Pakistan's nuclear ambitions:

DURING a visit last year to Washington, DC, to try to convince George Bush's administration that she was the answer to Pakistan's problems, Benazir Bhutto promised to hand over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former head of her nation's atomic bomb programme, who has been living under house arrest in Islamabad since 2004. Under Miss Bhutto's rule, Mr Khan would be made available for questioning—not directly by the Americans, but by the next best thing, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Miss Bhutto is now dead, and it is unlikely that any other Pakistani leader in the near future will allow the world to know the full details of how a Pakistani scientist came to sell nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The reaction at home to Miss Bhutto's proposal was outrage. Mr Khan, best known as A.Q. Khan, may officially be in disgrace and forced to live without access to radio, television or the internet, but for many Pakistanis he remains a national hero. When he was hospitalised last year the prime minister sent flowers.

“The Nuclear Jihadist” exposes in detail how Mr Khan, an affable, mediocre metallurgist inspired by the dream of an Islamic bomb, stole nuclear technology from the Dutch laboratory in which he was working in the mid-1970s, moved back to Pakistan to build a giant enrichment complex to make the bomb at Kahuta in Punjab province, and then created a nuclear Wal-Mart to sell the parts to others. The authors describe his work as the linchpin of the “second nuclear age”.

Pakistan's progress towards becoming a nuclear power began with Miss Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who promised, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.” As for Miss Bhutto, she told the Americans when she was prime minister in the late 1980s that she did not know the details of the nuclear device her scientists were developing. If she was being truthful, the authors suggest she was close to negligent. She assured George Bush senior that she would keep Pakistan from enriching uranium to weapons-grade level, and was promptly sold 60 F-16 fighter jets. America had sold Pakistan 40 F-16s during the Reagan presidency, when it already knew about the nuclear programme.

The book's most revealing passages are about America's role in the affair. The authors argue that successive American administrations knew a lot about Mr Khan's activities, but for larger strategic foreign-policy reasons, chose to do nothing about them. Mr Khan was able to flout international rules on nuclear non-proliferation because American policymakers thought that securing Pakistan's assistance in defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan—and, more recently, President Pervez Musharraf's help in fighting terrorism—were more important than limiting the spread of nuclear bombs.

The story of Richard Barlow, a CIA agent who once worked in its directorate of intelligence on proliferation, sums up the American attitude. Mr Barlow had protested that intelligence was being manipulated by the Pentagon to suit the policy adopted by President Bush senior's administration of turning a blind eye to Pakistan's nuclear development. He lost his job. The authors find Mr Barlow at the end of the book denied his state pension, living with two dogs in a motor home.

The one successful recent effort to reverse the spread of nuclear technology involves Libya. After September 11th 2001, Libya's leader, Muammar Qaddafi, agreed to give up his nuclear ambitions in return for better access to western investment and trade. But the authors show that even in this instance American and British intelligence agents believe enough critical technology remains hidden to allow Libya one day to rekindle its programme.

Douglas Frantz, an investigative journalist and former managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, and his wife, Catherine Collins, also a journalist, know how to weave complicated material into a persuasive narrative. Mr Musharraf has insisted all along that Mr Khan, the salesman, was a lone wolf who operated under the radar, and that his network has been shut down. The authors argue that this claim is far-fetched: there is still plenty of nuclear know-how in the wrong hands.