Nuclear Secrets

S01E05

The Terror Trader

Could the father of the Pakistani bomb be the creator of the largest nuclear-smuggling ring ever known? This story reveals a cat-and-mouse tale of an out-of-control nuclear scientist and Western intelligence. In 1975, a young scientist copied top-secret blueprints from his Dutch Nuclear company. The thief in question was Dr AQ Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who was working in the Netherlands. His job gave him access to the designs of the key nuclear process, Centrifuges. He flew to Pakistan over Christmas in 1975 with his family and wrote to his employers, stating that he had yellow fever. He never returned and went on to live a lavish lifestyle in Pakistan. Dr Khan's motivation was based by his fierce patriotism and his quest to ensure Pakistan was at the centre of nuclear supremacy. The president of Pakistan placed Khan in charge of his nuclear programme, project 706, and he used his network of contacts from Europe to start it up. In 1998, Khan tested his bomb design and, for the first time, Pakistan revealed itself to the world as a nuclear power. Khan immediately became a national hero. With fame came wealth and the CIA discovered that Khan had acquired a large property empire. The CIA and MI6 were unclear what Khan was up to but, as time went on, the clues grew more alarming. They set up a joint task force which eventually led to Dr Khan's "nuclear bazaar". The world saw for the first time the terrifying scale of Khan's activities. The president of Pakistan placed him under house arrest, where he remains today.