Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons
by Adrian Levy, Catherine Scott-Clark
On December 15, 1975, A. Q. Khan - a young Pakistani scientist working in Holland - stole top-secret blueprints for a revolutionary new process to arm a nuclear bomb. His original intention, and that of his government, was purely patriotic - to provide Pakistan a counter to Indias recently unveiled nuclear device. However, as Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark chillingly relate in their masterful investigation of Khans career over the past thirty years, over time that limited ambition mushroomed into the worlds largest clandestine network engaged in selling nuclear secrets - a mercenary and illicit program managed by the Pakistani military and made possible, in large part, by aid money from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and by indiscriminate assistance from China.
Most unnerving, the authors reveal that the sales of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, so much in the news today, were made with the clear knowledge of the American government, for whom Pakistan has been a crucial buffer state and allyfirst against the Soviet Union, now in the war against terror. Every successive American presidency, from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, has turned a blind eye to Pakistans nuclear activityrewriting and destroying evidence provided by its intelligence agencies, lying to Congress and the American people about Pakistans intentions and capability, and facilitating, through shortsightedness and intent, the spread of the very weapons we vilify the axis of evil powers for having and fear terrorists will obtain.
Deception puts our current standoffs with Iran and North Korea in a startling new perspective, and makes clear two things: that Pakistan, far from being an ally, is a rogue nation at the epicenter of world destabilization; and that the complicity of the United States has ushered in a new nuclear winter.
"Starred Review. Building on a decade's worth of interviews, the husband-and-wife investigative term serve a stunning indictment of the nuclear crime of all our lifetimes, in which, the authors claim, the U.S. has been an active accessory." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Simultaneously astonishing, maddening and absolutely frightening." - Kirkus Reviews.
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Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark worked as staff writers and foreign correspondents for the Sunday Times of London for seven years before joining the Guardian as senior correspondents. They are the authors of The Amber Room: The Fate of the Worlds Greatest Lost Treasure, and The Stone of Heaven: Unearthing the Secret History of Imperial Green Jade. They have reported from South Asia for more than a decade, and now live in London and in France.
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