General Pervez Musharraf was the Pakistani military dictator in power during John Kiriakou’s 2002 tour as CIA chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan.
”We essentially just purchased Musharraf”
Per Kiriakou: “The United States loves working with dictators, because then you don’t have to worry about public opinion, and you don’t have to worry about the media.” The U.S. gave Pakistan “millions and millions and millions of dollars” in military and economic aid, paid tens of millions in cash directly to the ISI, and met with Musharraf several times a week. In return, “essentially he would let us do whatever we wanted to do.”[1][2][3]
Kiriakou notes the limit of that leverage: Musharraf had to keep his own military happy, and the military “didn’t care about Al-Qaeda. They cared about India.”[3]
The nuclear arsenal
Kiriakou says that while stationed in Pakistan in 2002 he was told unofficially that the Pentagon controlled the Pakistani nuclear arsenal — that Musharraf had turned control over to the United States because he feared the weapons could fall into terrorist hands.[4]
A.Q. Khan
Musharraf later pardoned nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan, ending all investigations into Khan’s black-market network.[5]