1980: British Customs Interviews Key A. Q. Khan Associate

British Customs and Excise officers interview Peter Griffin, a British businessman who supplies equipment for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Griffin tells customs that he has recently received an order for six devices known as mandrels, equipment used to produce high-precision cylindrical objects. Griffin knows it will be difficult to deliver this order, as a previous order of equipment was seized by customs (see February 1979). He has informed the head of Pakistan’s Special Works Organization (SWO) that he will be unable to ship them, because he will not get an export license. However, he obtains the mandrels and moves them to an export packager, to stop them being damaged. Apparently, they are the final piece of equipment ordered by SWO for the production of bellows, which a 2005 customs report will describe as “centrifuge component parts.” Griffin tells investigators that he did not originally understand what the equipment was to be used for, but now realizes its intended use. [Armstrong and Trento, 2007, pp. 99-100] Abdus Salam, one of Griffin’s business partners, was put under surveillance the previous year (see (Fall 1979)).