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AQ Khan: How to Live Dangerously · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm welcome into the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
0:16
Speaker 2: Should Know, Foreign Policy Edition.
0:19
Speaker 1: That's right, take it away.
0:22
Speaker 2: Okay, So Chuck, we're talking today. Well let me start differently, Chuck. Yes,
0:28
Speaker 2: have you ever met Aq Khan?
0:31
Speaker 1: I had never heard of Aq Khn?
0:33
Speaker 2: What do you think of him? Now?
0:38
Speaker 1: You know, seems like a guy that made a lot
0:41
Speaker 1: of money helping countries develop their nuclear program.
0:45
Speaker 2: Sure, but I think that leaves out some very important stuff.
0:49
Speaker 2: This was in flagrant violation of UN non proliferation treaties.
0:54
Speaker 2: Who was generally illegal, and he was even doing it
0:57
Speaker 2: on the side. He had an underground clandestine proliferation network,
1:02
Speaker 2: which is I mean, that's very few people have ever
1:06
Speaker 2: done that in the world. Over here in the West, Chuck,
1:10
Speaker 2: he's viewed as a villain, and in other parts of
1:13
Speaker 2: the world, especially Pakistan where he's from, he's hailed as
1:17
Speaker 2: a hero. He's very complex, complicated, and at the end
1:21
Speaker 2: of the day, he may essentially be generally a fall
1:25
Speaker 2: guy for a much larger cabal of people who were
1:28
Speaker 2: actually doing.
1:29
Speaker 1: This, Yeah, for sure. I guess we can go back
1:33
Speaker 1: and talk a little bit about how he got there, right, Yeah.
1:36
Speaker 2: I think so.
1:38
Speaker 1: He was born in India in nineteen thirty six and
1:41
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two moved to West Pakistan and he
1:46
Speaker 1: was into metallurgy and studied at a few different universities
1:49
Speaker 1: in a few different countries. He eventually graduated initially in
1:52
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty from the University of Karachi, but then got
1:56
Speaker 1: a doctorate in metallurgical engineering in nineteen seventy two. In
2:01
Speaker 1: that time, he got married, had a couple of daughters,
2:06
Speaker 1: and then eventually he found his way with his family
2:08
Speaker 1: in the early seventies and the Netherlands working for a
2:13
Speaker 1: company called Physical Dynamic Research Laboratory which was doing uranium
2:19
Speaker 1: enrichment for another company called Urinko, which was a consortium
2:24
Speaker 1: of a few different countries Britain, Germany and the Netherlands,
2:29
Speaker 1: and they were, you know, they were running ultracentrifuges and
2:34
Speaker 1: he was pretty good at snooping around.
2:36
Speaker 2: It seems like, yeah, in ultracentrifuge r centrifugias in general
2:40
Speaker 2: is used to enricheranium in your rich uranium to a
2:43
Speaker 2: certain extent to use for nuclear power. But if you
2:47
Speaker 2: keep going, you can use that enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Right,
2:51
Speaker 2: So I think that these companies were doing this for
2:55
Speaker 2: power for power generation. But regardless, he wasn't a particular
3:00
Speaker 2: like brilliant physicists or metal or just or anything like that.
3:03
Speaker 2: He was just kind of a dude. He just had
3:07
Speaker 2: a will that was unlike other people's typically. So when
3:11
Speaker 2: he started out, he had a very low level security clearance,
3:14
Speaker 2: but he very quickly like started making waves and catching
3:18
Speaker 2: the attention of Dutch intelligence agencies for asking a lot
3:22
Speaker 2: of questions that did not have much of anything to
3:25
Speaker 2: do with the work he was supposed to be doing.
3:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they started monitoring him, and this is something
3:32
Speaker 1: that kind of continued at at least as far as
3:35
Speaker 1: Dutch intelligence, and then you know, eventually other countries would
3:37
Speaker 1: start monitoring as well, because you know, like I said,
3:42
Speaker 1: he got pretty good at snooping around. And in nineteen
3:45
Speaker 1: seventy one there was a conflict between East and West
3:49
Speaker 1: Pakistan and that led to a pretty brief war with India,
3:56
Speaker 1: and just for our purposes, what that eventually meant was
4:00
Speaker 1: a khan and a lot of Pakistan were kind of
4:04
Speaker 1: humiliated at the whole thing, and we're like, we're still
4:07
Speaker 1: under the thumb of India here, and kind of just
4:09
Speaker 1: sort of got that I guess national Pakistani pride going,
4:15
Speaker 1: as you know, wanting to get out from under that thumb.
4:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that that in that thirteen day war,
4:22
Speaker 2: Pakistan lost half its navy, a quarter of its air force,
4:25
Speaker 2: and a third of its army. So it was very
4:28
Speaker 2: much a humiliating defeat. And yeah, I saw that. Up
4:32
Speaker 2: to this point, aq Kan was just a generally average person,
4:36
Speaker 2: but that seemed to have really started to get him going.
4:39
Speaker 2: So he decided he was going to use what expertise
4:42
Speaker 2: he had to help build a bomb for Pakistan. So
4:46
Speaker 2: he wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Pakistan,
4:50
Speaker 2: Zulfa kar Ali Bhutto, who was running the show at
4:53
Speaker 2: the time, and said, Hey, I want to help build
4:56
Speaker 2: a nuclear bomb for Pakistan. We clearly need one. And
4:59
Speaker 2: if you said back and look at it, chuck like,
5:01
Speaker 2: this is just some random dude that the Prime Minister
5:04
Speaker 2: had never heard of who wrote him a letter and
5:06
Speaker 2: said like, hey, let's build a bomb. And I heard
5:09
Speaker 2: the first time he was ignored and the second time,
5:11
Speaker 2: they were like, all right, let's see what this guy
5:12
Speaker 2: has to say.
5:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he was lobbying for uranium and that was
5:17
Speaker 1: his expertise, was enriching uranium and at the time, Pakistan
5:22
Speaker 1: was trying to enrich and produce plutonium. And he was like,
5:25
Speaker 1: that's not the way. Uranium is the way to go.
5:28
Speaker 1: And just a couple of months after that, Bhutto met
5:31
Speaker 1: with him and over about the next eleven or twelve months,
5:35
Speaker 1: con was like, all right, I'm going to make a
5:36
Speaker 1: little grocery shopping list of what we need, the parts
5:40
Speaker 1: that we need to get a nuclear program started here
5:42
Speaker 1: in earnest and I'm going to make a list of
5:44
Speaker 1: companies and suppliers and who can get us this stuff.
5:48
Speaker 1: And he basically got all of this information while he
5:52
Speaker 1: was working for that Dutch company, right, you know, making
5:56
Speaker 1: copies of blueprints and sneaking them out and supply lists,
5:59
Speaker 1: suppers lists and stuff like that.
6:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was very well known around the office or
6:04
Speaker 2: be like making capies.
6:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.
6:07
Speaker 2: So he well, I just dated myself. Can we just
6:11
Speaker 2: do a little science minute off to the side.
6:14
Speaker 1: Sure.
6:14
Speaker 2: So you said that there was a course that Pakistan
6:18
Speaker 2: was already on for making a bomb out of plutonium. Right.
6:22
Speaker 2: Aq Con was all about enriching uranium. There are two
6:25
Speaker 2: routes you can use to make a nuclear bomb, and
6:27
Speaker 2: the background and training khan Head was in uranium enrichment,
6:31
Speaker 2: and he loved to like talk trash about plutonium and
6:35
Speaker 2: the people in Pakistan running the plutonium program. But just
6:38
Speaker 2: the upshot of it is this, if you want to
6:42
Speaker 2: get weapons grade uranium, you need about ninety percent pure
6:46
Speaker 2: uranium in nature. The U two thirty five uranium that
6:52
Speaker 2: you're looking for occurs about three quarters of a percent
6:56
Speaker 2: of any natural lump of uranium. So there's two ways
6:59
Speaker 2: to get that purified U two thirty five. One is enrichment,
7:03
Speaker 2: where you spin it in centrifugias that go so fast
7:06
Speaker 2: that it actually separates the different kinds of uranium isotopes
7:10
Speaker 2: and then you just kind of siphon off the stuff
7:12
Speaker 2: you want. Or with plutonium, you bombard it with neutron
7:15
Speaker 2: so that uranium two thirty eight eventually turns into two
7:19
Speaker 2: thirty nine, decays into neptunium and then plutonium. They're both
7:24
Speaker 2: like great ways of creating nuclear material to blow up
7:27
Speaker 2: the world with, but they're just two totally different tracks.
7:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we did a whole episode on that. If
7:32
Speaker 1: you're interested in like the finer details, seek that one out.
7:36
Speaker 2: Was that the one that we did after Fukushima?
7:40
Speaker 1: I don't know, but we did a whole episode on
7:42
Speaker 1: how to that whole process. I can't remember what it
7:44
Speaker 1: was called, though.
7:45
Speaker 2: Well I can't help but talk about it. I love
7:47
Speaker 2: that for some reason, really like tickles me.
7:50
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in October of seventy five, the Dutch authorities
7:53
Speaker 1: who had been watching him this whole time, noting all
7:56
Speaker 1: this sort of suspicious stuff that he was doing at work,
8:00
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to transfer you out of these
8:04
Speaker 1: enrichment projects because we think you're, you know, you're clearly
8:08
Speaker 1: some sort of a snoop or a thread or something.
8:11
Speaker 1: And just a couple of months after that, and I
8:14
Speaker 1: guess late nineteen seventy five, in December, he left the
8:18
Speaker 1: company all together and had you know, basically under his
8:23
Speaker 1: in his banker's box on the way out the door.
8:26
Speaker 1: He had a bunch of sensitive documents, blueprints and those
8:29
Speaker 1: supplier lists, and he said, don't bother looking in these
8:32
Speaker 1: banker boxes. The lid is on, right.
8:34
Speaker 2: He just kind of vanished and showed back up in
8:36
Speaker 2: Pakistan and he was very quickly put in charge of
8:39
Speaker 2: the uranium project. And there was a guy named Manir
8:43
Speaker 2: Ahmad Khan who was essentially his rival in the quest
8:47
Speaker 2: to build Pakistan a bomb. The other Cohn was involved
8:51
Speaker 2: in the plutonium wing of the whole thing. Khn eventually
8:55
Speaker 2: got Bhutto and then the guy who overthrew Bhuto over
8:59
Speaker 2: to his side in favor of uranium enrichment, but also
9:02
Speaker 2: in favor of aq Con. From what I could tell,
9:05
Speaker 2: he had a really big ego and he wanted to
9:08
Speaker 2: be like the top dog in getting Pakistan the bomb,
9:12
Speaker 2: and so he was working on the project called Project
9:15
Speaker 2: seven oh six. It was the uranium Enrichment project, and
9:20
Speaker 2: by nineteen eighty two, I think they managed to produce
9:25
Speaker 2: the highly enriched uranium that you need to make a bomb,
9:28
Speaker 2: very very small amount at first, you need several kilograms
9:31
Speaker 2: to actually make a bomb, but they were successful at
9:34
Speaker 2: doing it through that uranium enrichment program by nineteen eighty
9:37
Speaker 2: two for the first time.
9:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as they're doing this, are also researching how
9:42
Speaker 1: to get this thing into a missile. So you know,
9:45
Speaker 1: as you'll see, I mean, if you just look back
9:47
Speaker 1: at the history of enriching uranium or for nuclear energy.
9:53
Speaker 1: It's usually a country is like, hey, you know, we
9:56
Speaker 1: just want to have a nuclear energy company and we
9:59
Speaker 1: want to get a to speed on that. But what
10:01
Speaker 1: they're also trying to do is get a nuclear bomb.
10:05
Speaker 2: They're also making copies.
10:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of just happens over and over and
10:09
Speaker 1: over where they're like, no, no, no, we just want nuclear
10:11
Speaker 1: energy and don't worry about what's in that bunker over there.
10:15
Speaker 2: Right and again I kind of I mentioned it at
10:17
Speaker 2: the outset. The reason that countries have to do it
10:20
Speaker 2: like that is because there's a huge treaty from the
10:23
Speaker 2: sixties that said, Okay, the people who already have the bomb,
10:27
Speaker 2: they're agreeing to disassemble it. People who don't have the bomb,
10:31
Speaker 2: they're going to agree not to seek the bomb. And
10:34
Speaker 2: it's still in effect and it's still enforced. So that's
10:37
Speaker 2: why you have to do it right exactly. But it's
10:41
Speaker 2: just been so just kind of nibble that and worn
10:44
Speaker 2: down and just flagrantly ignored that. It doesn't really seem
10:48
Speaker 2: to have that much teeth, but I guess it's enough
10:51
Speaker 2: to make countries feel like they have to be subversive
10:53
Speaker 2: when they're trying to create a nuclear weapons program.
10:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So while he's doing all this, and you
11:01
Speaker 1: mentioned at the beginning that he had a side gig,
11:04
Speaker 1: you know, getting rich off of selling these secrets and
11:07
Speaker 1: blueprints and helping other countries, you know, get in touch
11:11
Speaker 1: with the right. As you'll see, he worked with a
11:13
Speaker 1: lot of middlemen over the years and spoke a bunch
11:16
Speaker 1: of different languages, so he was really kind of the
11:19
Speaker 1: perfect dude to do this. And while he was doing this,
11:22
Speaker 1: he developed that side gig as importing and exporting all
11:27
Speaker 1: these components and plans that you know, some of which
11:29
Speaker 1: he just outright stole.
11:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was able to do this in large
11:34
Speaker 2: part because he had by this time garnered so much
11:37
Speaker 2: respect in Pakistan among the leadership of Pakistan, emerging as
11:41
Speaker 2: the guy who was giving the bomb or developing the
11:44
Speaker 2: bomb for Pakistan that they just weren't. They were like,
11:48
Speaker 2: just go, here's a blank check, do whatever you need
11:50
Speaker 2: to do. So he started ordering doubles of the stuff yeah,
11:54
Speaker 2: that he was he needed to set up Pakistan's uranium
11:57
Speaker 2: enrichment program, and then he would take the stuff that
12:01
Speaker 2: he didn't need and turn around and essentially reverse the
12:04
Speaker 2: way that it got there. He would use Pakistani military
12:09
Speaker 2: planes cargo planes to take those parts, the extra parts
12:13
Speaker 2: back to middlemen, and then he'd tell the middlemen what
12:15
Speaker 2: buyers to direct it to, and then he'd pocket the money.
12:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was very lucrative, as we'll see, he
12:23
Speaker 1: ended up making a ton of money doing this. He
12:25
Speaker 1: ended up having a few kind of major clients. No
12:28
Speaker 1: one really knows how many countries he really dealt with,
12:31
Speaker 1: because I think they found out he traveled to many
12:34
Speaker 1: more countries than they officially sort of accused him of
12:39
Speaker 1: dealing with. But the first country to step up and
12:43
Speaker 1: say hey, I really want to do business with you
12:46
Speaker 1: was Iran, and this was in nineteen eighty seven. He
12:50
Speaker 1: helped them build up to fifty thousand centrifuges P one
12:56
Speaker 1: types Pakistan won. There are a couple of different types,
13:00
Speaker 1: Pakistan one and the P two, the Pakistan two. Those
13:03
Speaker 1: the P twos are much faster. And the belief at
13:06
Speaker 1: the time is that he was just kind of sending
13:09
Speaker 1: the stuff that they didn't need anymore to Iran and
13:11
Speaker 1: it was kind of outdated equipment that wasn't going to
13:14
Speaker 1: help him that much.
13:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, that's how it started out. They were
13:18
Speaker 2: they because Pakistan upgraded their setup from what I saw.
13:22
Speaker 2: And the reason why you need fifty thousand centrifuges is
13:26
Speaker 2: because when you spin that uranium to separate it and
13:31
Speaker 2: you siphon off the stuff you want, you have to
13:33
Speaker 2: do it again and again and again and again, and
13:35
Speaker 2: it can take weeks and months and sometimes years depending
13:38
Speaker 2: on what kind of centrifuges you're working with. But if
13:40
Speaker 2: you have fifty thousand centrifuges like Iran supposedly got, you
13:45
Speaker 2: can make a lot of highly enriched uranium fairly fast. Which,
13:50
Speaker 2: let me know, wonder, Chuck, like, what is taking Iran
13:54
Speaker 2: so long? If they still don't have a nuke and
13:56
Speaker 2: they started in nineteen eighty seven, What's what's the deal there?
14:00
Speaker 2: And the best answer I could come up with is
14:03
Speaker 2: that back in the nineties, the Ayatola issued a fatois
14:06
Speaker 2: like a ruling on Sharia law that basically said no nukes,
14:10
Speaker 2: Iran's not going to have any nukes, and that it
14:12
Speaker 2: wasn't until twenty twenty four that Iran said that they
14:15
Speaker 2: were starting to rethink it. So I guess just because
14:19
Speaker 2: the leadership said they weren't going to have nukes. That
14:21
Speaker 2: is the reason Iran doesn't have a nuke right now.
14:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting, I thought so too. So he was dealing
14:28
Speaker 1: with their government. Supposedly until nineteen ninety one there was
14:33
Speaker 1: a final shipment of the p ones, but other people
14:36
Speaker 1: have said no, no, no. That continued for at least
14:38
Speaker 1: another four years through the mid nineties, and those P
14:41
Speaker 1: two centerfuges started flowing in. Iran wanted this potential bomb
14:48
Speaker 1: because they were at war with Iraq at the time
14:50
Speaker 1: in the eighties, over the course of about eight years,
14:53
Speaker 1: So Khan over the businessman, was like, hey, Iraq, I've
14:57
Speaker 1: been helping Iran developed their You could probably use a
15:01
Speaker 1: little with my help in stolen documents as well.
15:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's crazy is Iroq was like very suspicious of
15:08
Speaker 2: this from the outset, and I guess they asked for
15:12
Speaker 2: a sample and they couldn't find what sample they were given.
15:17
Speaker 2: Just that con was like, don't taste this, that's not
15:19
Speaker 2: that kind of sample.
15:21
Speaker 1: Right, And I think you dab your pinky in it, Yeah, exactly,
15:24
Speaker 1: put it on your tongue.
15:25
Speaker 2: It's like, don't do that. So I guess a rock
15:29
Speaker 2: thought that this is some sort of maybe international un
15:32
Speaker 2: sting operation. And then around the same time, the first
15:35
Speaker 2: Gulf War broke out and they were like, we don't
15:38
Speaker 2: have time for this, so they moved on. And I
15:41
Speaker 2: guess he never managed to get a bomb or the
15:45
Speaker 2: information a rock needed to a rock.
15:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there were documents that said, hey, this little
15:52
Speaker 1: you know, the paperwork was there. This will cost you
15:54
Speaker 1: five million bucks and a ten percent commission on materials
15:58
Speaker 1: right through my network, So I can you know, pay
16:00
Speaker 1: people off basically. But yeah, like you said, it seems
16:04
Speaker 1: like it never ended up happening, and Iraq was probably
16:07
Speaker 1: wise to think that that was a sting operation even
16:09
Speaker 1: though it wasn't.
16:10
Speaker 2: Well, what something I saw that was kind of funny
16:13
Speaker 2: was Iran paid three million dollars for THEIRS and they
16:16
Speaker 2: actually were like ten percent commission. That seems steep, So
16:20
Speaker 2: they went and started calling up the list of suppliers
16:23
Speaker 2: that aq Con had for him, rather than dealing with him,
16:27
Speaker 2: because they were bargain shopping for their nuclear.
16:29
Speaker 1: Pro Well apparently, well maybe that has something to do
16:32
Speaker 1: with it too.
16:35
Speaker 2: Their nuclear centrifuges were held together bubble gum and duct tape.
16:40
Speaker 1: Should we take a break. Yeah's all right, we'll come
16:43
Speaker 1: back and talk about a couple of more clients right
16:45
Speaker 1: after this. All right, so we're back, and we promised
17:17
Speaker 1: to talk about new clients. This is where North Korea
17:20
Speaker 1: enters a picture. It's the mid nineties, and with a
17:24
Speaker 1: deal with the United States, North Korea said, you know what,
17:27
Speaker 1: we're going to stop building our nuclear reactors. We're going
17:31
Speaker 1: to stop producing plutonium again. We're just trying to get
17:35
Speaker 1: nuclear energy going. But all right, we'll stop doing that.
17:39
Speaker 1: But what we're really going to do is very quietly
17:42
Speaker 1: start looking to continue that process, just on the down load.
17:46
Speaker 2: Right, But Kim Jung il had his fingers crossed behind
17:49
Speaker 2: his back, so none of that counted.
17:51
Speaker 1: That's right. And so who do they turn to? Of
17:53
Speaker 1: course they turned to Pakistan and aq Kan.
17:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is where it really seems like Pakistan.
18:00
Speaker 2: Pakistani officials were definitely involved in this, even though later on,
18:04
Speaker 2: as we'll see, they're like, we had nothing to do
18:06
Speaker 2: with this. But Pakistan conducted its first nuclear test in
18:11
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight, which really surprised the world, and even
18:15
Speaker 2: more dramatically, they did it in response to a test
18:18
Speaker 2: that India had carried out two weeks before and during
18:22
Speaker 2: this test. One of the groups that was there was
18:25
Speaker 2: a delegation of North Koreans who were invited to watch
18:29
Speaker 2: the whole thing. And the common wisdom among the intelligence
18:33
Speaker 2: community is that this was a group of nuclear scientists
18:36
Speaker 2: from North Korea's nuclear program who are basically being you know,
18:41
Speaker 2: run through the motions of how this is working. I
18:43
Speaker 2: don't know if we said or not. Also, a q
18:45
Speaker 2: Khan was known to have gone to North Korea at
18:47
Speaker 2: least thirteen times that were documented. Something really weird happened
18:52
Speaker 2: during this nuclear test with the North Korean delegation though,
18:56
Speaker 2: and that was that one of them, a woman who
18:58
Speaker 2: was among this group died. Mys seriously. She was shot
19:02
Speaker 2: and eventually sent back to North Korea. Her body was
19:06
Speaker 2: but on the cargo plane were centrifuges and other things
19:10
Speaker 2: for North Korea's nuclear program too.
19:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, was that just like, Hey, we've got this plane going,
19:17
Speaker 1: so why don't we just double dip and get some
19:20
Speaker 1: stuff moved, maybe transporting this body.
19:23
Speaker 2: Maybe Pakistan is the bargain shop as well.
19:29
Speaker 1: So, like you said, he went to North Korea at
19:32
Speaker 1: least thirteen times that intelligence knows about. And while he
19:36
Speaker 1: was helping North Korea sort of develop their enrichment program.
19:40
Speaker 1: They were supplying Pakistan. It was a bit of a
19:43
Speaker 1: quid pro quo. They're like, hey, we've got long distance
19:47
Speaker 1: missile technology that you don't have, and so we're perfect
19:50
Speaker 1: bedfellows here.
19:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so they got the missiles from North Korea
19:55
Speaker 2: through a guy named Kang. He was on paper the
19:59
Speaker 2: dip the astor to Pakistan for North Korea. In reality,
20:03
Speaker 2: he was the husband of the woman who was murdered.
20:05
Speaker 2: She turned out to be murdered during the missile test
20:08
Speaker 2: because she was spying for the US, but her husband
20:11
Speaker 2: managed to hang in there and it turns out he
20:14
Speaker 2: was an armstealer for North Korea. He was the one
20:16
Speaker 2: who provided the missiles. So again, all this time, North
20:20
Speaker 2: Korea is saying like, we don't have a nuclear program.
20:22
Speaker 2: Pakistan's like, we don't even know what anybody's talking about.
20:25
Speaker 2: This is all in retrospect, like this is not on
20:28
Speaker 2: a lot of people's radar right now. And as a
20:30
Speaker 2: matter of fact, Aq Khan was on the radar of
20:34
Speaker 2: international intelligence communities again all the way back to the
20:37
Speaker 2: with the seventies, when the Dutch started watching him but somehow,
20:41
Speaker 2: some way, the global intelligence community missed the fact that
20:46
Speaker 2: he was a rogue nuclear weapons technology salesman, which is
20:52
Speaker 2: one of the weirdest things ever. But it turned out
20:55
Speaker 2: that it was his next business venture in Libya that
21:00
Speaker 2: led to his downfall.
21:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there were you know, later on they
21:04
Speaker 1: were they were like, yeah, we knew he was ordering
21:06
Speaker 1: double the amount of everything, and we just couldn't figure
21:11
Speaker 1: out why.
21:11
Speaker 2: Right, it makes zero. There's a lot about this that
21:14
Speaker 2: just really smells like a kind of a poorly constructed
21:17
Speaker 2: cover up internationally, not just from Pakistan.
21:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, the next client step forward,
21:24
Speaker 1: and that was Libya. And this was in the late nineties,
21:28
Speaker 1: like nineteen ninety six, ninety seven. He started trading centrifuges
21:33
Speaker 1: and the equipment and the components getting them over to Libya.
21:38
Speaker 1: This there's a guy here named Peter Griffin. Not what
21:42
Speaker 1: you're thinking from family guy is a real life human.
21:45
Speaker 1: It was a British engineer who was involved in this
21:48
Speaker 1: operation who was like, man, I've been I've been given
21:52
Speaker 1: or not giving, but I've been selling material to Pakistan
21:55
Speaker 1: for you know, twenty years or more like this has
21:58
Speaker 1: been going on for a long time.
22:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was a huge thing that allowed this
22:02
Speaker 2: to go on. Is like the international community would ban
22:05
Speaker 2: parts for like centrifuges or breeder reactors that you made
22:09
Speaker 2: plutonium with, and then people like Iq Khan would be like, well, fine,
22:13
Speaker 2: we're going to start shipping the parts to make those
22:15
Speaker 2: parts and then assemble the parts at the at the end.
22:18
Speaker 2: So they were legitimately allowed to do this stuff. It
22:22
Speaker 2: was just they still had to fake what the overall
22:25
Speaker 2: purpose was. So yeah, guys like Peter Griffin were like,
22:28
Speaker 2: I actually wasn't breaking any laws. It was more like
22:31
Speaker 2: an international more that was broken where he knew he
22:35
Speaker 2: was helping states that should not have nuclear bombs get
22:40
Speaker 2: nuclear bombs essentially.
22:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So Peter Griffin, Peter Griffin.
22:46
Speaker 2: There's just no way that couldn't do something.
22:49
Speaker 1: I guess that was. Uh, oh, what's the guy's name.
22:52
Speaker 1: I haven't watched Family Gun so long? Cleveland, Peter Cleveland. Yeah,
22:55
Speaker 1: that's right. So Peter Griffin was a partner and a
23:00
Speaker 1: company from Dubai, and in two thousand and one they
23:03
Speaker 1: placed a bunch of orders for these parts that they
23:06
Speaker 1: needed with a Malaysian company, and that company spun off
23:11
Speaker 1: a subsidiary and they hired workers and brought in, you know,
23:14
Speaker 1: all this equipment and brought in a bunch of new
23:17
Speaker 1: tools to start sort of you know, turning this into
23:20
Speaker 1: a real program. And Con was like for my part,
23:23
Speaker 1: you know, I've got all these blueprints to show you
23:25
Speaker 1: how to put this you know, big lego machine together.
23:30
Speaker 1: And he sent at least one engineer, so like active involvement,
23:33
Speaker 1: sending engineers to Dubai to like make sure they were
23:37
Speaker 1: doing everything correctly, so like deep involvement at this point.
23:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. Huge. So he had like middlemen from Europe, He
23:42
Speaker 2: had designers from Switzerland. He had companies that were set
23:46
Speaker 2: up to build the parts that were being shipped from Turkey,
23:51
Speaker 2: from Malaysia to Turkey to Dubai where they were repackaged
23:54
Speaker 2: and sent on to Libya. It was a huge network. Also,
23:57
Speaker 2: I forgot to say earlier. By this time, the CON
24:01
Speaker 2: network had their own sales bruchures that they used to
24:03
Speaker 2: hand out at ARM sales fares, which apparently they have
24:07
Speaker 2: ARM sales fares, but they had brochures by this point.
24:10
Speaker 2: That's that's how set up they were, I guess how established.
24:15
Speaker 2: That's what I was going for so it was a huge,
24:17
Speaker 2: huge network. But it was one of these shipments that
24:20
Speaker 2: somehow got intercepted and I think two thousand and three
24:24
Speaker 2: aboard the a ship called the BBC China, which as
24:28
Speaker 2: far as I noticed, I have anything to do with
24:30
Speaker 2: the BBC, And that was the thing that brought the
24:34
Speaker 2: whole thing down. Eventually, Chuck I proposed that since I
24:38
Speaker 2: remembered the word established, that kind of says we.
24:41
Speaker 1: Should take a break, all right, we'll be right back.
25:13
Speaker 2: So the whole thing came down with that Libya thing.
25:16
Speaker 2: Remember they had this amazing network going, all these amazing
25:21
Speaker 2: all this amazing subtrifuge going somehow, I don't know how,
25:27
Speaker 2: but a particular shipment aboard a ship called the BBC
25:30
Speaker 2: China was captured in I think, leaving Dubai en route
25:37
Speaker 2: to Libya. And at this point aq Con had basically
25:41
Speaker 2: been under great suspicion. I think he was being investigated
25:45
Speaker 2: by CIA and MI six at the same time. But
25:48
Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot you could do about this if
25:50
Speaker 2: you were the US, because you needed Pakistan at the time,
25:53
Speaker 2: as we'll talk about in a second. But when this
25:56
Speaker 2: shipment was found, it was a massive shipment of centrifuge
26:01
Speaker 2: is going to Libya. It was just all out in
26:03
Speaker 2: the open now, there was just no denying it. Even
26:06
Speaker 2: Pakistan couldn't protect aq Kan anymore.
26:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And like you said, it was pretty complicated.
26:12
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always been fairly complicated, with US and
26:15
Speaker 1: Pakistan as being like sometimes bedfellows because they were necessary
26:21
Speaker 1: for the US until they weren't, and then you know,
26:23
Speaker 1: that's when the US could take action. But in the eighties,
26:26
Speaker 1: you know, we were supplying military aid to Pakistan to
26:29
Speaker 1: help support the fight against Soviets in Afghanistan, so we
26:33
Speaker 1: couldn't really, you know, even though we intelligence services knew
26:37
Speaker 1: that they had a nuclear program going and even where
26:41
Speaker 1: that technology was coming from, there wasn't a lot we
26:44
Speaker 1: could do at the time. In the mid eighties they
26:46
Speaker 1: caught Congress threatened to cut off that military aid unless
26:50
Speaker 1: Reagan could promise that they didn't they weren't producing nuclear weapons.
26:54
Speaker 1: And so for five years from eighty five to ninety,
26:57
Speaker 1: I guess Reagan and George H. W. Bush would certify
27:00
Speaker 1: that Pakistan didn't have a nuclear weapons program. And then
27:04
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety, once the Soviets were out of Afghanistan. Coincidentally,
27:10
Speaker 1: not really, Bush said, you know what, I'm not going
27:12
Speaker 1: to sign that certification anymore, and we're going to stop
27:15
Speaker 1: the flow of a to Pakistan.
27:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is I mean, talk about a screwjob. But apparently, Chuck,
27:21
Speaker 2: we were so in bed with Pakistan during the Soviet
27:24
Speaker 2: occupation of Afghanistan that we were flying YouTube bomber flights
27:29
Speaker 2: to surveil Russia out of Pakistan. We had an NSA
27:33
Speaker 2: listening station there, like we needed them big time. But
27:37
Speaker 2: once we didn't anymore, we could start to press them
27:40
Speaker 2: on Aq Khan and that was when this whole thing
27:45
Speaker 2: started to kind of fall apart. But again, it wasn't
27:47
Speaker 2: until two thousand and three that the BBC China was
27:51
Speaker 2: intercepted and the whole thing was on the table. But
27:55
Speaker 2: by this time the pressure that the US had been
27:57
Speaker 2: putting on Pakistan was enough that the president at the time,
28:01
Speaker 2: Proves Mushariff, who was the president of Pakistan around the
28:06
Speaker 2: time of nine to eleven and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan,
28:11
Speaker 2: he essentially was like, Okay, I've got to do something,
28:15
Speaker 2: So he dismissed Khan from the research laboratories that by
28:20
Speaker 2: this time bore his own name. They were called the
28:23
Speaker 2: Doctor aq Khan Research Laboratories, the National Nuclear Research Laboratories
28:28
Speaker 2: in Pakistan, and they were like, you're not the director
28:31
Speaker 2: of those anymore, but we're still friends, so you can
28:34
Speaker 2: be a government advisor.
28:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's I don't know, I don't know
28:40
Speaker 1: enough about it, but that seemed to be very much
28:42
Speaker 1: just sort of like, hey, look what we're doing. We're
28:45
Speaker 1: saying he doesn't have that job anymore. Didn't that what
28:49
Speaker 1: was going on?
28:50
Speaker 2: Yeah? And the US had to put up with it
28:52
Speaker 2: because by this time we were in Afghanistan and we
28:55
Speaker 2: needed Pakistan him in just as much as we did
28:58
Speaker 2: when the Soviets were in Afghanistan. Because no one learns
29:01
Speaker 2: from history.
29:03
Speaker 1: That's right. So after that two thousand and three cargo
29:08
Speaker 1: ship exposure, I guess in December of that year, that's
29:12
Speaker 1: when Gaddafi of Libya said, all right, you know what,
29:15
Speaker 1: I'm going to shut down our nuclear program.
29:18
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry.
29:19
Speaker 1: United States didn't mean it and really sold con down
29:23
Speaker 1: the river and said this is the guy. He's been
29:24
Speaker 1: supplying us with materials and we're friends, right.
29:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, Apparently Kadafi was really really worried after the US
29:34
Speaker 2: invaded Iraq that he was going to be next, and
29:36
Speaker 2: he was right, but it was eight years down the road. Yeah,
29:39
Speaker 2: but I guess he He went so far as to
29:42
Speaker 2: show them like centrifuge labs that were described or disguised
29:47
Speaker 2: as chicken farms, and the whole time he's like, it
29:50
Speaker 2: was CON. It was CON. It was CON. And he
29:51
Speaker 2: gave I six and the CIA documents on how to
29:55
Speaker 2: build a nuclear warhead that he said CON had given him.
29:58
Speaker 2: So he really sold them down the river. And by
30:01
Speaker 2: this point, the CIA chief at the time, George Tennant,
30:04
Speaker 2: had enough to go to pervezmer Sharff and was like,
30:08
Speaker 2: it's not enough to fire this guy from his job,
30:10
Speaker 2: like he's an international nuclear proliferation dealer and you need
30:15
Speaker 2: to do something much more pronounced. And Mouchharff said, Okay,
30:20
Speaker 2: I got it, I got it. We're going to make
30:24
Speaker 2: him apologize and we're going to put him under house
30:27
Speaker 2: arrests and then four days after that, I'm going to
30:28
Speaker 2: pardon him. What do you think?
30:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, they put him on TV. He did confess, he
30:34
Speaker 1: did apologize, he did all that stuff, said he was
30:38
Speaker 1: he took the fall. He said, you know, I wasn't
30:40
Speaker 1: acting on the direction of my government. I was doing
30:44
Speaker 1: this on my own. And you know, I think everyone
30:49
Speaker 1: even at the time, kind of saw through that he
30:52
Speaker 1: would pardon him. I mean, the initial arrest was like
30:55
Speaker 1: a real arrest, but then he pardoned him and put
30:57
Speaker 1: him under house arrests. And that whole time though, Pakistan
31:01
Speaker 1: was still like, no, CIA, you can't like same with
31:05
Speaker 1: the International Atomic Energy Agency, you can't come in here
31:08
Speaker 1: and ask him questions directly, like we're still shielding him
31:12
Speaker 1: from you.
31:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they continued to even after they let him
31:14
Speaker 2: out of house arrest. I also saw one other little note.
31:19
Speaker 2: He had a jasmine shrub trimmed in the shape of
31:22
Speaker 2: a topiary mushroom cloud outside of his house.
31:25
Speaker 1: Did he really is that a joke?
31:27
Speaker 2: No? Well, at least as far as I think Time
31:29
Speaker 2: magazine reported back in two thousand and five he did.
31:33
Speaker 1: That's the one time I thought you were actually thought
31:35
Speaker 1: you were pulling my leg, and it was the truth.
31:37
Speaker 1: So I don't even know what to think of.
31:38
Speaker 2: I like to mix it up and keep you guessing, buddy,
31:40
Speaker 2: he got to keep you on your toes. Uh.
31:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. People from Walt Disney World actually came and did
31:47
Speaker 1: that Is that true? The best No, So in two
31:53
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, the Pakistani government said, you know, this
31:56
Speaker 1: is internally of course, they were like, hey, we should
31:58
Speaker 1: let's just get him out of house too, because this
32:00
Speaker 1: is all just for show anyway, right, And the US
32:04
Speaker 1: was trying to work with Pakistan at the time to
32:07
Speaker 1: fight against al Qaeda. So again we were in a
32:10
Speaker 1: position as the US to we couldn't publicly come out
32:13
Speaker 1: and say like, you can't like let this guy out
32:16
Speaker 1: of house arrest because once again we needed Pakistan.
32:20
Speaker 2: We did. And Seymour Hirsh, the very very very famous
32:22
Speaker 2: investigative reporter who broke the Mili massacre and that Osama
32:28
Speaker 2: bin Laden have been assassinated and so on, he reported
32:31
Speaker 2: back in two thousand and five that the US went
32:33
Speaker 2: along with it because Pakistan agreed to hand over all
32:36
Speaker 2: of the information they had on the nuclear program they
32:39
Speaker 2: had helped Iran start to build. And so the US
32:43
Speaker 2: was like, okay, that's a deal. Well, we'll take your
32:45
Speaker 2: Iranian secrets and then we'll just kind of look the
32:48
Speaker 2: other way. And the slap on the wrist that you
32:50
Speaker 2: guys are giving a q Khan.
32:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting, like with the recent stuff with
32:56
Speaker 1: the US and Iran, Like when people try to argue
33:02
Speaker 1: about what's going on and they say, no, it's because
33:05
Speaker 1: of this thing that happened under Biden or Obama, or
33:08
Speaker 1: no it's Trump's fault. It's like, this stuff goes back
33:10
Speaker 1: decades and decades. If you really want to trace back
33:13
Speaker 1: to like the origins of all these issues, you know,
33:16
Speaker 1: it's like you can't just look. You can't look. Yeah,
33:18
Speaker 1: you can't look back at one previous administration if you
33:21
Speaker 1: really want to investigate the true roots of this stuff.
33:24
Speaker 2: It's interesting because you had Carter getting in bed with
33:27
Speaker 2: Pakistan because the Russians invaded Afghanistan under his watch. You
33:32
Speaker 2: had Reagan and then hw Bush certifying every year lying
33:37
Speaker 2: that Pakistan didn't have a program, and so on and
33:40
Speaker 2: so forth. And yeah, that's actually a really important point.
33:43
Speaker 2: One of the reasons a Q Khan was allowed to
33:45
Speaker 2: continue proliferating nuclear programs to countries the US don't want
33:51
Speaker 2: to have nuclear programs is because the US looked the
33:54
Speaker 2: other way on it. That's a huge factor in his success.
33:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Eventually he was fully released in two thousand
34:04
Speaker 1: and nine, and they still said Hey, you can't, like
34:07
Speaker 1: you said, you can't interview him even now that he's
34:10
Speaker 1: that he's out, you know, United States or you know,
34:14
Speaker 1: international nuclear commissions, like just stay away from them. And
34:18
Speaker 1: there are a lot of Pakistanis that think he's a hero.
34:21
Speaker 1: Like he came out later on, and even though he
34:24
Speaker 1: took the fall, he came out later and was basically like,
34:28
Speaker 1: you know, like why should they have all the nukes?
34:32
Speaker 1: Why why should those original five countries have all this power?
34:36
Speaker 1: He had a quote that said, are these bastards God
34:38
Speaker 1: appointed guardians of the world to stockpile hundreds of thousands
34:41
Speaker 1: of nuclear warheads? And have they God given authority to
34:44
Speaker 1: carry out explosions every month? So this was in an
34:49
Speaker 1: op ed in Derschpiegel magazine, a German magazine. So he's
34:53
Speaker 1: very much a hero to a lot of people in
34:54
Speaker 1: Pakistan still for sort of saying, hey, Muslim countries need
34:58
Speaker 1: to have the same weapons that you have.
35:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like we talked about all the way back
35:02
Speaker 2: in the seventies, patriotism certainly seems to have motivated him.
35:06
Speaker 2: For sure.
35:07
Speaker 1: He also had money.
35:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, he also made a lot of money. I saw
35:10
Speaker 2: an estimate that at his PQ is worth about four
35:12
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars. Yeah, and bear in mind he's on
35:17
Speaker 2: paper still just a civil servant, a scientist, a highly
35:20
Speaker 2: respected scientist, but he works for the government, and now
35:22
Speaker 2: he's worth four hundred million dollars. He died and a
35:27
Speaker 2: hotel he did in Molly and I looked it up
35:29
Speaker 2: and only as like two point six out of five
35:31
Speaker 2: stars on trip Advisor. Doesn't look that nice, but yeah,
35:36
Speaker 2: it's in Timbuck two. And I guess it's in competition
35:40
Speaker 2: to the Biospherians hotel. They had one in Timbuk two, right,
35:44
Speaker 2: that's right.
35:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought of that immediately. I guess that's the
35:46
Speaker 1: place to open a hotel if you want to, you know,
35:49
Speaker 1: fill out the hotel here for hotel yah waters.
35:52
Speaker 2: Do you want to get your feet wet? For sure?
35:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He eventually passed away. Aq Con died in
35:59
Speaker 1: October twenty twenty one, apparently died of COVID nineteen. And
36:04
Speaker 1: he got a full military funeral, even though he was,
36:07
Speaker 1: you know, not a part of their military.
36:09
Speaker 2: No, but that really goes to show what a national
36:13
Speaker 2: hero he was considered then and now this is twenty
36:16
Speaker 2: twenty one. I think, to me, the biggest the biggest
36:22
Speaker 2: shock of all this is that he managed to live
36:25
Speaker 2: to be an old man and die of COVID. Like
36:28
Speaker 2: the fact that he wasn't assassinated during his career when
36:33
Speaker 2: he was putting out brochures for his services, and the
36:37
Speaker 2: fact that he wasn't assassinated by the Pakistani military because
36:40
Speaker 2: they were worried he was going to start pointing fingers
36:43
Speaker 2: like it's nuts. This guy managed to stay alive. But
36:47
Speaker 2: he did. And he was a public figure too. He
36:49
Speaker 2: used to write op eds in the newspaper once in
36:51
Speaker 2: a while. He was like a public intellectual in Pakistan.
36:54
Speaker 2: He was a big deal throughout his life. It's not
36:58
Speaker 2: like he went into hiding. He did the oppoice.
36:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, very interesting.
37:02
Speaker 2: And then one thing I saw, though, the irony of
37:04
Speaker 2: all this is that supposedly his technology didn't work all
37:09
Speaker 2: that well. North Korea ended up abandoning the centrifuge program
37:14
Speaker 2: in favor of plutonium, and I think even Pakistan's arsenal
37:19
Speaker 2: is largely based on plutonium now rather than highly enriched uranium.
37:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. I wonder if that was any kind of ruse
37:28
Speaker 1: on his part, But it seemed like he really did
37:30
Speaker 1: believe in uranium.
37:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it does work. I think, who knows. Maybe
37:34
Speaker 2: it's just harder to do when you have to keep
37:36
Speaker 2: it secret. I don't know. But one other thing I
37:40
Speaker 2: want to shout out. There's a Adam Curtis documentary. Remember
37:43
Speaker 2: he's the one who did the Century of the Self
37:45
Speaker 2: that we talked a lot about in the PR episode.
37:48
Speaker 2: He did one called Hypernormalization and it covers a lot
37:51
Speaker 2: of Cutaffi and Libya throughout the years and his relationship
37:55
Speaker 2: with the US and basically makes the has the theory
37:59
Speaker 2: that Kadafi was essentially an international punching bag for the
38:04
Speaker 2: US for show that the the US beat up on
38:09
Speaker 2: kind of with his Agreement tests agreement because the US
38:14
Speaker 2: wasn't able or didn't think it was able to take
38:16
Speaker 2: on the real issue in the Middle East, which was Syria,
38:20
Speaker 2: the real strong man in the Middle East. So they
38:22
Speaker 2: made Kaddafi look like a strong man that he wasn't
38:24
Speaker 2: so that they could pummel him in the public sphere
38:28
Speaker 2: and look like they were doing something about Middle East
38:31
Speaker 2: problems at the time.
38:34
Speaker 1: I'll say one thing about Kadafi is he could he
38:36
Speaker 1: could rock those aviators.
38:37
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and that that perm.
38:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, two looks that I've never been able to pull off.
38:43
Speaker 2: I would pay good money to see you try, though,
38:47
Speaker 2: I have a feeling as a photoshop in the future.
38:50
Speaker 1: I'm looking at him right now. He kind of looked
38:52
Speaker 1: a little bit like Carlos Santana.
38:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, he got he got mistaken for that
38:58
Speaker 2: all the time. He thought that was like, yeah, and
39:01
Speaker 2: Santana too, but it was not as good for Santana
39:04
Speaker 2: to be mistaken as Kadafi. Yeah, yeah, you got anything
39:07
Speaker 2: else about aq Kahn?
39:09
Speaker 1: I got nothing else.
39:10
Speaker 2: I don't either, which means, of course, everybody, it's time
39:13
Speaker 2: for a listener mail.
39:17
Speaker 1: This is a not a correction, just a little bit
39:21
Speaker 1: of added info. Hey guys, we've heard from a few
39:23
Speaker 1: people by the way from Canada, specifically about Phil Hartman.
39:30
Speaker 1: Love the show, guys, my favorite podcast for years now.
39:32
Speaker 1: As a huge comedy and huge SNL fan. I really
39:35
Speaker 1: appreciated your recent Phil Hartman podcast. You said in your
39:38
Speaker 1: show that you surmised he was probably the second most
39:41
Speaker 1: famous person from Branford after Wayne Gretzky, but also qualified
39:46
Speaker 1: there were probably someone else that you might be missing
39:48
Speaker 1: that was more famous. Just wanted to pass along that
39:51
Speaker 1: Alexander Graham Bell was born in Branford and this is
39:54
Speaker 1: arguably the most famous person born in Branford, Ontario, ahead
39:58
Speaker 1: of Gretzky and then Hartman. I think I agree with
40:01
Speaker 1: that Jay. That is Jay Hammer from Hamilton, Ontario.
40:04
Speaker 2: Thanks Jay, It was a short and sweet email and
40:06
Speaker 2: we love those kind and yeah, I would agree to
40:10
Speaker 2: Alexander Graham Bell is probably more famous even than Wayne Gretzky.
40:14
Speaker 1: Oh hooy.
40:16
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Jay and get in
40:17
Speaker 2: touch with us and set us straight about something, we
40:19
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40:22
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40:28
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