Alston proposes a response to the Israeli Prime Minister's letter on Pakistan's nuclear activity.

This study, even more heavily redacted than the Z Division study on India (November 1988), examined the status of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon status, and number of other topics (deleted from the table of contents), and policy implications. The Joint Special Operations Command is among the agencies on the distribution list. As the report is a “Gamma Controlled Item,” some of the excisions relate to communications intelligence information.

This issue includes an extract from a recent study on Pakistan and two highly technical articles relating to on-going research to identify the signatures of high explosives used for the implosion method of nuclear detonation. It also includes a report that utilized open literature and classified intelligence, including two satellite photographs, the purpose of the article is to illuminate how the South African Government intended to use the site, down to the depth and thickness of the bore holes.

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.

Short report on talks with the chairman of the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission. Pakistan wants to purchase a nuclear power plant control system from Hungary.

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.

The State Department asks for information on a letter sent by IAEA Director General Eklund to Munir Khan of the Pakistani atomic energy commission. IAEA inspectors in Pakistan should also be alert to "any questionable use of facilities or disposition of safeguarded material."

Summary of conversation with IAEA official Davi Fischer. Fischer stated that Director Eklund had not yet written to the Pakistani atomic energy commission. He also reported a number of "troubling bits of information" on the situation in Pakistan.