Ex ISI chief claims foiling CIA bid to derail Pakistan Nuclear Programme

Pakistan’s former spymaster Brig (retd) Imtiaz Ahmad, whose recent statements have caused ripples in the country’s political arena, now talks of a much serious issue — Pakistan’s nuclear programme. He claims to have foiled two CIA plots to sabotage the country’s nuclear programme.

While serving for Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency ISI, he claims conducting the operation ‘Rising Sun’ in 1979 that successfully thwarted a CIA plot to target Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

The operation concluded with the arrest and conviction of a Pakistani CIA agent, declaration of a few undercover CIA agents and US diplomats as personae non grata and

their return.

In the second case, Imtiaz says, he, as the Intelligence Bureau chief, had discovered another CIA plot being operated through a third country mainly to hit the country’s nuclear programme.

In an interview yesterday, Imtiaz said that in the late 70s, the CIA spotted one Rafiq Munshi, a graduate of Karachi University, and took him to the US to be trained on nuclear technicalities and intelligence skills. Later, he got appointed in the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant as an engineer.

“It was in 1979 when he was launched back by the CIA with a mission to penetrate into the country’s nuclear network with two clear objectives. Firstly, to provide the CIA with information about the nuclear programme’s development, security and protection measures for the nuclear installations and identification of nuclear scientists working on sensitive assignments. Secondly, he was assigned to create an opportunity, when given a signal, for a technical sabotage of certain nuclear installations,” Imtiaz claimed.

He said Munshi was provided substantial financial aid and was made to operate in close coordination with a few special CIA operators, who were under cover agents and working under diplomatic cover in the US embassy in Islamabad and its consulate in Karachi.

Imtiaz said during those days he was posted in Karachi as a Lt Colonel and the ISI chief in Sindh. After getting the clue of the plot and personally monitoring it for several months, he disclosed, he conducted the operation ‘Rising Sun’.

He said that the operation was conducted in a secret manner and it was only between him and the then ISI chief Maj Gen Riaz Khan as to what was going on against the country’s nuclear programme