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Jeffrey Goldberg on Pakistani nuclear weapons

Jeffrey Goldberg: The SPD, this Pakistani army branch, get the call from General Kayani, who’s the most powerful figure in the country, the chief of army staff, and basically says that do we know for sure that these weapons are secure, not from jihadists, which is what the world worries about, but from America?

Fareed Zakaria: And so what does General Kidwai, the head of this nuclear unit, what does he do in regards to Kayani’s concerns?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, this is - this is very interesting. What happens is the nuclear program is already dispersed around the country. There are 12 or 15 different sites, here you could plausibly believe that their nuclear weapons are stored or components of nuclear weapons are stored. one of the doctrines, one of the Pakistani doctrines to keep these weapons safe and away from prying eyes, not only America’s but India’s, is to move them around, move them around the country. Sometimes they’re moved by helicopter, but often they’re moved by road. And what happened after Abbottabad was the pace of this movement increased. In other words, they accelerated the velocity of this shell game, if you will. And here’s the troubling, the really troubling aspect of this. There are two ways you can do this, obviously. You can have huge armored convoys that are - that are driven at night, well protected, moving weapons and components. But, of course, that draws attention, not only the attention of jihadists or whoever might be interested, but spy satellites and et cetera. So what happens is very often these warheads and fissile material are moved around in the equivalent of delivery vans, over…

Fareed Zakaria: UPS trucks.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You wish. I mean, UPS would probably do a fairly good job of it. It’s an open question about how good a job is being done. Now, obviously, if the intelligence is good, if they have good operational security on the movement of these trucks, let’s put aside the issue of how dangerous Pakistani roads are on a daily basis, but put that aside. If they have good operational security, then no one knows where these trucks are going at any given moment. But because we know that the Pakistani military has been infiltrated to some degree by people who are sympathetic to organizations like the Taliban, that’s a whole other level of worry.