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Stephen J. Hadley, Assistant to the President For National Security Affairs reads too much Le Carré:

That was a concern. That’s one of the reasons we rolled up the network here three years or so ago, and fairly successfully. And part of that rolling up was to roll up the network and part of it was to pursue what kind of relationship the A. Q. Khan network had to individual countries with which they are dealing.

Bush administration officials, like officials everywhere, tend to describe events—even situations where people out of their depth are running around with their hair on fire—in terms that suggest everything was and is deliberate.

It’d be interesting to know how far back the US knew Khan was disseminating nuclear knowhow (at least); but the question, really, is how far back did the US, through omission and commission, sponsor Khan’s activities?

(A. Q. Khan demos nuclear “football.”)

There will be hell to pay—literal hell—for the US’s poorly thought-out engagement with Pakistan (only most recently under Bush). We might as well get started on the truth and reconciliation phase. Hadley might be a good place to start, because he’d probably reveal as much by accident as by intent.