As these telegrams demonstrate, by the fall of 1986, if not earlier, the U.S. government believed that a Pakistani firm, Multinational Inc., was a “procurement agent” for A.Q. Khan’s secret network. In this case, Pakistani agents operating in West Germany were trying to secure aluminum tubes that could be used for the Khan Laboratory’s gas centrifuge program.

This heavily excised report on the “well-educated committed cadre” that managed the Pakistani nuclear program demonstrates how the CIA protects its intelligence on Pakistani nuclear activities. This is the same version of the report that can be found on the Agency’s FOIA Web page; the recent version includes no new information. Details on Khan Research Laboratories and the gas centrifuge program are entirely withheld, but some information is made available on the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission and the Directorate of Nuclear Fuels and Materials. The latter includes details on the status and purpose of major projects, for example, the Kundian Nuclear Complex, also known as the Chasma Reprocessing Plant, which was not completed until 1990. For the purposes of producing plutonium for weapons, the Pakistanis were interested in a heavy water moderated reactor of the NRX (National Research Experimental) type that Canada built at Chalk River. In 1985, the Pakistanis started that project in earnest, with construction beginning in 1987 of what became known as Khushab Chemical Plant II.

Summary of a British report on problems with the export "trigger list" of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The list did not include gray area items that could be used in building nuclear facilities. To begin correcting the problem, the British announced a ban of inverter exports and asked other governments to take parallel steps. Also includes a summary of a secret British paper on Pakistan nuclear intentions. The British believed that the “piecemeal” Pakistani purchasing efforts to acquire inverters were directly related to the building of a gas centrifuge unit for producing weapons-grade uranium. Attached to the cable is a 7 November "Memorandum for the Record" discussing sharing this information with the Department of Energy.