former US Vice President, Dick Cheney has recently said that instead of the Obama administration going after CIA operatives for their alleged torture of (Muslim) prisoners, intelligence agents should be asked to pursue the Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr A.Q. Khan to see what he is up to (Aug 31).

This is obviously a trick by Mr Cheney to divert attention from what has become a major issue in the US and could end up by dragging him and other US leaders and senior officials to court for war crimes.

This could already be largely inferred from the article, 'CIA under (belated) scrutiny', by Chris McGreal (July 16).

In it, he writes that after the initial assurance by Mr Obama that CIA operatives would not be tried for such reasons “America's intelligence community breathed a sigh of relief at what it took to be a commitment that if anyone was to be brought to book, it would be the politicians the agency served as it slipped the leash of legal restraint, particularly the former vice-president, who fronted the Bush administration's war on terror...

“But in recent days the ground has shifted dramatically, as a series of revelations about the CIA's activities have left the agency facing its most hostile scrutiny since the 1970s, when Congressional hearings revealed it was pursuing its own, often illegal agenda, including numerous failed attempts to kill Fidel Castro, the former Cuban president.”

Another important thing Mr McGreal has mentioned is the recent revelation by the CIA's new director, Leon Panetta, about the agency's secret assassination programme, which was said to be Dick Cheney's brainchild and a separate report some months back had even shown Benazir Bhutto to have been one of its targets.

Thus, it is evident that the former vice president is trying to divert attention from his own and the Bush establishment's sins by scaring the Americans about the supposed danger inherent in the case of Dr Khan being set free.

As far as the allegations of Dr Khan providing assistance to Libya, Iran and North Korea are concerned, Libya has already terminated its nuclear programme, while Iran and North Korea could, through smart diplomacy, be made to end their own activities of concern. Thus, the threat supposedly posed by our scientist is only imaginary, whereas what Cheney and others did is real and sufficient to indict them for war crimes.

ABDUL ALEEM
Karachi