Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network

This book was written by a reporter working for the BBC. It investigates how Pakistan set up its nuclear program and succeeded in producing the A-bomb, thanks in large part to the project's mastermind: Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. The author draws on a wide range of sources for his research, including: press articles, interviews, academic scholarship, TV bulletins, and reports published by various NGOs and UN institutions.Corera chronicles his book as a loose biography of Dr. Khan. Beginning in the early 1970s, he describes how Khan studied metallurgical engineering at Dutch and German universities. Khan decided to keep illegal copies of important research data. This policy of storing sensitive information was of great importance in Khan's career, and was the source of his later political influence. It opened the doors of Pakistan's elite to him, and led to his appointment as director of the country's covert nuclear program. Thanks to his political connections, Khan succeeded in forming a secret network of states (Iran, Libya, North Korea) providing him with uranium enrichment and fusion technology in exchange for money and military equipment. This business was never an ongoing operation, and was conducted on an ad hoc basis to avoid detection. Khan amassed a fortune in the process.The research in this book clearly indicates that Khan was given carte blanche to develop his activities by successive Pakistani governments. The secret services (ISI) regularly collaborated and planned operations with him. Khan was appointed as the director of his own research facility (Khan Research Laboratories) with de-facto complete independence from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (which has links with western institutions). Despite the fact that most western intelligence agencies had knowledge of his activities, it wasn't until after Pakistan successfully conducted its first nuclear tests in 1998 that Khan's days became numbered. Following mounting US pressure, Khan was placed under house arrest in 2004 and later "confessed" his guilt on Pakistani television. He was pardoned by Pervez Musharraf, and remains a national hero for many Pakistanis.The principal drawback of this book is that even though it presents a damning indictment of the West's inaction over Pakistan's illegal nuclear program, its perspective remains strongly western. This transpires in Corera's discussion of how Khan's televised admission of guilt was received in Pakistan itself. The author never really asks himself why thousands of Pakistanis admire this man, and why Pakistan felt it needed to build the bomb (although he does mention India). Furthermore, Corera probably didn't travel to places like Iran, Libya, and North Korea to collect information for his book. This limits his neutrality somewhat; but given the sensitive nature of the topic, only an insider could really give you the full story.All in all, this is an interesting read. It's unlikely that details of Khan's program will emerge soon, which makes this book even more germane. Considering the West's recent threats of intervention against Iran's nuclear program, one wonders why there is so little outrage over Pakistan. A question of double-standards no doubt. Should you develop a further interest in Pakistan, then I strongly recommend you pick up "Crossed Swords" by Shuja Nawaz - a very thorough examination of Pakistan's army.

This is a good book which illustrates how short term policy making by the U.S. and other world powers allowed a complex and effective nuclear proliferation network to occur. It also points out that capitalistic greed by companies based in Europe allowed the sale of components which can and were likely to be used for the enrichment of uranium to weapons grade fissile material, demonstrating the loop holes in international trade regulation.

I've used this is an upper-level undergraduate course on International Security with great success. The students enjoyed the journalistic style (compared to our other texts), but absorbed a lot of the details. It was one of the best-received texts for the course. Best for class sizes that allow substantial discussion.

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The critics on the back cover of the book rave about it being all exciting, but I felt like it dragged on. It is very detailed and informative, and helps put the entire situation of AQ Khan and his proliferation threat into perspective.

This is a fascinating book about an individual I knew nothing about. This is a fast read and would recommend it for anyone serving or studying abroad.

George Tenet reportedly described A.Q. Khan as "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden." Corera adds that Khan has had greater impact on nuclear proliferation than any other individual - yet, his story begins simply as the right man in the right place. Trained as a metallurgist in Europe, he began work in '72 at a research lab in the Netherlands at the forefront of Europe's efforts to develop the latest centrifuge technology for nuclear fuel, providing independence from the U.S.Next to the research lab was a plant holding thousands of tall, slender centrifuges connected by a maze of metal piping. Each machine only enriched the gas a tiny amount - thus, the need for a connected cascade. Each centrifuge consisted of 100 parts, many engineered to within /001 of a mm. and able to withstand very high speeds. One tiny mistake and the centrifuge spins out of control, often crashing into other machines and destroying the entire cascade.Khan's first job at the research center was to translate documents for a new German-designed centrifuge - the P2. Security at the site was lax, and within three years Khan's co-worker became convinced Khan was a spy. Authorities were alerted, but according to most accounts, the CIA helped convince them just to watch Khan and remove his access to secret materials. Realizing he'd been found out, Khan returned to Pakistan, taking thousands of pages of documents and even discarded parts with him.At about this same point in time the U.S. learned of Pakistan's intent to use fuel reprocessing (aided by France) to make a bomb. France as convinced to stop the program, leading Pakistan to instead focus on Khan's knowledge of centrifuges. (Other advantages of using centrifuges were that much less space and power were required than reprocessing or gaseous diffusion - making the program much easier to hide.)Khan knew Pakistan lacked the manufacturing skills ("couldn't make a pin"), but he also knew who the component suppliers were for the research lab where he had worked. Thus, he utilized a network of Swiss, German, U.K., U.S., China (bomb design), North Korea (missile design), and Niger (yellowcake) suppliers. By 1987 Pakistan had the bomb. Soon after, Khan began marketing his/Pakistan's skills - North Korea, Libya, and Iran. Throughout this period and on to the present, the U.S. knew of Pakistan's activities but refrained from taking strong action because their cooperation was needed to help defeat the Russians in Afghanistan, and then after 9/11 in terror-reduction efforts.An IAEA inspection in '03 found Iran with 160 cascaded P1-design centrifuges and evidence of uranium enriched to between 36 - 70%. Iran's original efforts began under the Shah in 1976, were known about in the U.S., and reportedly led Saddam Hussein in Iraq to press for his own program (began by purchasing a reactor from France). Iran, like its mentor, Pakistan, eventually also decided to go the centrifuge route after the U.S. pressed France to renege on an agreement to provide Iran with a fuel reprocessing (enrichment) plant. In addition, taking a lesson from Iraq's reactor being destroyed by Israel, Iran built its facilities in a dispersed, underground manner.Currently it is not clear what Iran's strategy is. It may simply be building a large, legal stockpile of power-plant level fuel - ready to upgrade to weapons grade on short notice in only 20% of the time required starting from scratch. Or, it may have a parallel setup that is creating bomb-grade material at the present.Pakistan's proliferation activities continued after 9/11 - however, dissidents in various countries provided information that led to finding enrichment centrifuges on a ship bound for Libya. Libya decided to renounce its program, and the information garnered from them and their suppliers helped prove to Pakistan's leaders that Khan and his associates were running amok.A.Q. Khan has now been under house arrest in Pakistan for several years, unable to even use the telephone. Hopefully his proliferation activities have all been undone. However, his network suppliers have by now learned how valuable their offerings are, and it is also known that he also worked with those wanting to start a program in Saudi Arabia.

This book gives an accurate (as far as I can gather) account of how Pakistan spread WMD to Iraq, Libya, North Korea, etc etc and it also gives an excellent account of how the security services MI6 traced and finally brought down the Network of A.Q.Khan along with the CIA. It shows how politics has played and is still playing a major part in protecting the Pakistani Government whilst it serves the wests purpose of fighting the Taliban. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in how WMD have spread around the globe, all in all an excellent book.

Excellent, easy to read narrative of the AQK story. I felt it was a little bit repetitive at times but a good read nevertheless. If you are interested in nuclear politics then I would recommend