Deception: Pakistan, The United States And The Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy

A stunning exposé of how A.Q. Khan set up Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and the role of the United States in the spread of nuclear weapons

Based on hundreds of interviews in the United States, Pakistan, India, Israel, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Deception is a masterwork of reportage and dramatic storytelling by two of the world’s most resourceful investigative journalists. It is the most complete account of Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear network as it has extended from Islamabad around the world, and chronicles how A.Q. Khan’s operation and his ultimate fall from grace are part of a much larger deceit.

In this masterful investigation Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark chillingly relate how thirty years of parochial and sometimes criminal policy of the United States enabled Pakistan to betray the West, build a vast nuclear arsenal with US aid money, and sell the technology to countries hostile to the West, while giving shelter to the resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda. Every American administration from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush has condoned Pakistan’s nuclear activity, rewriting and destroying evidence provided by US and Western intelligence agencies, deceiving about Pakistan’s intentions and capability, and facilitating the spread of the very weapons it is feared terrorists will obtain. Most unnerving, the authors reveal that the sales of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, so much in the news today, were made with the clear knowledge of the American government, for whom Pakistan has been a crucial buffer state and ally.

Deception puts the current standoffs with Iran and North Korea in a startling new perspective, and makes clear two things: that Pakistan, far from being an ally, is a rogue nation at the epicenter of world destabilization; and that the complicity of the United States has ushered in a new nuclear winter.