Pakistan's Nuke Submarine Threat Credible

By Diane Petryk-Bloom

The cold white illumination of the computer screen was the only light in the bedroom.

It overlooked our bed like a wide-mouthed monster that never slept.

It was the 3 a.m in New York. My husband clicked open his email inbox.

“Here it is,” he said.

I had long gone to sleep, but not really. I got up on my knees behind him and put my chin on his left shoulder as he clicked open the email he had been waiting for.

Former top CIA agent Robert D. Steele had responded in just four words:

“Your scenario is credible.”

I know emails don’t flash. But whenever I remember that moment I see the words flashing in my mind.

There would be no more sleep that night.

My husband, Howard Kenneth Bloom, author of The Lucifer Principle, is a mass behavior scientist, a scholar of the history of Islam, as well as a human encyclopedia of history and science. Earlier, he had been researching for his upcoming appearance on Coast to Coast AM, a radio talk show. He is often invited on the show to talk about current events. A 9-11 anniversary was at hand. The question was – what could happen next?

Pakistan was a likely place for him to start, because Pakistan, he says, has one of the most violently fundamentalist and anti-American populations among the world’s 57 Islamic states. Many of those hate us a lot, so that’s saying something, he told me.

Pakistan sucks you into a vortex of political and religious issues that branch offin endless threads: Osama Bin Laden in the hills, military dictator Pervez Musharaff holding on against great odds, fundamentalist agitation, religious vigilantes, the “Islamic” bomb…

Among these, Howard discovered Pakistan’s Agosta 90-B submarines.

You probably haven’t heard about those. For some reason, mainstream media just doesn’t want to report about them. But here’s what you should know:

These are state of the art stealth subs that pose a challenge even to our Navy’s sophisticated tracking equipment.

• Each can carry 16 Harpoon Stand-Off Land Attack cruise missiles
• Those are nuclear missiles
• Since Pakistan tested its first nuclear bomb in 1998, every nuclear device it has made has been a missile warhead.
• The Agosta 90-Bs have a range of 12,000 miles

That means they could slink into Chesapeake Bay or up the Hudson River undetected.

Pakistan has these powerful subs courtesy of our wise friends, the French. Their government-owned shipbuilder, DCN, which builds France’s naval vessels, helped the Pakistanis build not only the subs, but a shipyard that can make more.

“According to the Pakistani Navy Captain Iftikhar Riaz Qureshi, who commanded both of these subs in their test phases,” Howard wrote, “Pakistan acquired its Agosta 90Bs to provide itself with ‘second strike nuclear capability.’ Since Pakistan tested its first nuclear bomb in 1998, every nuclear device it's made has been a missile warhead. Qureshi's words imply that from day one, Pakistan's intention has been to tip these missiles with atomic warheads.

After a 12,000 mile journey, these subs, according to Defence Journal, could unleash their missiles on New York and Washington, and still be able to take refuge in mid-ocean, lay low and threaten other world capitals.

“The United States operates a network of hydrophones scattered all over the Atlantic and Pacific seabed. We are listening for subs like these,” Howard posted on his website, Howardbloom.net, “but we may not be able to hear them. The Pakistani subs use a methanol-and-liquid-oxygen engine bedded on a suspension system that quiets its purr to a whisper. We may not be able to detect their silent running beneath the sounds of zebrafish fanning their tails.”

Steele confirmed Howard’s fears that we’d need intuition like The Hunt for Red October’s fictional heroes – every time out.

Who is Robert D. Steele? After a distinguished career a a CIA operative, including three dangerous tours of duty as a clandestine officer under deep cover, Steele spent seven years training intelligence professionals from 40 nations and consulted directly with 18 nations. He served in three of the four Directorates of the Central Intelligence Agency, helped program for overhead imagery satellites and managed an offensive national-level counter intelligence program. Steele was responsible for creating the newest US national intelligence production facility, the US Marine Corps Intelligence Center. He’s also an Amazon.com top reviewer of books on national defense.

This is the scenario Howard envisioned and sent to Steele:

Pakistan’s military dictator, Pervez Musharaff, will be killed or deposed (Musharaff is either a genuine ally of United States or pretending to be, but, either way, he has been target of at least five assassination attempts.)

Osama Bin Laden or his successor or followers will take power in Pakistan.

Then, Islamic extremists will have control of the country and its military hardware – including the Agosta B’s.

They unleash them on New York and Washington.

The nuclear devastation is enough to bring other nations to their knees.

Before long, your daughter and mine wear headscarves and live under Sharia, the religious law of the Muslim faith. Equal rights for women are no more.

Western men don’t have it much better. Western freedoms are history.

What facts add crcdibilty to this scenario:

*From 1979 to 1995, Pakistan was the headquarters for a group of ‘Afghan freedom fighters’ who were not Afghans at all. They were an international army paid for by the US, Saudi Arabia, and China, armed by the CIA, and trained, in part, by China's Peoples Liberation Army. We trained an army of 50,000 men from 30 nations to bring down the Soviet Union's most advanced tanks, jets, and helicopters. Why? Our mutual goal was to embarrass a common enemy--the Russians. Chief among the recruits to our proxy Jihad were Osama bin Laden and the founding members of Al Qaeda.

*Pakistan is the nation whose citizens rioted in the streets in 1989 over the title of a novel they didn't like--The Satanic Verses. It was Pakistan's street activists who forced the Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a Fatwa offering five million dollars to the Moslem who killed Salman Rushdie. The Pakistanis were more extreme than the most extremist Islamic leader of his day. And that was fifteen years ago! Since then anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism has grown.

*Pakistan is also the nation that educated a generation of Afghan refugees who later went home to take over their country in the name of Islamic purity and justice. We know those refugees as the Taleban.

*Today Osama bin Laden is one of Pakistan's two biggest pop-culture heroes. The other is "The Father of the Islamic Bomb" Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan and Osama have reportedly met in Afghanistan. Khan is the weapons expert. Osama is the weapons user.

*Many a Pakistani militant fundamentalist cell identifies itself as an Osama ally. One of the strongest among these Osama-loyalists is arguably Pakistan's most popular leader, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the man who told 60 Minutes that: ‘God has ordered us to build nuclear weapons.’

According to Syed Adeeb, head of Information Times, a militant Pakistani press outlet based in the National Press Building in Washington DC, "an Urdu-language letter written by Pakistan Army officers on a Pakistan Army letterhead and sent to many members of the Pakistan Parliament" calls, "'Pervez Musharaff and his clique…a band of thieves and looters…imposed on this nation'" by the United States.

It looks like only this embattled head of state stands between Osama and the Islamic submarines, between Osama and the cruise missiles the subs can carry, and the 40 or more nuclear warheads Pakistan has built since it exploded the first Islamic atomic bomb.

And what bin Laden, in a January 2004 speech broadcast on Al Jazeera, called, "a surprising blow…one that…due to its magnitude…will change the international balances of powers…."

“Here's what I strongly suspect is Osama's dream endgame,” Howard told Steele : “Nuke a few key cities in the United States. Blind and devastate the Great Satan. Then watch while France, Germany, Italy, and England capitulate. Capitulate to what? To Osama's dream, his passion, his vision of truth and freedom--to a global Islamic caliphate.”

“Your scenario is credible.”

It didn’t flash, but it does.

###