The New York Times has a report on the frightening depth and pervasiveness of the nuclear black market led by the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan: As Nuclear Secrets Emerge in Khan Inquiry, More Are Suspected.

If the opening paragraphs don’t send a little chill down your spine, you may need to cut down on your dosage.

When experts from the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency came upon blueprints for a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the files of the Libyan weapons program earlier this year, they found themselves caught between gravity and pettiness.

The discovery gave the experts a new appreciation of the audacity of the rogue nuclear network led by A. Q. Khan, a chief architect of Pakistan’s bomb. Intelligence officials had watched Dr. Khan for years and suspected that he was trafficking in machinery for enriching uranium to make fuel for warheads. But the detailed design represented a new level of danger, particularly since the Libyans said he had thrown it in as a deal-sweetener when he sold them $100 million in nuclear gear.

“This was the first time we had ever seen a loose copy of a bomb design that clearly worked,” said one American expert, “and the question was: Who else had it? The Iranians? The Syrians? Al Qaeda?”

Squabbling between the US and the United Nations’ toothless IAEA watchdog has impeded the investigation, of course. And one has to wonder why the UN might have a motive to keep the full extent of Khan’s operation obscured.

Every time a plot involving nuclear weapons has been unearthed, “officials” express surprise that it got so far. They were surprised in Iraq, they were surprised in Pakistan, they were surprised in Libya.

What future surprises are in store for us from A.Q. Khan, who has been pardoned by our ally Pervez Musharraf?

There is no shortage of tantalizing leads. American intelligence officials and the I.A.E.A., working separately, are still untangling Dr. Khan’s travels in the years before his arrest. Investigators said he visited 18 countries, including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, on what they believed were business trips, either to buy materials like uranium ore or sell atomic goods.

In Dubai, they have scoured one of the network’s front companies, finding traces of radioactive material as well as phone records showing contact with Saudi Arabia. Having tracked the network operations to Malaysia, Europe and the Middle East, investigators recently uncovered an outpost in South Africa, where they seized 11 crates of equipment for enriching uranium.

The breadth of the operation was particularly surprising to some American intelligence officials because they had had Dr. Khan under surveillance for nearly three decades, since he began assembling components for Pakistan’s bomb, but apparently missed crucial transactions with countries like Iran and North Korea.

In fact, officials were so confident they had accurately taken his measure, that twice - once in the late 1970’s and again in the 1980’s - the Central Intelligence Agency persuaded Dutch intelligence agents not to arrest Dr. Khan because they wanted to follow his trail, according to a senior European diplomat and a former Congressional official who had access to intelligence information. The C.I.A. declined to comment.

“We knew a lot,” said a nuclear intelligence official, “but we didn’t realize the size of his universe.”

Here’s a page of LGF search results with a wealth of information on Abdul Qadeer Khan’s Armageddon conspiracy.

UPDATE at 12/26/04 6:00:00 pm:

Roger L. Simon also posted about this one.