In the fall of 2000, Pakistani intelligence agents followed the country's most influential nuclear scientist as he flew to the Persian Gulf port of Dubai.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, acclaimed as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was under surveillance as he met with men described by a former senior Pakistani military officer as "dubious characters."
Rumors had persisted for years that Khan was selling atomic secrets, but Pakistani intelligence was on his trail for another reason. His unauthorized trip violated new rules imposed by President Pervez Musharraf to assert government control over Pakistan's main nuclear weapons laboratory, which Khan ran as his fiefdom.
Upon Khan's return to Pakistan from the United Arab Emirates city, Musharraf warned the scientist to obey the rules. When Khan persisted in his travels, he was forced to retire. But the investigation went no further.
Khan's secret life in Dubai and beyond is the subject of a meticulous international inquiry tracing a black market in nuclear technology that stretched over 15 years and three continents.
Investigators have concluded that Khan masterminded a hugely profitable network that provided uranium enrichment equipment to Iran and North Korea, countries whose nuclear ambitions are now causing global anxieties. Libya paid the ring an estimated $100 million for atomic warhead designs and plans for a complete bomb factory before giving up its program.
After more than a year of investigation, one of the crucial unsolved mysteries is whether Khan could have run his network without the knowledge, and possibly the connivance, of Pakistani military and political leaders. The answer is vital to discovering not only the full scope of Khan's trafficking, but whether Pakistan has adequate safeguards to protect its arsenal of 30 to 50 atomic weapons.
Interviews in the Middle East, Europe and the United States with former Pakistani government and military officials, international investigators and Western diplomats show that warnings about Khan's illicit trafficking were ignored by a succession of Pakistani political leaders and military strongmen.
Neither Musharraf nor his predecessors fully investigated Khan despite years of accusations from U.S. officials and international media, Khan's visible accumulation of enormous wealth and the significance of his dealings in Dubai.
