China supplied nuke missiles to S. Arabia, claims ex-CIA analyst

Washington, June 8 (ANI): China supplied nuclear missiles to Saudi Arabia during the Bush administration years (2000-2008), a former CIA officer who managed intelligence reports on Riyadh has claimed in an uncleared manuscript sent to congressional offices.

"I believe the People's Republic of China delivered a turn-key nuclear ballistic missile system to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the course of several years beginning no later than December 2003," the Washington Post quotes Jonathan Scherck as writing in a self-published book, "Patriot Lost."

According to the paper, he has provided the copy of the book to SpyTalk and also e-mailed copies to the offices of Senator Dianne Feinstein,who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Scherck, who became convinced that the White House was covering up the China-Saudi nuclear connection so as not to damage relations with a major U.S. ally and oil supplier, said he formed his conclusions while reading intelligence reports from Riyadh during his 18 months on "the Saudi account" in the Near East Division between 2005 and 2007, as well as talking with other CIA personnel in contact with the Bush White House.

According to Scherck, this heavily shrouded deal and Washington's shocking complicity constituted a flagrant violation of the long-standing but crippled Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ratified decades ago under the Richard Nixon administration."

But his manuscript provides little in the way of detailed evidence for his conclusions.

Scherck joined the CIA in 2004 but quit before finishing the agency's rigorous clandestine career training course, in November of that year. He then joined SpecTal, a Reston, Va.-based intelligence contractor, which assigned him to the CIA as a collection management officer on the Saudi desk. He supplied SpyTalk with corroboration of his agency employment and correspondence with the CIA's Publications Review Board over his manuscript. (ANI)