Profile: CORA Engineering

A Swiss company named CORA Engineering delivers a gasification and solidification plant to Pakistan for use in A. Q. Khan’s nuclear weapons research. The plant is delivered aboard three C-130 transport aircraft. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 53]

A bomb planted by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad goes off outside the home of Eduard German in Berne, Switzerland. German is the managing director of CORA engineering, which had exported a gasification and solidification unit to Pakistan in 1979 to help A. Q. Khan’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, and is soon planning to supply another such unit. The bombing is one of a series by Mossad against Khan’s suppliers in Europe (see Early 1981). The company also receives an anonymous call saying it should stop trading with Pakistan, and this threat is followed by a similar one two months later. At this point the company realizes US intelligence knows everything about its operations (see April 1981), and so halts its dealings with Pakistan. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 87]

The Swiss firm CORA engineering finds that US intelligence has a comprehensive file on its shipments to Pakistan to aid A. Q. Khan’s nuclear weapons program. The discovery is made after the company is bombed by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad (see February 20, 1981). CORA official Rudolf Walti will comment, “When the company was cited to the Swiss government [for supplying technology to manufacture nuclear weapons to Pakistan] we discovered that the Americans had such good records of what we were doing that if we ever lost our own files we could always go and ask them to use theirs.” Authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark will comment, “However, this information had been kept highly classified [in the US] lest it undermine the aid train that had started to leave for Pakistan.” [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 87, 476]