Synopses & Reviews
The startling story of Americas role, over three decades and five administrations, in aiding and abetting a new age of nuclear terror.
In a masterful investigation, Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark reveal the disastrous ideological shortsightedness that has informed American policy toward Pakistan over the last thirty years, and how decades of parochial and sometimes criminal policy enabled a nuclear scandal to evolve. Although seen as a crucial ally, Pakistan instead betrayed the West, building a vast nuclear arsenal in large part with U.S. aid money and selling the technology to countries hostile to the West, while more recently giving shelter to the resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda. Deception puts our current standoffs with Iran and North Korea, and the quagmire in Iraq, in a startling new perspective, revealing how by giving the Pakistan military succor, the United States has helped usher in a new age of nuclear terror. Based on hundreds of interviews over the past decade in the United States, Pakistan, India, Israel and the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia, it is a masterwork of reportage and dramatic storytelling by two of the worlds most resourceful investigative journalists. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are internationally renowned and award-winning investigative journalists who 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 two highly acclaimed books: 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.
On December 15, 1975, A. Q. Khana young Pakistani scientist working in Hollandstole top-secret blueprints for a revolutionary new process to arm a nuclear bomb. His original intention, and that of his government, was purely patrioticto 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 secretsa 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. Nuclear 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. "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.'"Douglas Farah, The Washington Post
"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
"British journalists Levy and Scott-Clark 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 the Axis of Evil and other nations. Most alarming in this mind-boggling exposé 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 the truth 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."Kirkus Reviews
"Earlier this year, William Langewiesche's The Atomic Bazaar alerted 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 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 team 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)
Synopsis
The startling story of Americas role, over three decades and five administrations, in aiding and abetting a new age of nuclear terror.
In a masterful investigation, Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark reveal the disastrous ideological shortsightedness that has informed American policy toward Pakistan over the last thirty years, and how decades of parochial and sometimes criminal policy enabled a nuclear scandal to evolve. Although seen as a crucial ally, Pakistan instead betrayed the West, building a vast nuclear arsenal in large part with U.S. aid money and selling the technology to countries hostile to the West, while more recently giving shelter to the resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda. Deception puts our current standoffs with Iran and North Korea, and the quagmire in Iraq, in a startling new perspective, revealing how by giving the Pakistan military succor, the United States has helped usher in a new age of nuclear terror. Based on hundreds of interviews over the past decade in the United States, Pakistan, India, Israel and the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia, it is a masterwork of reportage and dramatic storytelling by two of the worlds most resourceful investigative journalists.
About the Author
Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are internationally renowned and award-winning investigative journalists who worked as staff writers and correspondents for the Sunday Times of London for seven years before joining the Guardian as senior correspondents. They are the authors of two highly acclaimed books, 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 France. Their Web site is www.clarkandlevy.com.