The Man who turned nuclear secrets into a business

The parts were travelling by cargo ship. The bomb designs turned up in shopping bags from a Pakistani tailor.

Between them lay a secret that would shake governments across three continents: some of the knowledge needed to pursue a nuclear weapon had become merchandise. And the man at the centre of the trade was celebrated in his own country as a national hero.

His name was Abdul Qadeer Khan.

It is October 2003, a freighter called the BBC China was diverted to Italy before it could complete its journey to Libya. Its cargo included components for about 1,000 centrifuges, machines used to enrich uranium. Manufactured in Malaysia and shipped through the Middle East, the parts were intended for Muammar Gaddafi’s clandestine nuclear programme.

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The interception helped expose an international supply network that connected factories, businessmen, intermediaries and governments. Later, investigators examining Libya’s programme also recovered nuclear weapons design documents.

Khan had helped make such transactions possible. He understood where to find the equipment, whom to approach and how to connect buyers with suppliers across borders. Technology guarded as a matter of national survival could now be acquired through an international network.

For Pakistan, his expertise had offered protection against India. For his overseas customers, it offered a chance to pursue nuclear ambitions of their own.

For Washington, it exposed the consequences of compromises made years earlier.

Long before the intercepted ship and the televised confession, Khan was a metallurgist working in the Netherlands. In 1972, he joined FDO, an engineering company associated with Urenco, the European uranium enrichment consortium.

It was a job that placed him close to sensitive technology and the people who supplied it.

His security clearance was limited. His access proved much broader. Translation assignments, professional relationships and weak security practices brought him into contact with confidential centrifuge information.

He also learned something that would become just as valuable as the documents: who made the equipment.

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A design could explain a machine. A supplier could help turn it into something that worked.

Thousands of kilometres away, Pakistan’s leaders were confronting a national crisis. The country’s defeat in the 1971 war with India had resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. Then, in 1974, India conducted its first nuclear test.

For Pakistan, the military imbalance had acquired a frightening new dimension.

Khan offered his help. When he returned to Pakistan in late 1975, his knowledge and European contacts gave the country another route towards a nuclear weapon.

The undertaking still required years of work, enormous resources and the contributions of many other scientists and officials. But Khan became a central figure in its uranium enrichment effort at Kahuta.

Overseas suppliers helped provide equipment. Procurement connections crossed borders. Pakistan gradually developed capabilities that other governments were trying to prevent it from acquiring.

Western intelligence was uncovering the programme by the late 1970s. Yet knowing about it and stopping it were very different propositions.

Former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers later said the CIA had asked the Netherlands to refrain from acting against Khan so intelligence officers could follow his activities.

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The logic, according to that account, was to keep watching and learn more.

It was a gamble with consequences that would extend far beyond the Netherlands.

Then, in December 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan.

Pakistan suddenly became indispensable to Washington. Its territory and intelligence service offered a route for supporting the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union.

American officials now had competing objectives: prevent Pakistan from acquiring nuclear weapons and preserve its cooperation in the struggle against Moscow.

The nuclear issue repeatedly lost ground.

Declassified records show that officials questioned Pakistani assurances and worried about its procurement activities. Efforts to restrict sensitive exports continued. But Washington’s willingness to confront Islamabad was constrained by the value of the alliance.

Pakistan had become too useful to alienate.

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As its nuclear programme advanced, Khan’s international connections eventually began serving other customers.

A network assembled to obtain technology for Pakistan became a channel through which sensitive technology could leave it.

Iran, North Korea and Libya became customers. Equipment, expertise and supplier contacts moved across borders through a web of intermediaries and manufacturers.

The network could bring together assistance that a buyer would otherwise have struggled to obtain. A factory might manufacture components in one country while a middleman arranged their movement through another. Different participants supplied pieces of a much larger enterprise.

Khan had helped turn nuclear procurement into an international business.

That did not mean a customer could simply pay for a finished bomb. Libya’s experience would demonstrate the distance between acquiring equipment and mastering it. Technical problems, limited expertise and the difficulty of making the pieces work together remained substantial obstacles.

But the network had lowered barriers that governments depended on to slow the spread of nuclear weapons.

Eventually, American and British intelligence penetrated it. Information about its activities gave them a clearer view of Libya’s purchases and helped lead to the BBC China interception.

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By then, Gaddafi’s government was already discussing its weapons programmes with Britain and the United States. Those talks had begun in March 2003, months before the ship was stopped.

The seizure strengthened the pressure on Tripoli. It also made continued concealment harder.

On December 19, 2003, Libya announced that it would abandon its prohibited weapons programmes.

Inspections exposed imported equipment, undeclared activities and nuclear weapons design documents. They also revealed that Libya remained far from producing a nuclear weapon.

For Khan, however, the disclosures were devastating.

In February 2004, the man celebrated for helping secure Pakistan’s future appeared on national television and accepted responsibility for proliferation activities.

President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him. Khan then spent years under house arrest.

The confession offered a politically convenient explanation that a celebrated scientist had conducted an illicit operation without the knowledge of the state.

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Khan later challenged that account. He retracted his confession and said he had been made a scapegoat to protect Pakistan.

Pakistani authorities maintained their position. Foreign investigators were denied direct access to him.

His role in the network was established. The full extent of official knowledge and authorisation remained disputed.

When Khan died on October 10, 2021, aged 85, Pakistan’s leaders praised his contribution to national security. To many Pakistanis, he had helped give their country the means to deter a stronger neighbour.

Elsewhere, his name remained inseparable from the sale of nuclear secrets.

Both reputations grew from the same career.

Khan understood the fear that drove governments to seek a bomb. He had helped his own country answer that fear, then became central to a network that supplied others.

His story leaves a difficult question for the countries trying to prevent another such enterprise.

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What can they offer a government that believes its survival depends on acquiring the very weapon they insist it must never have?

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