Douglas Farah
Levy and Scott-Clark take the reader deep inside Khan's operations, including his extensive and previously unreported contacts with China, which gave him technical help beginning in the early 1980s. Their book also provides the fullest picture of Khan's turbulent family life, his constant tension with his wife, his extramarital affairs and even his visits to a psychiatrist, who noted that he seemed "eaten up...as if he was unable to sate his ambition."
—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Earlier this year, William Langewiesche's The Atomic Bazaaralerted readers to the blind eye the United States and other nations have turned toward Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb and to sell that technology to other nations, including the entire "Axis of Evil." Levy and Scott-Clark (The Amber Room) work on a larger canvas, shaping their in-depth reporting into a compelling and more detailed narrative. They have not truly improved upon Langewiesche's portrait of A.Q. Khan, the metallurgist who became "Pakistan's biggest and most valuable personality" after smuggling atomic secrets out of the Netherlands. But they do substantially support the idea that the nuclear program influenced Pakistan's internal power struggles, and that American government officials led disinformation campaigns for 30 years in order to hang onto the nation as a dubious ally against first the Soviets and then al-Qaeda. The authors also hint at the possible involvement of Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby in an attempt to discredit an intelligence analyst who spoke frankly of the Pakistani threat during the first Bush administration. 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. (Oct.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Kirkus Reviews
British journalists Levy and Scott-Clark (The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure, 2004, etc.) offer persuasive evidence that the United States looked the other way for years while Pakistan developed a nuclear bomb and exported weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and other enemies of the West. In the early 1970s, write the authors, Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan stole European centrifuge technology to enrich uranium and developed his secret research laboratory in Kahuta. Years later, the mercurial Khan would give a sham public confession to having run a black market in nuclear weapons on his own, when in fact he worked for Pakistan's military government. The authors provide detailed accounts of Khan's dealings with Western suppliers, his relations with a succession of his country's leaders and his wooing of customers in "Axis of Evil" and other nations. Most alarming in this mind-boggling expose are the deliberate efforts by U.S. administrations from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush to conceal the fact that Pakistan even had a nuclear bomb. Needing the Pakistanis as allies against the Soviets in Afghanistan and later in the "war on terror," the presidents lied to Congress that the Islamic nation had no nuclear weapons (making it possible to give Pakistan billions of dollars in aid, some of which Khan diverted to his nuclear program), helped Pakistan circumvent laws against procurement in the United States and destroyed documents that might shed light on the situation, all the while touting a non-proliferation policy. The silencing of former CIA and Pentagon analyst Richard Barlow, the leading in-house expert on Pakistan's weapons program, who fought to bring thetruth to Congress, is one of many outrages recounted in this tale of expediency run amok. The authors also note that the "greatest nuclear scandal of our age" continues, with Pakistan still buying and selling nuclear technology, heightening American vulnerability to nuclear terrorism. Simultaneously astonishing, maddening and absolutely frightening.
From the Publisher
An un-putdownable and explosive account of our most recent times that reveals how while our leaders in the West claimed to be securing our future they were ultimately responsible for one of the greatest deceptions of the age.” —Simon Reeve, author of the New York Times best-seller The New Jackals Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism.
APR/MAY 08 - AudioFile
A.Q. Khan set about to learn and procure nuclear bomb technology for his native country, Pakistan. He secretly purchased and imported raw materials and specialized equipment from European and American suppliers to build his weapons. Narrator Richard Poe's rendition makes a long and detailed book agreeable for listeners by suiting his demeanor to what is being said, and modifying his voice to become incredulous, angry, doubtful, or sad. He also rolls off the abundant Arabic and Urdu names with ease and fluency. Poe avoids long pauses to set off quoted material, instead using vocal inflections that signify a change from the author's words to those of another. This history of a nuclear theft explains why Pakistan poses such a threat to the world today. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
