David Armstrong and I told this story in our book, America and The Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise, which was published in 2007. We never met Amin before publication of the book. We got the secret documents that contained his story from American and French sources. But because these documents embarrassed British and American intelligence agencies, the British authorities targeted their collective wrath on Amin.
The police raided his home and put him under an Official Secrets Act investigation. The investigators continued a two-year probe even though they knew that Amin was not our source. Their intent was to ruin his life, use him as an example, and stop our inquiries into CIA and MI6 connections to members of the A.Q. Khan/Pakistan network.
Atif Amin was not the only one who paid a high price for undertaking this story. PEC’s National Security News Service lost funding and our reporter. Some foundations did not want us to continue reporting that the United States and Great Britain are actually part of the arms proliferation network. It seems that getting to the heart of nuclear proliferation can make organizations supposedly devoted to peace less than stalwart.
For Atif Amin yesterday was a big day. The British government admitted they found no evidence to prosecute Amin. The two-year ordeal was a waste of British taxpayers’ money. But there is no happy ending here. Amin’s career as a brilliant Customs officer – a man who had uncovered major arms operations in places like Bosnia – was terminated, not based on official evidence but based on official spite.
Amin had come to the United States after our book was published to visit family. We asked to meet him while he was here. He agreed to a television interview where he only talked about public aspects of his work on the Khan case. British officials used this interview as an excuse to sack him for gross misconduct.
What was lost with the firing of Atif Amin and the refusal to pursue his investigation in the United Arab Emirates is the fact that commercial elements of the Khan/Pakistan nuclear ring still operate today and remain engaged in nuclear proliferation.
Amin leaked nothing to us. He was simply a public servant we wrote about, and he paid a terrible price. The Independent yesterday carried a fair piece on Amin.
