The Man Who Sold the Bomb
How Pakistan's A.Q. Khan outwitted Western intelligence to build a global nuclear-smuggling ring that made the world a more dangerous place
By BILL POWELL AND TIM MCGIRK/ISLAMABAD
Posted Sunday, February 6, 2005
Not long ago, Abdul Qadeer Khan used to walk into a wooded park across the street from his mansion in Pakistan's capital city and feed the monkeys who lived there. That was when he was a national hero and a multimillionaire, owner of a fleet of vintage cars and properties from Dubai to Timbuktu. But Khan, 68, no longer crosses the street to feed the monkeys. These days he is almost never seen outside. His house, which lies just over a grassy hillside from Islamabad's King Faisal Mosque, is modern, squat and dark, its facade concealed behind a vine-covered wall. To the casual observer, the house provides just one clue to its owner's sinister profession. At the end of his driveway sits a large jasmine bush, trimmed into an odd but unmistakable shape: that of a mushroom cloud.
When President George W. Bush identified the main threats to global security in his State of the Union address last week, the name A.Q. Khan was not on the list. In some respects, that's not surprising.
Khan is under house arrest, his every move monitored by Pakistani government agents. He is said to be in failing health, and will probably live out his days a recluse. And yet one year after Khan appeared on Pakistani television and confessed to selling some of that country's most prized secrets, the world is only beginning to uncover the extent of his treachery—and comprehend how one man did more to destabilize the planet than did many of the world's worst regimes.
For more than a decade. . .
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