Abdul Qadeer Khan — A.Q. Khan — was the Pakistani scientist regarded as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb and the operator of a black-market proliferation network. John Kiriakou, who was chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan in 2002, discussed Khan as a threat the United States chose not to confront.
The proliferation network
Per Kiriakou, it emerged during his time in Pakistan that nuclear material was being smuggled out to North Korea, and that Libyan nuclear material was also moving through Khan’s network. Khan’s dealings were not Kiriakou’s portfolio — he was strictly counterterrorism — but a colleague’s “entire life was dealing with A.Q. Khan."[1][2]
"We would have just killed him”
Kiriakou’s assessment: “If we had taken the Israeli approach we would have just killed him. He was easy enough to find. We knew where he lived. We knew how he spent his day.” But Khan had the protection of the Saudi government, which came to the United States and said: “Please leave him alone. We like A.Q. Khan. We’re working with A.Q. Khan. We’re close to the Pakistanis.” Kiriakou calls the decision not to confront Khan “a mistake that the US government made,” one ordered from the White House at Saudi insistence.[2][3][4]
Kiriakou’s own speculation, which he is careful to label as unproven: the Saudis may have protected Khan because they were themselves building a nuclear capability.[4]
The book
Kiriakou notes that when he later served as chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he worked for a former journalist who, with his wife, wrote what Kiriakou calls the most detailed book ever written about Khan — first titled The Man from Pakistan, retitled The Nuclear Jihadist in paperback.[5]
Khan was eventually pardoned by Pervez Musharraf, ending all investigations.[6]