Fall guy
Friend and Ally Update: A. Q. Khan says the Pakistani government was behind his nuclear proliferation activities. The Pakistani double game just keeps getting more interesting: the U.S. gave billions to Musharraf, and this is what he was doing. “AQ Khan nails Pakistan’s nuke lies,” by Chidanand Rajghatta for the Times of India, September 21 (thanks to A. M.):
WASHINGTON: An angry, humiliated, and wounded A.Q.Khan has finally made public and official what has long been suspected: his nuclear proliferation activities that included exchanging and passing blue-prints and equipment to China, Iran, North Korea, and Libya was done at the behest of the Pakistani government and military, and he was forced to take the rap for it. ( Watch Video )
”The bastards first used us and are now playing dirty games with us,” Khan writes about the Pakistani leadership in a December 2003 letter to his wife Henny that has finally been made public by an interlocutor. ”Darling, if the government plays any mischief with me take a tough stand,” he tells his wife, adding, ”They might try to get rid of me to cover up all the things they got done by me.”
But Henny was unable to play hardball because Khan had also sent copies of that letter to his daughter Dina in London, and to his niece Kausar Khan in Amsterdam through his brother, a Pakistan Airlines executive. Pakistani intelligence agencies got wind of it and threatened the well-being of the family, forcing him to recant and publicly take the blame for the proliferation activities in a humiliating television spectacle engineered by then military ruler Pervez Musharraf….