Word: khans
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...Khan had a secret life. In hindsight, there were some obvious tip-offs. Although still a civil servant in a poor country, he owned dozens of properties in Pakistan and Dubai and invested in a Timbuktu hotel, which he named after his wife. He donated $30 million to various Pakistani charities and had enough money left over to buy his staff members cars and pay for the university education of their children. He had an ego to match his newfound fortune: after paying to restore the tomb of Sultan Shahabuddin Ghauri, an Afghan who conquered Delhi, Khan...
Friends noticed another transformation in Khan. He became more religious after the successful nuclear tests in 1998. A Libyan source familiar with Khan's transactions with the Libyan government says Khan claimed he was selling nuclear technology to bolster the standing of Muslims. "We Muslims have to be strong and equal to any other country, and therefore I want to help some countries be strong," the source recalls Khan saying. Ex-colleagues told TIME that following the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, he railed against the West and its operations against the Muslim community. After the U.S. imposed sanctions...
Whether motivated by greed or ideology or both, Khan decided to go into business for himself, even as he oversaw Pakistan's nuclear development. Khan offered a one-stop shop for regimes interested in producing nuclear weapons. He offered centrifuges--known as P-1, for Pakistan, and later P-2, a more sophisticated version--as well as machines that make centrifuges (critical to Khan's customers because hundreds or thousands of them are needed to make highly enriched uranium in quantities sufficient for a weapon). Utilizing a variety of contacts in Europe, Asia and Africa, Khan built a network...
...early 1990s, Khan began meeting with representatives from an assortment of outlaw regimes. A former Energy Minister in Islamabad says Iranian officials approached Pakistan's army chief in 1991, offering "around $8 billion" for access to Khan's technology. The offer was rebuffed but, IAEA officials say, three years later Khan did establish contact with the Iranians. A key member of the network has told investigators that Iran bought centrifuges from Khan. The IAEA reports that the Khan network also provided Iran with blueprints to manufacture more P-1 and P-2 centrifuges. The Iranians say they wanted the centrifuges...
...with Khan's Iran connection established, another global pariah, Libya, sought him out. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had tried in the late 1980s to build his own nuclear program by importing German technology and engineers, but the effort failed. To make its bombs, Libya wanted to enrich uranium rather than produce plutonium in a reactor because, says the official, "with a reactor, you cannot hide anything." Khan's system was a perfect fit, and as the commercial relationship was launched, Khan's underlings whetted Gaddafi's appetite with an unexpected gift. Khan gave the Libyans a stack of technical instructions...