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Deception
Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons
Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark

Reviews of Deception

"In light of the recent events in Pakistan, this excellent and chilling book has acquired added significance." —Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs

"Essential information for understanding the nuclear dangers posed by Pakistan...A disturbing picture of the proliferation network set up by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan."—Joseph Cirincione, New York Review of Books

"All are scathing indictments of the Western powers that knew what Khan was doing and yet looked the other way... Deception provides rich new information about Khan's life and work while making the case that Pakistan shares the credit and the blame for his notorious crimes."—Mary Wiltenburg, Christian Science Monitor

"With the book Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark have produced a fascinating, complex and extremely detailed account of Pakistan's acquisition of the bomb."—Bob Oakley, The American Interest

"[A] richly reported work...of investigative journalism, add[ing] considerable detail to what we know about how Khan built his program."—Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Los Angeles Times

"...Deception is the most complete and authoritative. Levy and Scott-Clark take the reader deep inside Khan's operations, including his extensive and previously unreported contacts with China, which gave him technical help beginning in the early 1980s. Their book also provides the fullest picture of Khan's turbulent family life, his constant tension with his wife, his extramarital affairs and even his visits to a psychiatrist, who noted that he seemed "eaten up . . . as if he was unable to sate his ambition."

It was this insatiable ambition that appears to have led Khan to move beyond just developing Pakistan's nuclear capability and into the world of black market proliferation in the '80s. As his ego and expensive tastes grew, so did the recklessness with which he sold off nuclear plans and materiel. In the late 1990s, he went so far as to draw up a menu of nuclear goods and services he could provide. Pakistani officials occasionally sought to limit his business trips abroad, indicating they had inklings of his proliferation activities. All three books suggest that this mediocre physicist could not have carried out his plans without the backing of at least some senior military and government officials.

Deception also gives the harshest indictment of Pakistan's duplicity. By Levy and Scott-Clark's account, Musharraf has often told the West what it wanted to hear while following what the ISI -- Pakistan's entrenched intelligence service, which has strong ties to Islamic militants -- wanted to do. His recent declaration of a state of emergency has left Pakistan adrift and control over its nuclear arsenal arguably more tenuous than ever, as the army's command and control structure has frayed. Yet Musharraf seems confident that the United States, Britain and other patron states will not dare cut Pakistan off militarily or economically, precisely because of that arsenal."—The Washington Post

"Levy and Scott-Clark's work is Levy and Scott-Clarks work is gripping, and impeccably researched"—Kirkus Reviews

"Simultaneously astonishing, maddening and absolutely frightening."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"The authors of "Deception" are award-winning British investigative journalists who make it abundantly clear that Pakistan has done more to spread nuclear weapons to America's enemies than any other nation. They relate how our Middle East ally, while supposedly aiding our war on terror, has sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Not only was the United States aware of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and its proliferation, but, the authors say, our taxpayer dollars likely helped to fund the fiasco....Reading "Deception" will likely leave you skeptical of what the US government says and does about Pakistan, and that's likely a good thing." —Chuck Leddy, Boston Globe

"Earlier this year, William Langewiesche's The Atomic Bazaar alerted readers to the blind eye the United States and other nations have turned toward Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb and to sell that technology to other nations, including the entire "Axis of Evil." Levy and Scott-Clark (The Amber Room) work on a larger canvas, shaping their in-depth reporting into a compelling and more detailed narrative. They have not truly improved upon Langewiesche's portrait of A.Q. Khan, the metallurgist who became "Pakistan's biggest and most valuable personality" after smuggling atomic secrets out of the Netherlands. But they do substantially support the idea that the nuclear program influenced Pakistan's internal power struggles, and that American government officials led disinformation campaigns for 30 years in order to hang onto the nation as a dubious ally against first the Soviets and then al-Qaeda. The authors also hint at the possible involvement of Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby in an attempt to discredit an intelligence analyst who spoke frankly of the Pakistani threat during the first Bush administration. Building on a decade's worth of interviews, the husband-and-wife investigative term serve a stunning indictment of "the nuclear crime of all our lifetimes," in which, the authors claim, the U.S. has been an active accessory. (Oct.)<—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

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About Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark