Abstract
On April 8, 2005, Jeremy Jaynes, a spammer who sent 10 million junk e-mails a day from his North Carolina home, faced his day of reckoning in a federal court. His sentence: 9 years in prison.
On May 13, 2005, a German court convicted Karl-Heinz Wildmoser Jr., the project manager of the Munich 2006 World Cup arena, on corruption charges. His sentence: Four and a half years in prison.
On December 16, 2005, a district court in the Netherlands convicted Dutch businessman Henk Slebos on five counts of exporting sensitive technology to a front company set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan–the Pakistani engineer whose nuclear black market included such clients as Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Slebos' sentence: One year in prison, reduced to four months.
It's a curious state of affairs when a trafficker in nuclear technology gets less jail time than a corrupt businessman or a prolific spammer. And, what's worse, Slebos' sentence was harsh compared to his fellow alleged conspirators. According to a study by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (p. 25), out of the dozens of businessmen, agents, and scientists around the world with alleged ties to the Khan network, only three have been convicted and served time. “Aggressive pursuit and prosecution of wrongdoers and more substantial penalties for those convicted may help to deter future smuggling networks,” the study notes, “but the inconsistent record to date, with its strong tilt toward leniency, suggests that much remains to be done to achieve such results.”
This anemic record of prosecutions is, in part, due to the reluctance of governments (including the United States) to provide evidence that might compromise intelligence-gathering operations. But, according to Mark Hibbs, the Asian and European editor of Nucleonics Week and Nuclear Fuel, other aspects of national self-interest are sometimes in play. His latest investigative article for the Bulletin (p. 35) reveals that in the 1970s Dutch authorities deliberately played down the ramifications of nuclear secrets stolen by Khan when he was working in the Netherlands. The reason? Dutch scientists were eager to collaborate with foreign counterparts on breeder reactor development and international projects to develop a commercialized plutonium fuel cycle. Those projects could have been threatened if word got out about the full extent of Khan's activities in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the information appropriated by Khan made it possible for Pakistan to develop the Bomb–and years later, would aid the nuclear efforts of Libya and Iran.
Although Khan's black market is in disarray, experts today warn that Iran may have developed its own network to acquire sensitive goods. History has given them every reason to believe they can succeed.