.” or “in U.S.S.R.” that representatives of several Western special services had talked to me about—big-bellied gray or black canteens, padded like military canteens, double metal handle on the sides, a cap like the cap on a gas tank, and inside, a twentieth or a thirtieth of the Hiroshima bomb?

One can imagine, too, that after the Gul and Mahmoud trails he opened the Khan trail—after Abdul Qader Khan, the real father and boss of the Islamist bomb—and one can imagine that he scratched below the surface of the hero's official biography to find other feats of arms, carefully hidden from the outside world and particularly from the Americans. The cooperation programs, for instance, from 1986 to 1994, with the Iran of the Ayatollahs. The memo from the Iraqi secret service, dated 6 October 1990, a copy of which was shown to me in New Delhi, in which is described the Pakistani proposition to help Saddam Hussein, through Kahn, build a factory to enrich uranium. One can also imagine that he came across the dossier on Khan's contacts with the North Korean nuclear industry. I stumbled across this open secret in India, concerning the exchange of courtesies, through Khan, between Pakistan and North Korea, one side offering their know-how, the other delivering their missiles— why wouldn't Danny have been on that also? Why wouldn't he have been on the verge of presenting, in line with his 24 December article, but this time on the front page of the
Wall Street Journal,
an account of the secret agreements on this issue signed between Pyongyang and Islamabad?

If he studied the biography of Abdul Qader Khan, if he ended up, as I think he did, realizing that Khan's role was much more crucial than Mahmoud's or Gul's, I can't see him not getting interested in the scientist's peculiar status after his forced retirement in 2001: out of the loop, really? Taken off sensitive dossiers? A citizen like any other, just a little more acclaimed than most—the kind whose restaurant check is picked up for him when he's recognized, or his taxi ride offered for free? Or else, as I believe, and as I think Danny must have if he had the time to push the investigation that far: an emissary, unofficial but busier than ever, for the Pakistani nuclear lobby? I cannot help but conclude that the logical outcome of Pearl's investigation was leading him in the direction of the scientist's last trip to North Korea, which was recent, after his retirement and unnoticed: an Abdul Qader Khan, a minister told me, who no longer represented anyone but himself, going on a nice tourist visit to Pyongyang; an Abdul Qader Khan who, a friend insisted, had been on an official mission there previously, and it so happened that he liked it, he kept friends there and went back for purely personal reasons—would you hold it against a scientist who has given his life to his country if he goes to have a good time with his friends in Pyongyang? Yes, I think that's exactly the kind of, not reproach, but at least question, that Daniel Pearl would have been formulating on the eve of his abduction; I would bet that Pearl was asking himself, a I do now, what kind of tourism one indulges in these days in Pyongyang, what kind of friends you keep there when you're the world champion in making plutonium out of uranium— I would bet on an investigator attempting to find out what North Koreans would have to say at this time to a man who, for years, taught the scientists of a country barred from nuclear research the art and craft of circumventing embargoes . . .

In other words, I bet on a Daniel Pearl busy gathering proof of Pakistan's collusion between the leading rogue states and terrorist networks of the world.

My hypothesis is that he was writing an article on Pakistan's duplicitous game, whereby it posed on one hand as a good ally of the United States, and on the other lending itself, through its most prestigious scientists, to the most fearsome operations of nuclear proliferation.

To put it simply, was Pearl breaking the taboo?

Entering this sinister world of mad scientists and Islamist fanatics, taking steps into this dark night where secret services and nuclear secrets exchange and share their shadowy realms, working on this highly sensitive and explosive material—was Pearl violating the other major prohibition that weighs upon this part of the world?

I'm doing it, anyway.

Following Danny, in his wake and, in a way, in homage, I bring this modest contribution to the cause of truth that he loved more than anything else.

I assert that Pakistan is the biggest rogue of all the rogue states of today.

I assert that what is taking form there, between Islamabad and Karachi, is a black hole compared to which Saddam Hussein's Baghdad was an obsolete weapons dump.

The stench of apocalypse hangs over those cities; I am convinced that Danny smelled that stench.

CHAPTER 6
GENTLE ISLAM

One year already.

One year since—sitting in President Ahmid Karzai's office in Kabul with Karzai and his ministers, Fahim and Qanouni, remembering Commander Massoud—I learned of Daniel Pearl's death.

A word to Mariane whose pain and sorrow, on this anniversary day, I can only imagine.

Trying, with friends, to relay to synagogues in France word of the day of prayer and remembrance Ruth and Judea, Danny's courageous parents, have organized in Los Angeles.

A book that comes to an end with its blanks, its hypotheses, its zones that remain obscure.

And then, this last trip to Karachi. I had promised myself never to return. At least for the duration of this regime. But it was a message from Abdul that decided me: “Memon . . . the owner of the property at Gulzar e-Hijiri . . . the missing piece of your puzzle . . . I think I've found Saud Memon, come . . . ”

Go to the Islamic bookstore in Rawalpini, to the first floor of a building on Murree Road, which serves as an office for al-Rashid Trust and where I can meet the man who knows the man that knows the man who will lead me to Saud Memon. The same dance of the bearded ones hesitating as usual between the amiable and the veiled threat. The same courteous but cold looks, as if to signify how far is too far. The same smugness about being right, to the point of daring to say that, “The journalist's killer, whoever he is, will go to paradise.” And, again, the same promises as always, the same way of opening the door a crack, knowing they'll slam it shut just as quickly: “Yes, of course . . . nothing simpler . . . our friend Memon isn't hiding, he's in Karachi . . . there's no place on earth he'd be safer than in Karachi, especially not in the Arab countries collaborating with the Americans, the dogs!”