Seymour M. Hersh Full Article : What Musharraf Actually Said
By Guest Blogger • Nov 11th, 2009 • Category: Politics • 14 CommentsIn the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.
Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”
Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.
On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”
The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”
Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”
The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)
A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”
The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama’s so-called Af-Pak policy, which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan. I was told that the understandings on nuclear coöperation benefitted from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani, his counterpart, although the C.I.A. and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved. (All three departments declined to comment for this article. The national-security council and the C.I.A. denied that there were any agreements in place.)
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GB
I think any of Musharraf lover told you to extract something from 8 pages detail report of Seymour M. Hersh.As you are looking tired in reading this research so you just copy paste itsone page which has no linkg wiht your heading so for your convenience I am helping you to paste the exact share of Musharf in his report.
I hope you are thankful to me for reporting that our ex COAS is opening secrets of nuclear arsenals which he took oath of not declaring in public places at any cost,
Dont feel guilty as for last three days I am also tying to read it in full version but shortage of time is not allowing me.
Former President Musharraf, when I interviewed him in London recently, acknowledged that his government had held extensive discussions with the Bush Administration after the September 11th attacks, and had given State Department nonproliferation experts insight into the command and control of the Pakistani arsenal and its on-site safety and security procedures. Musharraf also confirmed that Pakistan had constructed a huge tunnel system for the transport and storage of nuclear weaponry. “The tunnels are so deep that a nuclear attack will not touch them,” Musharraf told me, with obvious pride. The tunnels would make it impossible for the American intelligence community—“Big Uncle,” as a Pakistani nuclear-weapons expert called it—to monitor the movements of nuclear components by satellite.
Safeguards have been built into the system. Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads (containing an enriched radioactive core) and their triggers (sophisticated devices containing highly explosive lenses, detonators, and krytrons) to be stored separately from each other and from their delivery devices (missiles or aircraft). The goal is to insure that no one can launch a warhead—in the heat of a showdown with India, for example—without pausing to put it together. Final authority to order a nuclear strike requires consensus within Pakistan’s ten-member National Command Authority, with the chairman—by statute, President Zardari—casting the deciding vote.
He again said about general musharf in page 7.His golden words for our popular president is written in this page.
Pervez Musharraf lives in unpretentious exile with his wife in an apartment in London, near Hyde Park. Officials who had dealt with him cautioned that, along with his many faults, he had a disarmingly open manner. At the beginning of our talk, I asked him why, on a visit to Washington in late January, he had not met with any senior Obama Administration officials. “I did not ask for a meeting because I was afraid of being told no,” he said. At another point, Musharraf, dressed casually in slacks and a sports shirt, said that he had been troubled by the American-controlled Predator drone attacks on targets inside Pakistan, which began in 2005. “I said to the Americans, ‘Give us the Predators.’ It was refused. I told the Americans, ‘Then just say publicly that you’re giving them to us. You keep on firing them but put Pakistan Air Force markings on them.’ That, too, was denied.”
Musharraf, who was forced out of office in August, 2008, under threat of impeachment, did not spare his successor. “Asif Zardari is a criminal and a fraud,” Musharraf told me. “He’ll do anything to save himself. He’s not a patriot and he’s got no love for Pakistan. He’s a third-rater.”
Musharraf said that he and General Kayani, who had been his nominee for Chief of Army Staff, were still in telephone contact. Musharraf came to power in a military coup in 1999, and remained in uniform until near the end of his Presidency. He said that he didn’t think the Army was capable of mutiny—not the Army he knew. “There are people with fundamentalist ideas in the Army, but I don’t think there is any possibility of these people getting organized and doing an uprising. These ‘fundos’ were disliked and not popular.”
He added, “Muslims think highly of Obama, and he should use his acceptability—even with the Taliban—and try to deal with them politically.”
Musharraf spoke of two prior attempts to create a fundamentalist uprising in the Army. In both cases, he said, the officers involved were arrested and prosecuted. “I created the strategic force that controls all the strategic assets—eighteen to twenty thousand strong. They are monitored for character and for potential fundamentalism,” he said. He acknowledged, however, that things had changed since he’d left office. “People have become alarmed because of the Taliban and what they have done,” he said. “Everyone is now alarmed.”
Both of these writers are going through their own Psychological war fare in their little mind. Its ok to write but where are the 8 page write up by Hersh?
We as Pakistani are trying to cut our own branches by baseless quotes and twisting the truth who said what. No one will burn this country but Our own Illitrate commentators and critics who does not know a Sh… about any thing but because of personal HATRED against one another.
Is Ghar ko AAg Lag Gaee Ghar Kae Chiraq Sae. Our Military is Capable of defending and protecting our Nuclear assets.
**
Probably the most disturbing aspect of the piece in the long article of Seymour Hersh quoted in the post above and is also the most threatening when he describes that what are the US plans for Pakistan’s nukes?
That is what the present turmoil in pakistan and US game may be all about - a unilateral US plan to have a US own potent force in Pakistan to attempt to take out the nuclear triggers which are normally kept away from nukes for security reason and thereby decapitate the nukes.
Is that why we are seeing so many covert US personnel arriving in batches into Pakistan? There may be no formal deal with Pakistani government; but there is a threatening unilateral US agenda. That Hersh has explained in his article most vividly!
the link is below for full article
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh
Peer
Your own illiterate commentators are product of illiterate governance.
So some literate people are misfit in this country
let the illiterate people to handle their illiterate leadership in their ways.
Diamond are always cut by diamond and for working in coal mines one has to blacken his hands and face.nothing to be shame in cleansing your own home
Our Coal mine is Full of Backbiter and traitors. Will be very hard to find a diomond unless you look around in Lahore.
Peer
Coal mines can dig , separate and crush these backbiters and traitors very easily but problem is that white collar men are not interested jumping into this black business that is why no successful operation of crushing and separating of coal can be accomplished.
Oh you are talking about our lahori paper lions the sharif brothers.
Do you consider them diamonds of lahore
really surprise???
No I was Reffering Lahore as in Hera Mandi.(Sorry)
I accept your pardon
Oh sure in heera mandi of lahore we have lot of pure diamonds of sharifzadas of lahore kept and reserved as hidden treasures of many pious and popular characters of Lahore.
Judge the truthfulness of Lahoris that they always acknowledge the existence of heeras in our mandi but people of karachi always deny such facts and feel proud of meeting prostitute in main lobby of any hotel.
The Army was controlled by Punjabis who, the Americans thought, “did not put up with Pashtuns,” as the former Bush Administration official put it. (The Taliban are mostly Pashtun.)
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all#ixzz0Wkvx32hC
@ Nazia ……………………..OH! Yes, ……….pious and popular characters of Lahore?
@mr 10 number
When US thought of using Punjabi army against talibans it was headed by urdu speaking COAS .This COAS was shortlisted by pure Punjabi prime minister who preferred this officer and superseded many Punjabi and phuktoons.
Army discipline doesn’t work on racial and ethical principles but on chain of commands from higher source to lower level at all cost.
Order has no racial dimensions and if not followed on any basis comes in the category of punishable offense in any army setup.So that is basic reason our all military dictators are blue boys of US administration as one command from white house can be sensed even lower ranks of army without any obstacle and objection.
So when US develop infatuation with our uniform men she has no interest of his backgrounds and different controllers following the command of one man only.When she fulfill her desire as paid rapist and then leave it with charges of corruption, unfairness and immodesty.
Hang Musharraf! Hang the bastard!
Dear All!
The argument interests me a lot as it shows at least we pakistani’s are very good at arguing for the sake of it. I dunno about any hidden agenda or any conspiracy going on, on the part of American intelligence but I’m very much sure about the fact that our political lot are just incapable of holding their offices. At the same time I am sure that the people of Pakistan are not very well aware of the state of affairs as far as our foreign policy or pacts with other nations are concerned. The irony is that we are kept in total darkness untill something absurd is brought in the light by characters like Syemore, who doesn’t belong to us…keep aside his interest our faithfulness with our national cause. We will have to open our mind to accept the technology war currently on the horizon which is trying to fuel up the third world countries. argument after an argument with zero result…. i would suggest Musharraf to keep his mouth shut untill he faces the real day of judgement. Seymore is a professional and he gotta get to such stories by hook or by crook. Mush was the easy prey for Syemore as Mush seems to be really pissed of with his loneliness in exile.