Chapter 7, Part 3 Summary

In February 2004, a Pakistani scientist named Dr. A. Q. Khan confessed on Pakistani television that he alone had setup an international black market in nuclear weapons materials, dealing primarily to Iran and Libya. Musharraf claimed to be surprised and subsequently pardoned Khan. Diplomats dismissed this media event as a farce. A Bush administration intelligence officer said that Dr. Khan simply could not have distributed materials without high-level Pakistani military assistance. Publicly, the Bush Administration praised the confession and considered the matter over. Musharraf suddenly offered the U.S. permission to search for Bin Laden in vast areas of the Pakistan border to which he had previously denied the U.S. access. "The worst nuclear-arms proliferator in the world" had been pardoned, and the U.S. had no negative comment about it.

In December 2003, Bush and Tony Blair announced that Libya would...