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- [00:00]
Chuck Bryant
This is an I Heart Podcast.
- [00:05]
Josh Clark
Living with a rare autoimmune condition comes with challenges but also incredible strength. Especially for those living with conditions like myasthenia gravis or mg, and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, otherwise known as cidp, finding empowerment in the community is critical. Untold Stories Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition. A Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics and explores people discovering strength in the most unexpected places. Listen to Untold Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:38]
Chuck Bryant
You know, Lowe's knows that taking on more projects should be rewarding. And that's why loyalty members get more every day with rewards for every home or business purchase. Plus shop weekly member deals and get access to free standard shipping. So what are you waiting for? Join Milo's Rewards for Free today Link Loyalty program Subject to terms and conditions details@lowe's.com terms subject to change.
- [01:04]
Bridget Todd
Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [01:14]
Josh Clark
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff youf Should Know Foreign Policy Edition.
- [01:23]
Chuck Bryant
That's right. Take it away.
- [01:25]
Josh Clark
Okay, so, Chuck, we're talking today. Well, let me start differently. Chuck.
- [01:31]
Chuck Bryant
Yes?
- [01:31]
Josh Clark
Have you ever met a Q. Khan?
- [01:34]
Chuck Bryant
I had never heard of a Q. Khan.
- [01:36]
Josh Clark
What do you think of him now?
- [01:41]
Chuck Bryant
You know, seems like a guy that made a lot of money helping countries develop their nuclear program.
- [01:49]
Josh Clark
Sure. But I think that leaves out some very important stuff. This is in flagrant violation of UN Non proliferation treaties. It was generally illegal, and he was even doing it on the side. He had an underground clandestine proliferation network, which is. I mean, that's. Very few people have ever done that in the world. And over here in the West, Chuck, he's viewed as a villain. And in other parts of the world, especially Pakistan, where he's from, he's hailed as a hero. He's very complex, complicated, and at the end of the day, he may essentially be generally a fall guy for a much larger cabal of people who are actually doing this.
- [02:33]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. I guess we can go back and talk a little bit about how he got there, right?
- [02:39]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I think so.
- [02:41]
Chuck Bryant
He was born in India in 1936, and in 1952 moved to West Pakistan, and he was into metallurgy and studied at a few different universities in a few different countries. He eventually graduated initially in 1960 from the university of Karachi, but then got a doctorate in Metallurgical Engineering in 1972. In that time, he got married, had a couple of daughters, and then eventually found his way with his family in the early 70s and the Netherlands, working for a company called Physical Dynamic Research Laboratory, which was doing uranium enrichment for another company called Eurenco, which was a consortium of a few different countries, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. And they were, you know, they were running ultracentrifuges and he was pretty good at snooping around, it seems like.
- [03:40]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And ultracentrifuge or centrifuges in general, is used to enrich uranium. And you enrich uranium, uranium to a certain extent to use for nuclear power. But if you keep going, you can use that enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Right. So I think that these companies were doing this for power, for power generation. But regardless, he wasn't a particularly, like, brilliant physicist or metallurgist or anything like that. He was just kind of a dude. He just had a will that that was unlike other people's typically. So when he started out, he had a very low level security clearance, but he very quickly, like, started making waves and catching the attention of Dutch intelligence agencies for asking a lot of questions that did not have much of anything to do with the work he was supposed to be doing.
- [04:31]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. So they started monitoring him. And this is something that kind of continued at least as far as Dutch intelligence. And then, you know, eventually other countries would start monitoring as well because, you know, like I said, he got pretty good at snooping around. And in 1971, there was a conflict between east and West Pakistan and that led to a pretty brief war with India. And just for our purposes, what that eventually meant was Khan and a lot of Pakistan were kind of humiliated at the whole thing and were like, we're still under the thumb of India here. And kind of just sort of got that, I guess, national Pakistani pride going as, you know, wanting to get out from under that thumb.
- [05:22]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I saw that in that 13 day war, Pakistan lost half its navy, a quarter of its air force and a third of its army. So it was very much a humiliating defeat. And yeah, I saw that up to this point, AQ Khan was just a generally average person, but that seemed to have really started to get him going. So he decided he was going to use what expertise he had to help build a bomb for Pakistan. So he wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was running the show at the time, and said, hey, I want to help build a nuclear bomb for Pakistan. We clearly need one. And if you step back and look at it, Chuck, like, this is just some random dude that the Prime Minister had never heard of who wrote him a letter and said, like, hey, let's build a bomb. And I heard the first time he was ignored, and the second time they're like, all right, let's see what this guy has to say.
- [06:17]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Because he was lobbying for uranium and that was his expertise, was enriching uranium. And at the time, Pakistan was trying to enrich and produce plutonium. And he was like, that's not the way. Uranium is the way to go. And just a couple of months after that, Bhutto met with him. And over about the next 11 or 12 months, Khan was like, all right, I'm going to make a little grocery shopping list of what we need, the parts that we need to get a nuclear program started here in earnest. And I'm going to make a list of companies and suppliers and who can get us this stuff. And he basically got all of this information while he was working for that Dutch company, like, you know, making copies of blueprints and sneaking them out and supply lists, suppliers lists and stuff like that.
- [07:04]
Josh Clark
Yeah, he was very well known around the office for being like, making copies.
- [07:08]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [07:10]
Josh Clark
So he. Wow, I just dated myself. Can we just do a little science minute off to the side?
- [07:17]
Chuck Bryant
Sure.
- [07:18]
Josh Clark
So you said that there was a course that Pakistan was already on for making a bomb out of plutonium. Right. A Q Khan was all about enriching uranium. Those are two routes you can use to make a nuclear bomb. And the background and training Khan had was in uranium enrichment. And he loved to, like, talk trash about plutonium and the people in Pakistan running the plutonium program. But just the upshot of it is this. If you want to get weapons grade uranium, you need about 90% pure uranium in nature. The U235 uranium that you're looking for occurs about 3/4 of a percent of any natural lump of uranium. So there's two ways to get that purified U235. One is enrichment, where you spin it in centrifuges that go so fast that it actually separates the different kinds of uranium isotopes, and then you just kind of siphon off the stuff you want. Or with plutonium, you. You bombard it with neutrons so that uranium 238 eventually turns into 239, decays into neptunium and then plutonium. They're both like great ways of creating nuclear material to blow up the world with, but they're Just two totally different tracks.
- [08:34]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. So we did a whole episode on that. If you're interested in, like, the finer details, seek that one out.
- [08:39]
Josh Clark
Was that the one that we did after Fukushima?
- [08:43]
Chuck Bryant
I don't know, but we did a whole episode on how to. That whole process. I can't remember what it was called, though.
- [08:48]
Josh Clark
Well, I can't help but talk about it. I love that for some reason. It really, like, tickles me.
- [08:53]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. So In October of 75, the Dutch authorities who had been watching him this whole time, noting all this sort of suspicious stuff that he was doing at work, said, all right, we're gonna transfer you out of these enrichment projects because we think you're, you know, you're clearly some sort of a snoop or a threat or something. And just a couple of months after that, in, I guess, late 1975, in December, he left the company altogether and had, you know, basically under his. In his banker's box on the way out the door, he had a bunch of sensitive documents, blueprints, and those supplier lists. And he said, don't bother looking in these banker boxes. The lid is on.
- [09:37]
Josh Clark
Right. He just kind of vanished and showed back up in Pakistan. And he was very quickly put in charge of the uranium project. And there was a guy named Munir Ahmad Khan who is essentially his rival in. In the quest to build Pakistan a bomb. The other Khan was involved in the plutonium wing of the whole thing. Khan eventually got Bhutto, and then the guy who overthrew Bhutto over to his side in favor of uranium enrichment, but also in favor of a Q Khan. From what I could tell, he had a really big ego and he wanted to be like, the top dog in getting Pakistan the bomb. And so he was working on a project called Project 706. It was the uranium enrichment project. And by 1982, I think they. They managed to produce the highly enriched uranium that you need to make a bomb. Very, very small amount at first. You need several kilograms to actually make a bomb.
- [10:35]
Chuck Bryant
But.
- [10:36]
Josh Clark
But they were successful at doing it through that uranium enrichment program by 1982 for the first time.
- [10:42]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And as they're doing this, they're also researching how to get this thing into a missile. So, you know, as you'll see, I mean, if you just look back at the history of. Of enriching uranium or for nuclear energy, it's usually a country is like, hey, you know, we just want to have a nuclear energy company and we want to get up to speed on that. But what they're also trying to do is get a nuclear bomb.
- [11:08]
Josh Clark
They're also making copies.
- [11:10]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it kind of just happens over and over and over where they're like, no, no, no, we just want nuclear energy and don't worry about what's in that bunker over there.
- [11:18]
Josh Clark
Right. And again, I mentioned it at the outset, the reason that countries have to do it like that is because there's a huge treaty from the 60s that said, okay, the people who already have the bomb, they're agreeing to disassemble it. People who don't have the bomb, they're going to agree not to seek the bomb. And it's still in effect and it's still enforced. So that's why you have to do it. Right, exactly. But it's just been so just kind of nibbled at and worn down and just flagrantly ignored that it doesn't really seem to have that much teeth. But I guess it's enough to make countries feel like they have to be subversive when they're trying to create a nuclear weapons program.
- [12:00]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, exactly. So while he's doing all this, and you mentioned at the beginning that he had a side gig, you know, getting rich off of selling these secrets and blueprints and helping other countries, you know, get in touch with the. Right. As you'll see, he worked with a lot of middlemen over the years and spoke a bunch of different languages. So he was really kind of the perfect dude to do this. And while he was doing this, he developed that side gig as importing and exporting all these components and plans that, you know, some of which he just outright stole.
- [12:34]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And he was able to do this in large part because he had by this time garnered so much respect in Pakistan, among the leadership of Pakistan, emerging as the guy who was giving the bomb or developing the bomb for Pakistan, that they just weren't. They were like, just go, here's a blank check. Do whatever you need to do. So he started ordering doubles of the stuff that he was. He needed to set up Pakistan's uranium enrichment program. And then he would take the stuff that he didn't need and turn around and essentially reverse the way that it got there. He would use Pakistani military planes, cargo planes, to take those parts, the extra parts back to middlemen, and then he'd tell the middlemen what buyers to direct it to, and then he'd pocket the money.
- [13:23]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And it was very lucrative, as we'll see. He ended up making a ton of money doing this. He ended up having a few kind of major clients no one really knows how many countries he really dealt with, because I think they found out he traveled to many more countries than they officially sort of accused him of dealing with. But the first country to step up and say, hey, I really want to do business with you was Iran. And this was in 1987. He helped them build up to 50,000 centrifuges. P1 types. Pakistan 1. There are a couple of different types. The Pakistan 1 and the P2. The Pakistan 2. The P2s are much faster. And the belief at the time is that he was just kind of sending the stuff that they didn't need anymore to Iran, and it was kind of outdated equipment that wasn't going to help him that much.
- [14:18]
Josh Clark
Yeah, for. For sure. That's how it started out, because Pakistan upgraded their setup from what I saw. And the reason why you would need 50,000 centrifuges is because when you spin that uranium to separate it and you siphon off the stuff you want, you have to do it again and again and again and again. And it can take weeks and months and sometimes years, depending on what kind of centrifuges you're working with. But if you have 50,000 centrifuges like Iran supposedly got, you can make a lot of highly enriched uranium fairly fast. Which led me to wonder, Chuck, like, what is taking Iran so long if they still don't have a nuke and they started in 1987, what's the deal there? And the best answer I could come up with is that back in the 90s, the ayatollah issued a fatwa, like a ruling on Sharia law, that basically said, no nukes, Iran's not going to have any nukes, and that it wasn't until 2024 that Iran said that they were starting to rethink it. So I guess just because the leadership said they weren't going to have nukes, that is the reason Iran doesn't have a nuke right now.
- [15:28]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Interesting.
- [15:28]
Josh Clark
I thought so, too.
- [15:30]
Chuck Bryant
So he was dealing with their government, supposedly until 1991. There was a final shipment of the P1s, but other people have said, no, no, no. That continued for at least another four years, through the mid-90s. And those P2 centrifuges started flowing in. Iran wanted this potential bomb because they were at war with Iraq at the time, in the 80s, over the course of about eight years. So Khan, ever the businessman, was like, hey, Iraq, I've been helping Iran develop their program. You could probably use a little of my help in stolen documents as well.
- [16:08]
Josh Clark
Yeah. What's crazy is Iraq was like very suspicious of this from the outset. And I guess they asked for a sample and I couldn't find what sample they were given, just that Kahn was like, don't taste this. It's not that kind of sample.
- [16:24]
Chuck Bryant
Right. And you dab your pinky in it.
- [16:27]
Josh Clark
Yeah, exactly.
- [16:27]
Chuck Bryant
Put it on your tongue.
- [16:28]
Josh Clark
It's like, don't do that. So I guess Iraq thought that this was some sort of maybe international UN sting operation. And then around the same time, the first Gulf War broke out and they were like, we don't have time for this. So they moved on. And I guess he never managed to get a bomb or the information Iraq needed to Iraq.
- [16:52]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, but there were documents that said, hey, this little, you know, the paperwork was there. This will cost you 5 million bucks and a 10% commission on materials through my network. So I can, you know, pay people off basically. But yeah, like you said, it seems like it never ended up happening. And Iraq was probably wise to think that that was a sting operation, even though it wasn't.
- [17:14]
Josh Clark
Something I saw that was kind of funny was Iran paid $3 million for theirs and they actually were like 10% commission. That seems steep. So they went and started calling up the list of suppliers that AQ Khan had for them rather than dealing with him because they were bargain shopping for their nuclear program, apparently.
- [17:34]
Chuck Bryant
Well, maybe that has something to do with it too.
- [17:36]
Josh Clark
It could be their nuclear centrifuges were held together with bubble gum and duct tape.
- [17:43]
Chuck Bryant
Should we take a break?
- [17:44]
Josh Clark
Yeah, let's.
- [17:45]
Chuck Bryant
All right, we'll come back and talk about a couple of more clients right after this.
- [18:09]
Heather
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- [19:09]
Josh Clark
Smokey the Bear. Then you know why Smokey tells you when he sees you passing through.
- [19:16]
Chuck Bryant
Remember, please be careful.
- [19:18]
Josh Clark
It's the least that you can do.
- [19:22]
Chuck Bryant
Don't play with matches.
- [19:26]
Heather
After 80 years of learning his wildfire prevention tips, Smokey Bear lives within us all. Learn more@smokeybear.com and remember, only you can prevent wildfires brought to you by the USDA Forest Service, your state forester, and the ad Council.
- [19:39]
Josh Clark
Adventure should never come with a pause button.
- [19:42]
Bridget Todd
Remember the MoviePass era where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9? It made zero sense, and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech podcast There Are no Girls on the Internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind MoviePass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of MoviePass, the company that he founded. His story is wild, and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us.
- [20:13]
Josh Clark
When you go to France or you go to England or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans. They're wearing Kobe's shirt. They're watching Black Panther and the challenges.
- [20:27]
Bridget Todd
Of being a black founder.
- [20:28]
Josh Clark
Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me, and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you.
- [20:35]
Bridget Todd
I created There are no girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There are no girls on the Internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:54]
Chuck Bryant
All right, so we're back and we promised to talk about new clients. This is where North Korea enters the picture. It's the mid-90s, and with a deal with the United States, North Korea said, you know what? We're going to stop building our nuclear reactors. We're going to stop producing plutonium. Again, we're just trying to get nuclear energy going, but all right, we'll stop doing that. But what we're really going to do is very quietly start looking to continue that process. Just on the down low.
- [21:25]
Josh Clark
Right. But Kim Jong Il had his fingers crossed behind his back, so none of that counted.
- [21:30]
Chuck Bryant
That's right. And so who do they turn to? Of course, they turn to Pakistan and a Q. Khan.
- [21:35]
Josh Clark
Yeah. So, and this is where it really seems like Pakistan, Pakistani Officials were definitely involved in this, even though later on, as we'll see, they're like, we had nothing to do with this. But the. But Pakistan conducted its first nuclear test in 1998, which really surprised the world. And even more dramatically, they did it in response to a test that India had carried out two weeks before. And during this test, one of the groups that was there was a delegation of North Koreans who were invited to watch the whole thing. And the common wisdom among the intelligence community is that this is a group of nuclear scientists from North Korea's nuclear program who are basically being, you know, run through the motions of how this is working. I don't know if we said or not. Also, A. Q. Khan was known to have gone to North Korea at least 13 times that were documented. Something really weird happened during this nuclear test with the North Korean delegation, though, and that was that one of them, a woman who was among this group, died mysteriously. She was shot and eventually sent back to North Korea. Her body was. But on the cargo plane were centrifuges and other things for North Korea's nuclear program, too.
- [22:52]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Was that just like, hey, we've got this plane going, so why don't we just double dip and get some stuff moved while we're transporting this body?
- [23:02]
Josh Clark
Maybe Pakistan is the bargain shop as well.
- [23:06]
Chuck Bryant
Right. So like you said, he went to North Korea at least 13 times that intelligence knows about. And while he was helping North Korea sort of develop their enrichment program, they were supplying Pakistan. It was, you know, a bit of a quid pro quo. They were like, hey, we've got long distance missile technology that you don't have. And so we're perfect bedfellows here.
- [23:30]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And so they got the missiles from North Korea through a guy named Kang. He was, on paper, the ambassador to Pakistan for North Korea. In reality, he was the husband of the woman who was murdered. She turned out to be murdered during the missile test because she was spying for the U.S. but her husband managed to hang in there, and it turns out he was an arms dealer for North Korea. He was the one who provided the missiles. So again, all this time, North Korea is saying, like, we don't have a nuclear program. Pakistan's like, we don't even know what anybody's talking about. This is all, in retrospect, like, this is not on a lot of people's radar right now. And as a matter of fact, A. Q. Khan was on the radar of international intelligence communities again, all the way Back to, what, the 70s when the Dutch started watching him. But somehow Some. Some way the global intelligence community missed the fact that he was a rogue nuclear weapons technology salesman, which is the. One of the weirdest things ever. But it turned out that it was his next business venture in Libya that led to his downfall.
- [24:41]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I mean, there were, you know, later on they were, they were like, yeah, we knew he was ordering double the amount of everything and we just couldn't figure out why.
- [24:50]
Josh Clark
Right. It makes zero. There's a lot about this that just really smells like a kind of a poorly constructed coverup internationally, not just from Pakistan.
- [24:59]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, the next client stepped forward and that was Libya. And this was in the late 90s, like 1996. 97. He started trading centrifuges and the equipment and the components, getting them over to Libya. There's a guy here named Peter Griffin. Not what you're thinking from Family Guy. He's a real life human. It was a British engineer who was involved in this operation who was like, man, I've been given, or not giving, but I've been selling material to Pakistan for 20 years or more. This has been going on for a long time.
- [25:39]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And that was a huge thing that allowed this to go on is the international community would ban parts for like centrifuges or breeder reactors that you made plutonium with. And then people like EQ Kahn would be like, well, fine, we're going to start shipping the parts to make those parts and then assemble the parts at the, at the end. So they were legitimately allowed to do this stuff. It was just. They still had to fake what the overall purpose was. So, yeah, guys like Peter Griffin were like, I actually wasn't breaking any laws. It was more like an international morey that was broken where he knew he was helping states that should not have nuclear bombs get nuclear bombs, essentially.
- [26:21]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. So Peter Griffin, PETA Griffin, there's just.
- [26:25]
Josh Clark
No way you couldn't do something.
- [26:28]
Chuck Bryant
I guess that was. What's the guy's name? I haven't watched Family Guy in so long.
- [26:32]
Josh Clark
Cleveland, PETA.
- [26:34]
Chuck Bryant
Cleveland. Yeah, that's right. So Peter Griffin was a partner with a company from Dubai. And in 2001, they placed a bunch of orders for these parts that they needed with a Malaysian company. And that company spun off a subsidiary and they hired workers and brought in, you know, all this equipment and brought, brought in a bunch of new tools to start sort of, you know, turning this into a real program. And Khan was like, for my part, you know, I've got all these blueprints to show you how to put this, you know, big LEGO machine together. And he sent at least one engineer, so like active involvement, sending engineers to Dubai to like make sure they were doing everything correctly. So like deep involvement at this point?
- [27:19]
Josh Clark
Yeah, huge. So he had like middlemen from Europe, he had designers from Switzerland, he had companies that were set up to build the parts that were being shipped from Turkey, from Malaysia to Turkey to Dubai, where they were repackaged and sent on to Libya. It was a huge network. Also, I forgot to say earlier, by this time the Khan network had their own sales brochures that they used to hand out at arms sales fairs, which apparently they have arms sales fairs, but they have brochures by this point. That's how, that's how set up they were, I guess how established. That's what I was going for. So it was a huge, huge network. But it was one of these shipments that somehow got intercepted In I think 2003 aboard the, a ship called the BBC China, which as far as I know doesn't have anything to do with the BBC. And that was the thing that brought the whole thing down eventually. Chuck, I propose that since I remembered the word established, that kind of says we should take a break.
- [28:21]
Chuck Bryant
All right, we'll be right back.
- [28:43]
Heather
There's nothing like sinking into luxury. @washablesofas.com you'll find the Anabe sofa which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price. And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom. Starting at only $699. The stain resistant performance fabric slipcovers and cloud like frame duvet can go straight into your wash. Perfect for anyone with kids, pets or anyone who loves an easy to clean spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slipcovers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style. Whether you need a single chair, loveseat or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now you can shop up to 60% off store wide with a 30 day money back guarantee. Shop now@washablesofas.com Add a little to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
- [29:42]
Josh Clark
Adventure should never come with a pause button.
- [29:45]
Bridget Todd
Remember the MoviePass era where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9? It made zero sense and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech podcast There are no Girls on the Internet. On this new season, I'M talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind MoviePass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of MoviePass, the company that he founded. His story is wild, and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us.
- [30:16]
Josh Clark
When you go to France or you go to England or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt. They're watching Black Panther and the challenges.
- [30:30]
Bridget Todd
Of being a Black founder.
- [30:31]
Josh Clark
Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you.
- [30:38]
Bridget Todd
I created There are no girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There are no girls on the Internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:47]
Josh Clark
And here's Heather with the weather.
- [30:49]
Heather
Well, it's beautiful out there, sunny and 75, almost a little chilly in the shade. Now let's get a read on the inside of your car. It is hot. You've only been parked a short time and it's already 99 degrees in there. Let's not leave children in the backseat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise and that could be fatal.
- [31:11]
Chuck Bryant
Cars get hot fast and can be deadly. Never leave a child in a car. A message from Nitza and the Ad Council.
- [31:27]
Josh Clark
So the whole thing came down with that Libya thing. Remember, they had this amazing network going, all these amazing, all this amazing subterfuge going. And somehow, I don't know how, but a particular shipment aboard a ship called the BBC China was captured in, I think, leaving Dubai en route to Libya. And at this point, A. Q. Khan had basically been under great suspicion. I think he was being investigated by CIA and MI6 at the same time. But there wasn't a lot you could do about this if you were the US because you needed Pakistan at the time, as we'll talk about in a second. But when this shipment was found and it was a massive shipment for of centrifuges going to Libya, it was just all out in the open now. There was just no denying it. Even Pakistan couldn't protect A. Q Khan anymore.
- [32:23]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. And like you said, it was pretty complicated. I mean, it's always been fairly complicated with the US And Pakistan as being like sometimes bedfellows because they were necessary for the US until they weren't. And then, you know, that's when the US could take action. But in the 80s, you know, we were supplying military aid to Pakistan to help support the fight against Soviets in Afghanistan. So we couldn't really, you know, even though we intelligence services knew that they had a nuclear program going and even where that technology was coming from, there wasn't a lot we could do at the time. In the mid-80s, Congress threatened to cut off that military aid unless Reagan could promise that they weren't producing nuclear weapons. And so for five years, from 85 to 90, I guess Reagan and George H.W. bush would certify that Pakistan didn't have a nuclear weapons program. And then in 1990, once the Soviets were out of Afghanistan, coincidentally not really, Bush said, you know what? I'm not going to sign that certification anymore and we're going to stop the flow of aid to Pakistan.
- [33:30]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Which is, I mean, talk about a screw job. But apparently, Chuck, we were so in bed with Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that we were flying YouTube bomber flights to surveil Russia out of Pakistan. We had an NSA listening station there. Like, we needed them big time, but once we didn't anymore, we could start to press them on a Q con. And that was when this whole thing started to kind of fall apart. But again, it wasn't until 2003 that the BBC China was intercepted and the whole thing was on the table. But by this time, the pressure that the US had been putting on Pakistan was enough that the President at the time, Pervez Musharraf, who was the President of Pakistan around the time of 911 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, he, he essentially was like, okay, I've got to do something. So he dismissed Khan from the. The research laboratories that by this time bore his own name. They were called the doctor A. Q Khan Research Laboratories, the national nuclear Research Laboratories in Pakistan. And they were like, you're not the director of those anymore, but we're still friends, so you can be a government advisor.
- [34:50]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I mean, that's. I don't know. I don't know enough about it. But that seemed to be very much just sort of like, hey, look what we're doing. We're saying he doesn't have that job anymore. 100% right. Isn't that what was going on?
- [35:04]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And the US had to put up with it because by this time we were in Afghanistan and we needed Pakistan, we needed them again just as much as we did when the Soviets were in Afghanistan. Because no one learns from history that's right.
- [35:18]
Chuck Bryant
So after that 2003 cargo ship exposure, I guess in December of that year, that's when Gaddafi of Libya said, all right, you know what? I'm going to shut down our nuclear program. I'm really sorry. United States didn't mean it. And really sold Khan down the river and said, this is the guy. He's been supplying us with materials and we're friends, right?
- [35:43]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Apparently Gaddafi was really, really worried after the US invaded Iraq that he was going to be next. And he was right. But it was eight years down the road. But I guess he went so far as to show them, like, centrifuge labs that were disguised as chicken farms. And the whole time he's like, it was Khan. It was Khan. It was Khan. And he gave MI6 and the CIA documents on how to build a nuclear warhead that he said Khan had given him. So he really sold them down the river. And by this point, the CIA chief at the time, George Tenet, had enough to go to Pervesma Sharif and was like, it's not enough to fire this guy from his job. Like, he's an international nuclear proliferation dealer and you need to do something much more pronounced. And Musharraf said, okay, I got it, I got it. We're going to make him apologize and we're going to put him under house arrest. And then four days after that, I'm going to pardon him. What do you think?
- [36:45]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, they put him on tv. He did confess, he did apologize, he did all that stuff. Said he was. He took the fall. He said, you know, I wasn't acting on the direction of my government. I was doing this on my own. And, you know, I think everyone even at the time kind of saw through that he would pardon him. I mean, the initial arrest was like a real arrest, but then he pardoned him and put him under house arrest. And during that whole time, though, Pakistan was still like, no, CIA. You can't. Like, same with the International Atomic Energy Agency. You can't come in here and ask him questions directly. Like, we're still shielding him from you.
- [37:26]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And they continued to, even after they let him out of house arrests. I also saw one other little note. He had a jasmine shrub trimmed in the shape of a topiary mushroom cloud outside of his house.
- [37:39]
Chuck Bryant
Did he really?
- [37:40]
Josh Clark
Or is that a joke? No. Well, at least as far as I think Time magazine reported back in 2005, he did.
- [37:46]
Chuck Bryant
That's the one time I thought you were. Actually thought you were pulling my leg. And it was the truth. So I don't even know what to think of.
- [37:52]
Josh Clark
I like to mix it up and keep you guessing, buddy. Got to keep you on your toes.
- [37:58]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. People from Walt Disney World actually came and did that.
- [38:02]
Josh Clark
Is that true?
- [38:02]
Chuck Bryant
They're the best. No. So in 2008, the Pakistani government said, you know, this is internally, of course, they were like, hey, we should. Let's just get him out of house arrest too, because this is all just for show anyway. Right. And the US Was trying to work with Pakistan at the time to fight against Al Qaeda. So again, we were in a position as the US To. We couldn't publicly come out and say, oh, like, you can't, like, let this guy out of house arrest, because once again, we needed Pakistan.
- [38:33]
Josh Clark
We did. And Seymour Hersh, the very, very, very famous investigative reporter who broke the My Lai massacre and that Osama bin Laden had been assassinated and so on, he reported back in 2005 that the US went along with it because Pakistan agreed to hand over all of the information they had on the nuclear program they had helped Iran start to build. And so the US Was like, okay, that's a deal. We'll. We'll take your Iranian secrets, and then we'll just kind of look the other way. And the slap on the wrist that you guys are giving a Q Con.
- [39:06]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it's so interesting, like, with the recent stuff with the US And Iran, like, when people try to argue about what's going on and they say, no, it's because of this thing that happened under Biden or Obama or, no, it's Trump's fault. It's like, this stuff goes back decades and decades. If you really want to trace back to, like, the origins of all these issues, you know, back to Carter, it's like, you can't just look. You can't look. Yeah. You can't look back at one previous administration if you really want to investigate the true roots of this stuff.
- [39:38]
Josh Clark
It's interesting because you had Carter getting in bed with Pakistan because the Russians invaded Afghanistan under his watch. You had Reagan and then H.W. bush certifying every year lying that Pakistan didn't have a program, and so on and so forth. And, yeah, that's actually a really important point. One of the reasons A. Q. Khan was allowed to continue proliferating nuclear programs to countries the US don't want to have nuclear programs is because the US Looked the other way on it. That's a huge factor in his success.
- [40:13]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, absolutely. Eventually, he was fully released in 2009, and they still said, hey, you can't. Like you said, you can't interview him even now that he's out. United States or international nuclear commissions just stay away from him. And there are a lot of Pakistanis that think he's a hero. Like, he came out later on and even though he took the fall, he came out later and was basically like, you know, like, why should they have all the nukes? Why should those original five countries have all this power? He had a quote that said, are these bastards God appointed guardians of the world to stockpile hundreds of thousands of nuclear warheads and have they God given authority to carry out explosions every month? So he. This was in an op ed in Der Spiegel magazine, a German magazine. So he's very much a hero to a lot of people in Pakistan still for sort of saying, hey, Muslim countries need to have the same weapons that you guys have.
- [41:14]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And like we talked about all the way back in the 70s, patriotism certainly seems to have motivated him for sure. He also.
- [41:21]
Chuck Bryant
And money.
- [41:22]
Josh Clark
Yeah, he also made a lot of money. I saw an estimate that at his peak he was worth about $400 million.
- [41:28]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [41:29]
Josh Clark
And bear in mind he's on paper still just a civil servant, a scientist, a highly respected scientist. But he works for the government and now he's worth 400 million dol.
- [41:40]
Chuck Bryant
He died down to a hotel.
- [41:41]
Josh Clark
He did in Mali. And I looked it up and it only has like 2.6 out of 5 stars on TripAdvisor. Doesn't look that nice, but yeah, it's in Timbuktu and I guess it's in competition to the Biospherians Hotel. They had one in Timbuktu, right?
- [41:58]
Chuck Bryant
That's right.
- [41:58]
Josh Clark
Yep.
- [41:59]
Chuck Bryant
I thought of that immediately. I guess that's a place to open a hotel if you want to, you know, feel out the hotelier. Hotelier waters if you wanted to get your feet wet.
- [42:07]
Josh Clark
For sure.
- [42:08]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, exactly. He eventually passed away. A. Q. Khan died in October 2021. Apparently died of COVID 19. And he got a full military funeral even though he was, you know, not a part of their military.
- [42:23]
Josh Clark
No, but that really goes to show what a national hero he was considered then and now. This is 2021. I think to me the biggest. The biggest shock of all this is that he managed to live to be an old man and die of COVID Like the fact that he wasn't assassinated during his. His career when he was putting out brochures for his services, and the fact that he wasn't assassinated by the Pakistani military because they Were worried he was going to start pointing fingers like it's nuts. This guy managed to stay alive. But he did. And he was a public figure, too. He used to write op EDS in the newspaper once in a while. He was like a public intellectual in Pakistan. He was a big deal throughout his life. It's not like he went into hiding. He did the opposite, you know.
- [43:14]
Chuck Bryant
Very interesting.
- [43:15]
Josh Clark
And then one thing I saw, though, the irony of all this is that supposedly his technology didn't work all that well. North Korea ended up abandoning the centrifuge program in favor of plutonium. And I think even Pakistan's arsenal is largely based on plutonium now rather than highly enriched uranium.
- [43:38]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. I wonder if that was any kind of ruse on his part. But it seemed like he really did believe in uranium.
- [43:45]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And it does work, I think. Who knows? Maybe it's just harder to do when you have to keep it secret. I don't know. But one other thing I want to shout out. There's an Adam Curtis documentary. Remember, he's the one who did the Century of the Self that we talked a lot about in the PR episode. He did one called Hypernormalization, and it covers a lot of Gaddafi in Libya throughout the years in his relationship with the US and basically has the theory that Gaddafi was essentially an international punching bag for the US for show that the US beat up on kind of with his test agreement because the US wasn't able or didn't think it was able to take on the real issue in the Middle east, which was Syria, the real strongman in the Middle East. So they made Gaddafi look like a strongman that he wasn't so that they could pummel him in the public sphere and look like they were doing something about Middle east problems at the time.
- [44:48]
Chuck Bryant
I'll say one thing about Gaddafi is he could rock those aviators.
- [44:51]
Josh Clark
Oh, yeah. And that perm.
- [44:54]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Two looks that I've never been able to pull off.
- [44:57]
Josh Clark
I would pay good money to see you try, though. I have a feeling there's a Photoshop in the future.
- [45:04]
Chuck Bryant
I'm looking at him right now. He kind of looked a little bit like Carlos Santana.
- [45:09]
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. He got mistaken for that all the time. He thought that was hilarious. Yeah. And Santana, too. But it was not as good for Santana to be mistaken as Gaddafi.
- [45:19]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Yeah.
- [45:20]
Josh Clark
You got anything else about aqcon?
- [45:23]
Chuck Bryant
I got nothing else.
- [45:24]
Josh Clark
I don't either. Which means, of course, everybody, it's time for listener mail.
- [45:31]
Chuck Bryant
This is a. Not a correction, just a little bit of added info. Hey guys, we've heard from a few people by the way from from Canada specifically about Phil Hartman.
- [45:43]
Josh Clark
Okay.
- [45:44]
Chuck Bryant
Love the show guys. My favorite podcast for years now. As a huge comedy and huge SNL fan, I really appreciated your recent Phil Hartman podcast. You said in your show that you surmised he was probably the second most famous person from Brantford after Wayne Gretzky, but also qualified there were probably someone else that you might be missing that was more famous. Just wanted to pass along that Alexander Graham Bell was born in Brantford and is arguably the most famous person born in Brantford, Ontario ahead of Gretzky and then Hartman. I think I agree with that Jay. That is Jay Hamer from Hamilton, Ontario.
- [46:18]
Josh Clark
Thanks Jay. That was a short and sweet email and we love those kind. And yeah, I would agree too. Alexander Graham Bell's probably more famous even than Wayne Gretzky.
- [46:28]
Chuck Bryant
Ahoy.
- [46:29]
Josh Clark
If you want to be like Jay and get in touch with us instead of straight about something, we love that kind of thing, you can send it via email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.
- [46:42]
Chuck Bryant
Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.
- [46:50]
Heather
You listen to your favorite show.
- [46:58]
Josh Clark
Living with a rare autoimmune condition comes with challenges but also incredible strength. Especially for those living with conditions like myasthenia gravis or mg, and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, otherwise known as cidp, finding empowerment in the community is critical. Untold Stories Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics, explores people discovering strength in the most unexpected places. Listen to untold Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [47:32]
Bridget Todd
Join iHeartRadio and Sarah Spain in celebrating the one year anniversary of I Heart Women's Sports. With powerful interviews and insider analysis, our shows have connected fans with the heart of women's Sports. In just one year, the network has launched 15 shows and built a community united by passion podcasts that amplify the.
- [47:51]
Heather
Voices of women in of spite sports.
- [47:52]
Bridget Todd
Thank you for supporting iHeart women's sports and our founding sponsors E L F Beauty, Capital One and Novartis. Just open the free iHeart app and search iHeart Women's Sports to listen now.
- [48:03]
Josh Clark
There'S stuff they don't want you to.
- [48:05]
Chuck Bryant
Know Every Monday we break down the news, make connections and reveal the stuff they don't want you to know.
- [48:13]
Bridget Todd
A secret deal between members of Mexican.
- [48:16]
Josh Clark
Cartels and the United States government. Residents are reporting sightings of exploding birds. Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.
- [48:29]
Chuck Bryant
Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast.