Customs Official in Secrets Inquiry Over Nuclear Revelations

A senior customs investigator could face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act over suspicions that he exposed how US and British intelligence agencies interfered in his attempts to halt an international nuclear smuggling ring.

Police and officials from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) have searched the home of Atif Amin for evidence that he passed classified information to the American authors of a book about the worldwide nuclear proliferation network.

Amin was in charge of Operation Akin, an investigation into links between British companies and the illegal network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani scientist who helped build that country's nuclear arsenal.

The investigation is the subject of a book recently published in the US, America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise. Its authors, David Armstrong and Joseph Trento, contend that in 2000 Amin uncovered evidence in Dubai of the Khan network's involvement in establishing Libya's nuclear program but was ordered to drop his inquiries and return home, at the request of the CIA and MI6.

The Libyan program and the Khan network were not exposed and halted until 2003. The book argues that in the intervening three years the network continued to sell nuclear technology and possibly weapons designs to Iran, North Korea and possibly other countries, under the noses of US and British intelligence.

It quotes a frustrated Amin as telling colleagues: "They knew exactly what was going on all the time. If they'd wanted to, they could have blown the whistle on this long ago."

On December 5 Amin's house was searched by investigators from the IPCC and Hampshire police.

Amin could not be contacted yesterday and his lawyer said he could not comment on an ongoing investigation.

The Guardian has learned that the search was intended to uncover evidence that Amin had cooperated in the writing of the book and had leaked customs reports from Operation Akin to the authors.

Armstrong said Amin and his work were the subject of the book rather than the source. "The most obvious answer to why they're going after him is that this is potentially embarrassing to US and British intelligence sources," he said.

"The book shows their failure to allow his investigation to go forward in 2000 was responsible for Khan network's proliferation activities, and very possibly the bomb programmes in Iran, North Korea and Libya."

A US national intelligence estimate published earlier this month said Iran probably halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but did not say how much progress Tehran had made towards building a bomb by that time.

Intelligence officials on both sides of the Atlantic have said they waited until 2003 to strike against the Khan network in order to gather evidence on all its activities and all its customers.

"But what did they achieve?" Armstrong asked. Where are all the people connected to the Khan network? There were at least 50 people in this thing, and there a handful of people under house arrest. Did they need three extra years to do that?"