In short
AQ Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who built and ran an illicit uranium-enrichment proliferation network that helped multiple countries pursue nuclear weapons, despite UN nonproliferation treaties.
Guest backgrounds
No episode guests. Hosts are Josh, Chuck, and Jerry (Stuff You Should Know: Foreign Policy edition).
Key claims
Khan stole and smuggled centrifuge blueprints and supplier lists from his job at a Dutch uranium-enrichment contractor (Urenco). He helped Pakistan’s uranium program (Project 706), produced highly enriched uranium by 1982, and later sold/redirected enrichment components to Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Libya using middlemen and front companies. The network was exposed after a shipment to Libya was intercepted (BBC China, early 2000s). US-Pakistan politics and aid during the Soviet-Afghan war limited earlier pressure; after 2003, Musharraf dismissed Khan, staged a public confession, then pardoned him and kept him under house arrest.
Notable examples
Iran’s alleged 50,000 centrifuges (1987); Iraq’s suspicious sample request; North Korea ties via repeated Khan trips and a North Korean delegation member who died during Pakistan’s 1998 test; Libya’s centrifuge shipments via Dubai and Malaysian firms; Libya’s shutdown after the US crackdown.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroduction to AQ Khan
0:13 to 0:37
Introduction to AQ Khan and his complex legacy in nuclear proliferation.
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Introduction to AQ Khan
1:12 to 1:48
Introduction to AQ Khan and his complex legacy in nuclear proliferation.
“I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too.”
Background and Early Life of AQ Khan
1:48 to 2:46
Exploration of AQ Khan's early life, education, and early career.
“But I think that leaves out some very important stuff.”
Khan's Role in Nuclear Enrichment
2:46 to 3:52
Discussion of Khan's involvement in uranium enrichment and its implications.
“He was born in India in 1936 and in 1952 moved to West Pakistan.”
Political Climate and Khan's Motivation
3:52 to 5:50
The political environment in Pakistan that motivated Khan to pursue nuclear capabilities.
“and you enrich uranium to a certain extent to use for nuclear power.”
Khan's Proposal to Build a Nuclear Bomb
5:50 to 7:35
Khan's letter to the Prime Minister proposing to develop a nuclear bomb for Pakistan.
“So he decided he was going to use what expertise he had to help build a bomb for Pakistan.”
Uranium vs. Plutonium Debate
7:35 to 8:33
Discussion of AQ Khan's preference for uranium enrichment over plutonium for bombs.
“Those are two routes you can use to make a nuclear bomb.”
Khan's Departure to Pakistan and Early Achievements
8:33 to 10:39
Khan's successful return to Pakistan and initial progress in uranium enrichment.
“They're both like great ways of creating nuclear material to blow up the world with, but they're just two totally different tracks.”
The Uranium Enrichment Project
10:39 to 12:30
Details on the Project 706 and its significance in Pakistan's nuclear program.
“You need several kilograms to actually make a bomb.”
Khan's Side Business in Nuclear Proliferation
12:30 to 14:01
Khan's lucrative side business selling nuclear secrets and how he operated.
“And while he was doing this, he developed that side gig as importing and exporting all these components and plans that, you know, some of which he just outright stole.”
Show all 22 chapters
Iran's Nuclear Centrifuge Development
14:01 to 17:51
Explore how AQ Khan assisted Iran in building a massive centrifuge program.
“There are a couple of different types, the Pakistan 1 and the P2, the Pakistan 2.”
The North Korea Connection
21:09 to 28:01
Delve into North Korea's covert nuclear ambitions and AQ Khan's involvement.
“This is where North Korea enters the picture.”
The Interception of a Critical Shipment
28:01 to 28:32
Learn about the significant event involving the BBC China that led to the collapse of a nuclear network.
“But it was one of these shipments that somehow got intercepted in, I think, 2003 aboard a ship called the BBC China, which, as far as I know, doesn't have anything to do with the BBC.”
The Fallout from the Libya Shipment
31:57 to 35:46
Understand the international reactions and consequences following the Libya shipment incident.
“Remember, they had this amazing network going, all this amazing subterfuge going.”
Khan's Arrest and Apology
35:47 to 37:55
Examine the events leading to AQ Khan's arrest and the implications of his public confession.
“So after that 2003 cargo ship exposure, I guess, in December of that year, that's when Gaddafi of Libya said, all right, you know what?”
Khan's Legacy and Public Perception
37:56 to 41:44
Discuss AQ Khan's legacy, his wealth, and how he is viewed in Pakistan today.
“He had a jasmine shrub trimmed in the shape of a topiary mushroom cloud outside of his house.”
The Death of A.Q. Khan
41:45 to 42:00
Reflect on the life and death of A.Q. Khan and his significance to Pakistan.
“I saw an estimate that at his peak, he was worth about$400 million.”
The Life and Death of A.Q. Khan
42:00 to 43:31
Learn about A.Q. Khan's controversial legacy and his unexpected death.
“respected scientist, but he works for the government and now he's worth 400 million dollars.”
Irony in Nuclear Technology
43:31 to 45:05
Explore the irony of A.Q. Khan's technology and its global implications.
“He used to write op-eds in the newspaper once in a while.”
The Gaddafi Connection
45:05 to 45:54
Discussion on Gaddafi's role as a geopolitical figure and U.S. perceptions.
“I'll say one thing about Gaddafi is he could rock those aviators.”
Listener Mail: Famous People from Brantford
45:54 to 47:48
A listener shares insights on famous individuals from Brantford, Ontario.
“This is a, not a correction, just a little bit of added info.”
Listener Mail: Famous People from Brantford
48:52 to 49:23
A listener shares insights on famous individuals from Brantford, Ontario.
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Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Josh Clark:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey, everybody. Back to school starts now. So get long-lasting battery life on the Dell XPS laptop powered by Series 3 Intel Core so you can work from anywhere. Now starting at$699 with exclusive student pricing starting at just$599. Complete your setup with savings on select monitors and must-have electronics and accessories. Limited time deals and free shipping on PCs and more await you at Dell.com slash deals. That's Dell.com slash deals.
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1:11Josh Clark:Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:21Chuck Bryant:Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, foreign policy edition.
1:30Josh Clark:That's right. Take it away.
1:33Chuck Bryant:Okay. So, Chuck, we're talking today. Well, let me start differently. Chuck.
1:38Josh Clark:Yes.
1:39Chuck Bryant:Have you ever met AQ Khan?
1:41Josh Clark:I had never heard of AQ Khan.
1:44Chuck Bryant:What do you think of him now?
1:47Josh Clark:Yeah, you know, seems like a guy that made a lot of money helping countries develop their nuclear program.
1:56Chuck Bryant:Sure. But I think that leaves out some very important stuff. This was in flagrant violation of U.N. nonproliferation treaties. It was generally illegal, and he was even doing it on the side. He had an underground clandestine proliferation network, which is, I mean, that's very few people have ever done that in the world. And over here in the West, Chuck, he's viewed as a villain. And in other parts of the world, especially Pakistan, where he's from, he's hailed as a hero. He's very complex, complicated. And at the end of the date, he may essentially be generally a fall guy for a much larger cabal of people who are actually doing this.
2:41Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. I guess we can go back and talk a little bit about his his how he got there. Right. Yeah, I think so. He was born in India in 1936 and in 1952 moved to West Pakistan. And he was into metallurgy and studied at a few different universities in a few different countries. He eventually graduated initially in 1960 from the University of Karachi, but then got a doctorate in metallurgical engineering in 1972. In that time, he got married, had a couple of daughters, and then eventually found his way with his family in the early 70s in the Netherlands, working for a company called Physical Dynamic Research Laboratory, which was doing uranium enrichment for another company called Urenco, which was a consortium of a few different countries, Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands.
3:39Josh Clark:and they were, you know, they were running ultra centrifuges and he was pretty good at snooping around, it seems like.
3:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and ultra centrifuge or centrifuges in general is used to enrich uranium and you enrich uranium to a certain extent to use for nuclear power. But if you keep going, you can use that enriched uranium for nuclear bombs, right? So I think that these companies were doing this for power, for power generation. But regardless, he wasn't a particularly, like, brilliant physicist or metallurgist or anything like that. He was just kind of a dude. He just had a will that was unlike other people's typically. So when he started out, he had a very low-level security clearance. But he very quickly, like, started making waves and catching the attention of Dutch intelligence agencies for asking a lot of questions that did not have much of anything to do with the work he was supposed to be doing.
4:38Josh Clark:Yeah, so they started monitoring him. And this is something that kind of continued, at least as far as Dutch intelligence. And then, you know, eventually other countries would start monitoring as well, because, you know, like I said, he got pretty good at snooping around. And in 1971, there was a conflict between East and West Pakistan, and that led to a pretty brief war with India. And just for our purposes, what that eventually meant was Khan and a lot of Pakistan were kind of humiliated at the whole thing. And we're like, we're still under the thumb of India here. And kind of just sort of got that, I guess, national Pakistani pride going as, you know, wanting to get out from under that thumb.
5:29Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I saw that in that 13-day war, Pakistan lost half its navy, a quarter of its air force, and a third of its army. So it was very much a humiliating defeat. And yeah, I saw that up to this point, AQ Khan was just a generally average person, but that seemed to have really started to get him going. So he decided he was going to use what expertise he had to help build a bomb for Pakistan. So he wrote a letter to the prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was running the show at the time, and said, hey, I want to help build a nuclear bomb for Pakistan. We clearly need one. And if you step back and look at it, Chuck, like, this is just some random dude that the prime minister had never heard of who wrote him a letter and said, like, hey, let's build a bomb.
6:18Chuck Bryant:And I heard the first time he was ignored and the second time they're like, all right, let's see what this guy has to say.
6:24Josh Clark:Yeah, because he was lobbying for uranium, and that was his expertise, was enriching uranium. And at the time, Pakistan was trying to enrich and produce plutonium. And he was like, that's not the way. Uranium is the way to go. And just a couple of months after that, Butoh met with him. And over about the next 11 or 12 months, Khan was like, all right, I'm going to make a little grocery shopping list of what we need, the parts that we need to get a nuclear program started here in earnest. and I'm going to make a list of companies and suppliers and who can get us this stuff. And he basically got all of this information while he was working for that Dutch company, like, you know, making copies of blueprints and sneaking them out and supply lists, suppliers lists and stuff like that.
7:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he was very well known around the office for being like making copies.
7:16Josh Clark:Yeah.
7:17Chuck Bryant:So he, wow, I just dated myself. Can we just do a little science minute off to the side? Sure. So you said that there was a course that Pakistan was already on for making a bomb out of plutonium, right? AQ Khan was all about enriching uranium. Those are two routes you can use to make a nuclear bomb. And the background and training Khan had was in uranium enrichment. And he loved to, like, talk trash about plutonium and the people in Pakistan running the plutonium program. But just the upshot of it is this. If you want to get weapons-grade uranium, you need about 90 % pure uranium. In nature, the U-235 uranium that you're looking for occurs about three-quarters of a percent of any natural lump of uranium.
8:08Chuck Bryant:So there's two ways to get that purified U-235. One is enrichment, where you spin it in centrifuges that go so fast that it actually separates the different kinds of uranium isotopes. And then you just kind of siphon off the stuff you want. Or with plutonium, you bombard it with neutrons so that uranium-238 eventually turns into 239, decays into neptunium, and then plutonium. They're both like great ways of creating nuclear material to blow up the world with, but they're just two totally different tracks.
8:41Josh Clark:Yeah, so we did a whole episode on that. If you're interested in like the finer details, seek that one out. Was that the one that we did after Fukushima? I don't know, but we did a whole episode on how to that whole process. I can't remember what it was called, though.
8:55Chuck Bryant:Well, I can't help but talk about it. I love that for some reason. It really like tickles me.
9:00Josh Clark:Yeah. So in October of 75, the Dutch authorities who had been watching him this whole time, noting all this sort of suspicious stuff that he was doing at work, said, all right, we're going to transfer you out of these enrichment projects because we think you're, you know, you're clearly some sort of a snoop or a threat or something. And just a couple of months after that, and I guess late 1975 in December, he left the company altogether and had, you know, basically under his, in his banker's box on the way out the door. He had a bunch of sensitive documents, blueprints, and those supplier lists.
9:41Josh Clark:And he said, don't bother looking in these banker boxes. The lid is on.
9:44Chuck Bryant:Right. He just kind of vanished and showed back up in Pakistan. and he was very quickly put in charge of the uranium project. And there was a guy named Munir Ahmad Khan, who was essentially his rival in the quest to build Pakistan a bomb. The other Khan was involved in the plutonium wing of the whole thing. Khan eventually got Butoh, and then the guy who overthrew Butoh, over to his side in favor of uranium enrichment, but also in favor of AQ Khan. From what I could tell, he had a really big ego. and he wanted to be like the top dog in getting Pakistan the bomb. And so he was working on a project called Project 706.
10:26Chuck Bryant:It was the uranium enrichment project. And by 1982, I think, they managed to produce the highly enriched uranium that you need to make a bomb. Very, very small amounts at first. You need several kilograms to actually make a bomb. But they were successful at doing it through that uranium enrichment program by 1982 for the first time.
10:50Josh Clark:Yeah. And as they're doing this, they're also researching how to get this thing into a missile. So, you know, as you'll see, I mean, if you just look back at the history of enriching uranium or for nuclear energy, it's usually a country is like, hey, you know, we just want to have a nuclear energy company and we want to get up to speed on that. But what they're also trying to do is get a nuclear bomb.
11:16Chuck Bryant:They're also making copies.
11:17Josh Clark:Yeah. It kind of just happens over and over and over where they're like, no, no, no, we just want nuclear energy. And don't worry about what's in that bunker over there.
11:25Chuck Bryant:Right. And again, I kind of I mentioned it at the outset. The reason that countries have to do it like that is because there's a huge treaty from the 60s that said, OK, the people who already have the bomb, they're agreeing to disassemble it. people who don't have the bomb, they're going to agree not to seek the bomb. And it's still in effect and it's still enforced. So that's why you have to do it. Right, exactly. But it's just been so just kind of nibbled and worn down and just flagrantly ignored that it doesn't really seem to have that much teeth. But I guess it's enough to make countries feel like they have to be subversive when they're trying to create a nuclear weapons program.
12:07Josh Clark:Yeah, exactly. So while he's doing all this, and you mentioned at the beginning that he had a side gig, you know, getting rich off of selling these secrets and blueprints and helping other countries, you know, get in touch with the right. As you'll see, he worked with a lot of middlemen over the years and spoke a bunch of different languages. So he was really kind of the perfect dude to do this. And while he was doing this, he developed that side gig as importing and exporting all these components and plans that, you know, some of which he just outright stole. Yeah.
12:42Chuck Bryant:And he was able to do this in large part because he had by this time garnered so much respect in Pakistan among the leadership of Pakistan emerging as the guy who was giving the bomb or developing the bomb for Pakistan that they just weren't they were like, just go. oh, here's a blank check, do whatever you need to do. So he started ordering doubles of the stuff that he needed to set up Pakistan's uranium enrichment program. And then he would take the stuff that he didn't need and turn around and essentially reverse the way that it got there. He would use Pakistani military planes, cargo planes to take those parts, the extra parts back to middlemen.
13:24Chuck Bryant:And then he'd tell the middlemen what buyers to direct it to. And then he'd pocket the money.
13:30Josh Clark:Yeah, and it was very lucrative, as we'll see. He ended up making a ton of money doing this. He ended up having a few kind of major clients. No one really knows how many countries he really dealt with because I think they found out he traveled to, you know, many more countries than they officially sort of accused him of dealing with. But the first country to step up and say, hey, I really want to do business with you was Iran. And this was in 1987. He helped them build up to 50 ,000 centrifuges, P1 types, Pakistan 1. There are a couple of different types, the Pakistan 1 and the P2, the Pakistan 2.
14:13Josh Clark:Those, the P2s are much faster. And the belief at the time is that he was just kind of sending the stuff that they didn't need anymore to Iran. And it was kind of outdated equipment that wasn't going to help him that much.
14:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. That's how it started out. Because Pakistan upgraded their setup from what I saw. And the reason why you would need 50 ,000 centrifuges is because when you spin that uranium to separate it and you siphon off the stuff you want, you have to do it again and again and again and again. And it can take weeks and months and sometimes years, depending on what kind of centrifuges you're working with. But if you have 50 ,000 centrifuges like Iran supposedly got, you can make a lot of highly enriched uranium fairly fast. Which led me to wonder, Chuck, like what is taking Iran so long? If they still don't have a nuke and they started in 1987, what's the deal there?
15:11Chuck Bryant:And the best answer I could come up with is that back in the 90s, the Ayatollah issued a fatwa, like a ruling on Sharia law that basically said no nukes, Iran's not going to have any nukes. And that it wasn't until 2024 that Iran said that they were starting to rethink it. So I guess just because the leadership said they weren't going to have nukes, that is the reason Iran doesn't have a nuke right now.
Read the full transcript
15:35Josh Clark:Yeah, interesting.
15:36Chuck Bryant:I thought so too.
15:36Josh Clark:So he was dealing with their government supposedly until 1991. There was a final shipment of the P1s, but other people have said, no, no, no, that continued for at least another four years through the mid-90s. And those P2 centrifuges started flowing in. And Iran wanted this potential bomb because they were at war with Iraq at the time in the 80s over the course of about eight years. So Khan, ever the businessman, was like, hey, Iraq, I've been helping Iran develop their program. You could probably use a little of my help in stolen documents as well.
16:15Chuck Bryant:Yeah, what's crazy is Iraq was like very suspicious of this from the outset. and I guess they asked for a sample and they couldn't find what sample they were given. Just that Khan was like, don't taste this. That's not that kind of sample.
16:31Josh Clark:Right. Dab your pinky in it. Yeah, exactly. Put it on your tongue.
16:36Chuck Bryant:It's like, don't do that. So I guess Iraq thought that this was some sort of maybe international UN sting operation and then around the same time, the first Gulf War broke out and they were like, we don't have time for this. So they moved on, and I guess he never managed to get a bomb or the information Iraq needed to Iraq.
16:59Josh Clark:Yeah, but there were documents that said, hey, this will, you know, the paperwork was there. This will cost you$5 million and a 10 % commission on materials through my network so I can, you know, pay people off, basically. But, yeah, like you said, it seems like it never ended up happening. And Iraq was probably wise to think that that was a sting operation, even though it wasn't.
17:21Chuck Bryant:Something I saw that was kind of funny was Iran paid$3 million for theirs, and they actually were like, 10 % commission, that seems steep. So they went and started calling up the list of suppliers that AQ Khan had for them, rather than dealing with him, because they were bargain shopping for their nuclear program, apparently.
17:41Josh Clark:Well, maybe that has something to do with it, too.
17:43Chuck Bryant:It could be. their nuclear centrifuges were held together with bubble gum and duct tape.
17:50Josh Clark:Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right. We'll come back and talk about a couple of more clients right after this.
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21:05Josh Clark:All right, so we're back and we promised to talk about new clients. This is where North Korea enters the picture. It's the mid-90s and with the deal with the United States, North Korea said, you know what, we're going to stop building our nuclear reactors. We're going to stop producing plutonium. Again, we're just trying to get nuclear energy going. But all right, we'll stop doing that. But what we're really going to do is very quietly start looking to continue that process just on the down low.
21:36Chuck Bryant:Right. But Kim Jong-il had his fingers crossed behind his back, so none of that counted.
21:41Josh Clark:That's right. And so who do they turn to, of course? They turn to Pakistan and AQ Khan. Yeah.
21:47Chuck Bryant:So this is where it really seems like Pakistani officials were definitely involved in this, even though later on, as we'll see, they're like, we had nothing to do with this. But Pakistan conducted its first nuclear test in 1998, which really surprised the world. And even more dramatically, they did it in response to a test that India had carried out two weeks before. And during this test, one of the groups that was there was a delegation of North Koreans who were invited to watch the whole thing. And the common wisdom among the intelligence community is that this was a group of nuclear scientists from North Korea's nuclear program who were basically being, you know, run through the motions of how this is working.
22:33Chuck Bryant:I don't know if we said it or not. Also, A.Q. Khan was known to have gone to North Korea at least 13 times that were documented. Something really weird happened during this nuclear test with the North Korean delegation, though, and that was that one of them, a woman who was among this group, died mysteriously. She was shot and eventually sent back to North Korea. Her body was. But on the cargo plane were centrifuges and other things for North Korea's nuclear program, too.
23:03Josh Clark:Yeah, was that just like, hey, we've got this plane going, so why don't we just double dip and get some stuff moved while we're transporting this body?
23:13Chuck Bryant:Maybe Pakistan is the bargain shop as well.
23:19Josh Clark:So, like you said, he went to North Korea at least 13 times that intelligence knows about. And while he was helping North Korea sort of develop their enrichment program, they were supplying Pakistan. It was, you know, a bit of a quid pro quo. They're like, hey, we've got long distance missile technology that you don't have. And so we're perfect bedfellows here.
23:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And so they got the missiles from North Korea through a guy named Kang. He was on paper the ambassador to Pakistan for North Korea. In reality, he was the husband of the woman who was murdered. She turned out to be murdered during the missile test because she was spying for the U.S. But her husband managed to hang in there. And it turns out he was an arms dealer for North Korea. He was the one who provided the missiles. So, again, all this time, North Korea is saying, like, we don't have a nuclear program. Pakistan's like, we don't even know what anybody's talking about. This is all in retrospect.
24:17Chuck Bryant:Like, this is not on a lot of people's radar right now. And as a matter of fact, A.Q. Khan was on the radar of international intelligence communities, again, all the way back to the 70s when the Dutch started watching him. But somehow, some way, the global intelligence community missed the fact that he was a rogue nuclear weapons technology salesman, which is one of the weirdest things ever. But it turned out that it was his next business venture in Libya that led to his downfall.
24:52Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, there were, you know, later on, they were like, yeah, we knew he was ordering double the amount of everything. and we just couldn't figure out why. Right.
25:02Chuck Bryant:It makes zero. There's a lot about this that just really smells like a kind of a poorly constructed cover-up internationally, not just from Pakistan.
25:10Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, the next client stepped forward and that was Libya. And this was in the late 90s, like 1996, 97. He started trading centrifuges and the equipment and the components, getting them over to Libya. this there's a guy here named Peter Griffin, not what you're thinking from Family Guy, is a real life human. It was a British engineer who was involved in this operation who was like, man, I've been I've been given or not giving, but I've been selling material to Pakistan for, you know, 20 years or more like this has been going on for a long time.
25:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And that was a huge thing that allowed this to go on is like the international community would ban parts for like centrifuges or breeder reactors that you made plutonium with. And then people like E.Q. Khan would be like, well, fine, we're going to start shipping the parts to make those parts and then assemble the parts at the end. So they were legitimately allowed to do this stuff. It was just they still had to fake what the overall purpose was. So yeah, guys like Peter Griffin were like, I actually wasn't breaking any laws. It was more like an international moray that That was broken where he knew he was helping states that should not have nuclear bombs get nuclear bombs, essentially.
26:32Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So Peter Griffin, Peter Griffin. There's just no way you couldn't do something. I guess that was, what's the guy's name? I haven't watched Family Gun in so long. Cleveland? Cleveland. Yeah, that's right. So Peter Griffin was a partner in a company from Dubai. And in 2001, they placed a bunch of orders for these parts that they needed with a Malaysian company. And that company spun off a subsidiary, and they hired workers and brought in, you know, all this equipment and brought in a bunch of new tools to start sort of, you know, turning this into a real program. And Khan was like, for my part, you know, I've got all these blueprints to show you how to put this, you know, big Lego machine together.
27:20Josh Clark:and he sent at least one engineer. So like active involvement, sending engineers to Dubai to like make sure they were doing everything correctly. So like deep involvement at this point.
27:30Chuck Bryant:Yeah, huge. So he had like middlemen from Europe. He had designers from Switzerland. He had companies that were set up to build the parts that were being shipped from Turkey, from Malaysia to Turkey, to Dubai, where they were repackaged and sent on to Libya. It was a huge network. Also, I forgot to say earlier, By this time, the Khan network had their own sales brochures that they used to hand out at arms sales fairs, which apparently they have arms sales fairs. But they had brochures by this point. That's how set up they were, I guess. How established. That's what I was going for. So it was a huge, huge network.
28:08Chuck Bryant:But it was one of these shipments that somehow got intercepted in, I think, 2003 aboard a ship called the BBC China, which, as far as I know, doesn't have anything to do with the BBC. And that was the thing that brought the whole thing down eventually. Chuck, I propose that since I remembered the word established, that kind of says we should take a break.
28:32Josh Clark:All right. We'll be right back.
28:54Hey there.
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31:56Chuck Bryant:So the whole thing came down with that Libya thing. Remember, they had this amazing network going, all this amazing subterfuge going. And somehow, I don't know how, but a particular shipment aboard a ship called the BBC China was captured in, I think, leaving Dubai en route to Libya. And at this point, AQ Khan had basically been under great suspicion. I think he was being investigated by CIA and MI6 at the same time. But there wasn't a lot you could do about this. If you were the U.S., because you needed Pakistan at the time, as we'll talk about in a second. But when this shipment was found, it was a massive shipment of centrifuges going to Libya.
32:45Chuck Bryant:It was just all out in the open now. There was just no denying it. Even Pakistan couldn't protect AQ Khan anymore.
32:52Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And like you said, it was pretty complicated. I mean, it's always been fairly complicated with the U.S. and Pakistan as being like sometimes bedfellows because they were necessary for the U.S. until they weren't. And then, you know, that's when the U.S. could take action. But in the 80s, you know, we were supplying military aid to Pakistan to help support the fight against Soviets in Afghanistan. So we couldn't really, you know, even though we, intelligence services knew that they had a nuclear program going, and even where that technology was coming from, there wasn't a lot we could do at the time.
33:28Josh Clark:In the mid-80s, Congress threatened to cut off that military aid unless Reagan could promise that they weren't producing nuclear weapons. And so for five years, from 85 to 90, I guess, Reagan and George H.W. Bush would certify that Pakistan didn't have a nuclear weapons program. And then in 1990, once the Soviets were out of Afghanistan, coincidentally, not really, Bush said, you know what, I'm not going to sign that certification anymore and we're going to stop the flow of aid to Pakistan.
33:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah, which is, I mean, talk about a screw job, but apparently, Chuck, we were so in bed with Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that we were flying YouTube bomber flights to surveil Russia out of Pakistan. We had an NSA listening station there. Like, we needed them big time. But once we didn't anymore, we could start to press them on AQ Khan. And that was when this whole thing started to kind of fall apart. But again, it wasn't until 2003 that the BBC China was intercepted and the whole thing was on the table. But by this time, the pressure that the U.S. had been putting on Pakistan was enough that the president at the time, Pervez Musharraf, who was the president of Pakistan around the time of 9-11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, he essentially was like, OK, I've got to do something.
34:58Chuck Bryant:So he dismissed Khan from the research laboratories that by this time bore his own name. They were called the Dr. A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories, the National Nuclear Research Laboratories in Pakistan. And they were like, you're not the director of those anymore. But we're still friends. So you can be a government advisor.
35:19Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, that's I don't know. I don't know enough about it, but that seemed to be very much just sort of like, hey, look what we're doing. We're saying he doesn't have that job anymore. 100%. Right? Isn't that what was going on?
35:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And the U.S. had to put up with it because by this time we were in Afghanistan and we needed Pakistan again. We needed them again. Just as much as we did when the Soviets were in Afghanistan because no one learns from history.
35:46Josh Clark:That's right. Right. So after that 2003 cargo ship exposure, I guess, in December of that year, that's when Gaddafi of Libya said, all right, you know what? I'm going to shut down our nuclear program. I'm really sorry. United States didn't mean it and really sold Khan down the river and said, this is the guy. He's been supplying us with materials and we're friends, right? Yeah.
36:13Chuck Bryant:Apparently, Gaddafi was really, really worried after the U.S. invaded Iraq that he was going to be next. And he was right, but it was eight years down the road. Yeah. But I guess he went so far as to show them, like, centrifuge labs that were disguised as chicken farms. And the whole time he's like, it was Khan, it was Khan, it was Khan. And he gave MI6 and the CIA documents on how to build a nuclear warhead that he said Khan had given him. So he really sold them down the river. And by this point, the CIA chief at the time, George Tenet, had enough to go to Pervez Musharraf and was like, it's not enough to fire this guy from his job.
36:53Chuck Bryant:Like, he's an international nuclear proliferation dealer, and you need to do something much more pronounced. And Musharraf said, OK, I got it. I got it. We're going to make him apologize, and we're going to put him under house arrest. and then four days after that, I'm going to pardon him. What do you think?
37:15Josh Clark:Yeah, they put him on TV. He did confess. He did apologize. He did all that stuff. He took the fall. He said, you know, I wasn't acting on the direction of my government. I was doing this on my own. And, you know, I think everyone even at the time kind of saw through that. He would pardon him. I mean, the initial arrest was like a real arrest, but then he pardoned him and put him under house arrest. And during that whole time, though, Pakistan was still like, no, CIA, you can't like, same with the International Atomic Energy Agency. You can't come in here and ask him questions directly. Like, we're still shielding him from you.
37:55Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and they continue to even after they let him out of house arrest. I also saw one other little note. He had a jasmine shrub trimmed in the shape of a topiary mushroom cloud outside of his house.
38:08Josh Clark:Did he really? Or is that a joke?
38:10Chuck Bryant:No. Well, at least as far as I think Time Magazine reported back in 2005, he did.
38:16Josh Clark:That's the one time I thought you were actually thought you were pulling my leg and it was the truth. So I don't even know what to think.
38:21Chuck Bryant:I like to mix it up and keep you guessing, buddy. Got to keep you on your toes.
38:27Josh Clark:Yeah. People from Walt Disney World actually came and did that. Is that true? For the best. No. So in 2008, the Pakistani government said, you know, this is internally, of course, they were like, hey, we should let's just get him out of house arrest, too, because this is all just for show anyway. Right. And the U.S. was trying to work with Pakistan at the time to fight against al-Qaeda. So, again, we were in a position as the U.S. to we couldn't publicly come out and say, oh, like you can't like let this guy out of house arrest because once again, we needed Pakistan. We did.
39:03Chuck Bryant:And Seymour Hersh, the very, very, very famous investigative reporter who broke the Mylai Massacre and that Osama bin Laden had been assassinated and so on, he reported back in 2005 that the U.S. went along with it because Pakistan agreed to hand over all of the information they had on the nuclear program they had helped Iran start to build. And so the U.S. was like, okay, that's a deal. We'll take your Iranian secrets and then we'll just kind of look the other way and the slap on the wrist that you guys are giving AQ Khan.
39:36Josh Clark:Yeah, it's so interesting, like with the recent stuff with the U.S. and Iran,
39:44Josh Clark:like when people try to argue about what's going on and they say, no, it's because of this thing that happened under Biden or Obama, or no, it's Trump's fault. It's like this stuff goes back decades and decades. if you really want to trace back to the origins of all these issues, you know?
39:59Chuck Bryant:Back to Carter.
39:59Josh Clark:It's like you can't just look, you can't look, yeah, you can't look back at one previous administration if you really want to investigate the true roots of this stuff. It's interesting.
40:08Chuck Bryant:Because you had Carter getting in bed with Pakistan because the Russians invaded Afghanistan under his watch. You had Reagan and then H.W. Bush certifying every year lying that Pakistan didn't have a program and so on and so forth. And yeah, that's actually a really important point. One of the reasons A.Q. Khan was allowed to continue proliferating nuclear programs to countries the U.S. don't want to have nuclear programs is because the U.S. looked the other way on it. That's a huge factor in his success.
40:42Josh Clark:Yeah, absolutely. Eventually he was fully released in 2009. And they still said, hey, you can't, like you said, you can't interview him even now that he's out, you know, United States or, you know, international nuclear commissions. Like, just stay away from him. And there are a lot of Pakistanis that think he's a hero. Like he came out later on and even though he took the fall, he came out later and was basically like, you know, like, why should they have all the nukes? Why should those original five countries have all this power? He had a quote that said, are these bastards God appointed guardians of the world to stockpile hundreds of thousands of nuclear warheads?
41:25Josh Clark:And have they God given authority to carry out explosions every month? Like, so he, this was in an op-ed in Der Spiegel magazine, a German magazine. So he's very much a hero to a lot of people in Pakistan still for sort of saying, hey, Muslim countries need to have the same weapons that you guys have.
41:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and like we talked about all the way back in the 70s, patriotism certainly seems to have motivated him for sure. And money. Yeah, he also made a lot of money. I saw an estimate that at his peak, he was worth about$400 million. dollars. Yeah. And bear in mind, he's on paper still just a civil servant, a scientist, a highly respected scientist, but he works for the government and now he's worth 400 million dollars. He died. He owned a hotel. He did in Mali. And I looked it up and it only has like 2.6 out of 5 stars on TripAdvisor. Doesn't look that nice. But yeah, it's in Timbuktu. And I guess it's in competition to the Biospherians hotel.
42:25Chuck Bryant:They had one in Timbuktu, right?
42:27Josh Clark:That's right. I thought of that immediately. I guess that's the place to open a hotel if you want to feel out the hotelier waters. If you want to get your feet wet, for sure. Yeah, exactly. He eventually passed away. A.Q. Khan died in October 2021. Apparently died of COVID-19. And he got a full military funeral, even though he was not a part of their military.
42:52Chuck Bryant:No, but that really goes to show what a national hero he was considered then and now. This is 2021. I think to me the biggest shock of all this is that he managed to live to be an old man and die of COVID. Like the fact that he wasn't assassinated during his career when he was putting out brochures for his services. and the fact that he wasn't assassinated by the Pakistani military because they were worried he was going to start pointing fingers. Like, it's nuts this guy managed to stay alive. But he did. And he was a public figure, too. He used to write op-eds in the newspaper once in a while.
43:35Chuck Bryant:He was like a public intellectual in Pakistan. He was a big deal throughout his life. It's not like he went into hiding. He did the opposite. Yeah, yeah. You know?
43:44Josh Clark:Very interesting.
43:45Chuck Bryant:And then one thing I saw, though, the irony of all this is that supposedly his technology didn't work all that well. North Korea ended up abandoning the centrifuge program in favor of plutonium. And I think even Pakistan's arsenal is largely based on plutonium now rather than highly enriched uranium.
44:07Josh Clark:Yeah, I wonder if that was any kind of ruse on his part, but it seemed like he really did believe in uranium.
44:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and it does work. I think, who knows? Maybe it's just harder to do when you have to keep it secret. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. But one other thing I want to shout out, there's an Adam Curtis documentary. Remember, he's the one who did The Century of the Self that we talked a lot about in the PR episode. He did one called Hypernormalization, and it covers a lot of Qaddafi in Libya throughout the years in his relationship with the U.S. And basically has the theory that Gaddafi was essentially an international punching bag for the U.S. for show that the U.S. beat up on kind of with his agreement, TASS agreement, because the U.S.
44:57Chuck Bryant:wasn't able or didn't think it was able to take on the real issue in the Middle East, which was Syria, the real strongman in the Middle East. So they made Gaddafi look like a strongman that he wasn't so that they could pummel him in the public sphere and look like they were doing something about Middle East problems at the time.
45:17Josh Clark:I'll say one thing about Gaddafi is he could rock those aviators. Oh, yeah.
45:20Chuck Bryant:And that perm.
45:23Josh Clark:Yeah. Two looks that I've never been able to pull off.
45:27Chuck Bryant:I would pay good money to see you try, though. I have a feeling there's a Photoshop in the future.
45:33Josh Clark:I'm looking at him right now. He kind of looked a little bit like Carlos Santana.
45:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. He got mistaken for that all the time. He thought that was hilarious. Yeah. And Santana too, but it was not as good for Santana to be mistaken as Gaddafi. Yeah, yeah. You got anything else about AQ Khan? I got nothing else. I don't either, which means, of course, everybody, it's time for Listener Mail.
46:01Josh Clark:This is a, not a correction, just a little bit of added info. Hey guys, we've heard from a few people, by the way, from Canada, specifically about Phil Hartman.
46:12Chuck Bryant:Okay.
46:13Josh Clark:Love the show, guys. My favorite podcast for years now. As a huge comedy and huge SNL fan, I really appreciated your recent Phil Hartman podcast. You said in your show that you surmised he was probably the second most famous person from Brantford after Wayne Gretzky, but also qualified there were probably someone else that you might be missing that was more famous. Just wanted to pass along that Alexander Graham Bell was born in Brantford and is arguably the most famous person born in Brantford, Ontario, ahead of Gretzky and then Hartman. I think I agree with that. Jay, that is Jay Hamer from Hamilton, Ontario.
46:47Chuck Bryant:Thanks, Jay. That was a short and sweet email, and we love those kind. And yeah, I would agree, too. Alexander Graham Bell's probably more famous even than Wayne Gretzky.
46:58Josh Clark:Ahoy.
46:58Chuck Bryant:If you want to be like Jay and get in touch with us and set us straight about something, we love that kind of thing, you can send it via email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
47:11Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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From the publisher
He’s been called the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb and a real-life Bond villain and depending on where you’re from, he’s a national hero or was the world’s most dangerous arms dealer - who made a career of selling his knowledge of nuclear weapons.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
