Watching the watcher
Brian Cloughley
Mr Seymour Hersh wrote a fascinating piece in the New Yorker recently, 'Watching the Warheads', largely about Pakistan's nuclear capability. Mr Hersh is a writer of renown and enormous stature, with many important sources, and one would hesitate to contradict his well-researched pieces save for one important fact: in this instance he has produced some startling rubbish.
Let's begin with the first paragraph: "The Bush Administration's hunt for Osama bin Laden... has evolved into a regional crisis that has put Pakistan's nuclear arsenal at risk, exacerbated the instability of the Government of General Pervez Musharraf, and raised the possibility of a nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India." He then expounds on these allegations.
So Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is at risk. From whom? Mr Hersh has a spine-tingling answer: from none other than "an elite Pentagon undercover unit". A what? Oh, yes; this unit is "trained to slip into foreign countries and find suspected nuclear weapons, and disarm them if necessary." Stop laughing. Stop it, I say; pay attention.
Mr Hersh gives no clue as to the size of this 'unit' that is going to slip into foreign countries to disarm nuclear weapons, but let's say a modest detachment, perhaps half a dozen, and let us consider how this serendipitous sextet will infiltrate Pakistan to disarm its nuclear weapons. They could already be in the Embassy, of course, under cover as visa people, so there would be no need for them to "slip in" to the country. But if they did have to "slip in," how do they do that? Arrive by commercial flight and melt into the countryside? Possibly. But surely Mr Hersh has more James-Bondish infiltration in mind. Perhaps slipping across the border from China, Afghanistan, Iran or India, disguised in drab native garb, speaking Farsi, Hindi, Pushto, or Uighur. They will then blend in with the local population, just as those already lurking under Embassy cover might do, and, using their superb knowledge of nuclear science as well as of Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi and–who knows? –even English, will live off the country for the few days it will take them to reconnoitre Pakistan's nuclear weapons' storage facilities.
Blending in as they do, these multi-talented warriors of the "elite Pentagon undercover unit", should find it simple to make their way to the most closely guarded camps in the country, and then disarm all Pakistan's nuclear warheads. But there are a couple of small problems. For one, the areas concerned are quite well-guarded. Not only this, but access routes are subject to control. Further, any stranger in the area, even a Pakistani, is immediately identifiable and immediately reported. But let us say the elite sextet do get to the confines of the facility containing nuclear weapons. They then wish to gain access to disarm them, and, instead of thinking it a lunatic and even suicidal endeavour, they proceed to avoid all patrols, spotlights and surveillance devices and cut their way through 10 metres of razor wire. Then, having achieved entry to the promised land, they look at their maps and decide in which building they should begin to disarm nuclear weapons.... I can't go on. The whole thing is just so ludicrous, so fatuous, so–Oh, so Hershish– that I laughed aloud. And to regain equilibrium I continued to read more of Mr Hersh's piece, only to come across the amazing claim that the "elite Pentagon undercover unit"–which by this stage of the article is "operating under Pentagon control with CIA assistance" –is "apparently getting help from Israel's most successful special operations unit, the Sayaret Matkal, also known as Unit 262, a deep penetration unit that has been involved in assassinations...." and so on and so on. (The last successful operation by "Unit 262" that Mr Hersh can quote was against mighty Uganda 25 years ago.) Mr Hersh writes that "Members of the Israeli unit arrived in the United States a few days after September 11th, an informed source said, and as of last week were training with American special-forces units at undisclosed locations." And shortly after September 11th Little Green Men arrived in Lusaka from Planet Zog and are training with three-legged hippopotami in the Lower Zambezi, from where they will launch a custard pie laser assault on Marks & Spencers' Ouagadougou branch.
Then Mr Hersh makes an interesting claim. "India's nuclear warheads are more numerous, more sophisticated, and more powerful than Pakistan's...". Has Mr Hersh actually read anything about nuclear weapons' developments in the Subcontinent? Apparently not, because that is a particularly ill-informed comment, and perhaps he should refer to published sources rather than his chums on the fringes of information. He would find that Pakistan has fewer warheads, but that its capability is far in advance of India's, which is perhaps why Mr Hersh was told by "intelligence officials" that "in case of an imminent threat, the Indian military's special commando unit is preparing to make its own move on the Pakistani [nuclear] arsenal."
This is mega-garbage of the first order, and Mr Hersh better have nothing more to do with the "intelligence officials" who fed him such tripe, though he does admit that "other officials" wondered about US covert operations, and one of them said (very sensibly), "We don't know where this stuff is and it would take far more than a commando operation to get at it."
Mr Hersh's linked claim that "India is known to have conducted deep penetration raids against terrorist camps in Pakistan" is so absurd, one should ignore it. But a lot of influential people read the New Yorker, and they all now think–such is Mr Hersh's reputation– there have been deep penetration raids by Indian troops into Pakistan. Alas, these people probably don't take The Nation, but I tell you there has never been a "deep penetration raid" (never mind the plural) by Indian troops into Pakistan. The claim is preposterous. New Yorker please copy. Fat chance.
One Hersh source, another "intelligence expert", says nuclear warheads and launch systems are not kept apart, as President Musharraf stated categorically. This expert is reported as having asked "what happens in a crisis? Are you going to have to drive warheads to the delivery vehicles? And leave you vulnerable to an enemy strike?"
I can comment on this, having served in a nuclear missile regiment. I was reconnaissance and survey officer, and also had two Honest John missile launchers, looked after by a couple of subalterns and some extremely efficient NCOs and excellent soldiers. The 'Number Three' of one launcher was named Gunner Brown. Number Three is the man who presses the button to launch a few tons of nuclear explosive, and Brown was the great grandson of the man who sounded the Charge of the Light Brigade, which I felt splendidly appropriate for our then circumstances.
But reverting to Mr Hersh and his source who says President Musharraf is lying when he states there is separation of warheads and launch vehicles, I recollect that when we had Nuclear Alerts in Germany we got out of our beds (the practices always took place in the middle of the night – even the real emergency in 1968 was a 0230 job), took up our noddy suits and gas masks (anti-nuclear protective clothing; quite useless), and sallied forth. I went to the border with East Germany to make sure the little pegs I had put in the ground were still there, so that the launchers could drive over them and then go flash-whoosh, and the chaps and some vehicles went–mark this well –to The Site.
'The Site' (as it was always known) was where the warheads were kept. It was about two miles from barracks, and the practice was for special vehicles to drive there and pick up the warheads while the launchers deployed to a rendezvous to load the device after the 'mating' of rocket motor and warhead. This was a mix of safety and security, and the man who told Mr Hersh "you have them ready to go" all the time is talking nonsense as far as tactical and air-delivered weapons go.
Mr Hersh's piece is a curious hotchpotch of loosely related gossip mixed with spicy allegations, many of which do not stand up to analysis. It doesn't reach any conclusion, which is understandable because on the basis of what he has been told by so many 'experts', there could be no conclusion to reach. |
