IAEA's "Soviet Nuclear Scientist" Never Worked on Weapons

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Nov 9, 2011 (IPS) - The report of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) published by a Washington think tank Tuesday
repeated the sensational claim previously reported by news media all
over the world that a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist had
helped Iran construct a detonation system that could be used for a
nuclear weapon.

But it turns out that the foreign expert, who is not named in the IAEA
report but was identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko, is
not a nuclear weapons scientist but one of the top specialists in the
world in the production of nanodiamonds by explosives.

In fact, Danilenko, a Ukrainian, has worked solely on nanodiamonds
from the beginning of his research career and is considered one of the
pioneers in the development of nanodiamond technology, as published
scientific papers confirm.

It now appears that the IAEA and David Albright, the director of the
International Institute for Science and Security in Washington, who
was the source of the news reports about Danilenko, never bothered to
check the accuracy of the original claim by an unnamed "Member State"
on which the IAEA based its assertion about his nuclear weapons
background.

Albright gave a "private briefing" for "intelligence professionals"
last week, in which he named Danilenko as the foreign expert who had
been contracted by Iran's Physics Research Centre in the mid-1990s and
identified him as a "former Soviet nuclear scientist", according to a
story by Joby Warrick of the Washington Post on Nov. 5.

The Danilenko story then went worldwide.

The IAEA report says the agency has "strong indications" that Iran's
development of a "high explosions initiation system", which it has
described as an "implosion system" for a nuclear weapon, was "assisted
by the work of a foreign expert who was not only knowledgeable on
these technologies, but who, a Member State has informed the Agency,
worked for much of his career in the nuclear weapon program of the
country of his origin."

The report offers no other evidence of Danilenko's involvement in the
development of an initiation system.

The member state obviously learned that Danilenko had worked during
the Soviet period at the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of
Technical Physics in Snezhinsk, Russia, which was well known for its
work on development of nuclear warheads and simply assumed that he had
been involved in that work.

However, further research would have revealed that Danilenko worked
from the beginning of his career in a part of the Institute that
specialised in the synthesis of diamonds. Danilenko wrote in an
account of the early work in the field published in 2006 that he was
among the scientists in the "gas dynamics group" at the Institute who
were "the first to start studies on diamond synthesis in 1960".

Danilenko's recollections of the early period of his career are in a
chapter of the book, "Ultrananocrystalline Diamond: Synthesis,
Properties and Applications" edited by Olga A. Shenderova and Dieter
M. Gruen, published in 2006.

Another chapter in the book covering the history of Russian patents
related to nanodiamonds documents the fact that Danilenko's centre at
the Institute developed key processes as early as 1963-66 that were
later used at major "detonaton nanodiamond" production centres.

Danilenko left the Institute in 1989 and joined the Institute of
Materials Science Problems in Ukraine, according to the authors of
that chapter.

Danilenko's major accomplishment, according to the authors, has been
the development of a large-scale technology for producing
ultradispersed diamonds, a particular application of nanodiamonds. The
technology, which was later implemented by the "ALIT" company in
Zhitomir, Ukraine, is based on an explosion chamber 100 sq metres in
volume, which Danilenko designed.

Beginning in 1993, Danilenko was a principal in a company called
"Nanogroup" which was established initially in the Ukraine but is now
based in Prague. The company's website boasts that it has "the
strongest team of scientists" which had been involved in the
"introduction of nanodiamonds in 1960 and the first commercial
applications of nanodiamonds in 2000".

The declared aim of the company is to supply worldwide demand for nanodiamonds.

Iran has an aggressive programme to develop its nanotechnology sector,
and it includes as one major focus nanodiamonds, as blogger Moon of
Alabama has pointed out. That blog was the first source to call
attention to Danilenko's nanodiamond background.

Danilenko clearly explained that the purpose of his work in Iran was
to help the development of a nanodiamond industry in the country.

The report states that the "foreign expert" was in Iran from 1996 to
about 2002, "ostensibly to assist in the development of a facility and
techniques for making ultra dispersed diamonds (UDDs) or
nanodiamonds…" That wording suggests that nanodiamonds were merely a
cover for his real purpose in Iran.

The report says the expert "also lectured on explosive physics and its
applications", without providing any further detail about what
applications were involved.

The fact that the IAEA and Albright were made aware of Danilenko's
nanodiamond work in Iran before embracing the "former Soviet nuclear
weapons specialist" story makes their failure to make any independent
inquiry into his background even more revealing.

The tale of a Russian nuclear weapons scientist helping construct an
"implosion system" for a nuclear weapon is the most recent iteration
of a theme that the IAEA introduced in its May 2008 report, which
mentioned a five-page document describing experimentation with a
"complex multipoint initiation system to detonate a substantial amount
of high explosives in hemispherical geometry" and to monitor the
detonation.

Iran acknowledged using "exploding bridge wire" detonators such as
those mentioned in that document for conventional military and
civilian applications. But it denounced the document, along with the
others in the "alleged studies" collection purporting to be from an
Iranian nuclear weapons research programme, as fakes.

Careful examination of the "alleged studies" documents has revealed
inconsistencies and other anomalies that give evidence of fraud. But
the IAEA, the United States and its allies in the IAEA continue to
treat the documents as though there were no question about their
authenticity.

The unnamed member state that informed the agency about Danilenko's
alleged experience as a Soviet nuclear weapons scientist is almost
certainly Israel, which has been the source of virtually all the
purported intelligence on Iranian work on nuclear weapons over the
past decade.

Israel has made no secret of its determination to influence world
opinion on the Iranian nuclear programme by disseminating information
to governments and news media, including purported Iran government
documents. Israeli foreign ministry and intelligence officials told
journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins about the special
unit of Mossad dedicated to that task at the very time the fraudulent
documents were being produced.

In an interview in September 2008, Albright said Olli Heinonen, then
deputy director for safeguards at the IAEA, had told him that a
document from a member state had convinced him that the "alleged
studies" documents were genuine. Albright said the state was "probably
Israel".

The Jerusalem Post's Yaakov Katz reported Wednesday that Israeli
intelligence agencies had "provided critical information used in the
report", the purpose of which was to "push through a new regime of
sanctions against Tehran…."

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist
specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition
of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the
Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.