The black marketeer with a foul tongue

Past words can come back to haunt you. Sometimes they get you into serious trouble while at other times, they make you seem like a fool!! (even after granting some leeway for hindsight!)

In 1979, Shyam Bhatia and Colin Smith authored an article on the nuclear espionage perpetrated by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan (father of Pakistan's nukes) in Holland, a charge that has since been established as being true.

Incensed at this article, AQ Khan shot off a handwritten letter condemning it. While a letter of condemnation is not out of place, the coarse language used in it certainly stood out like a sore thumb. Shyam Bhatia has published the contents of that letter in an article on Rediff.com today.

Have a look at the abusive language of Dr. AQ Khan who was furious at the charge of being labelled as a nuclear thief...

'The article on Pakistan in the issue of 9.12.1979 by Colin Smith and Shyam Bhatia was so vulgar and low that I considered it an insult to reflect on it.

It was in short words a bull-shit, full of lies, insinuations and cheap journalism for money and cheap publicity.

Shyam Bhatia, a Hindu bastard, could not write anything objective about Pakistan. Both insinuated as if Holland is an atomic bomb manufacturing factory where, instead of cheese balls, you could pick up "triggering mechanisms." Have you for a moment thought of the meaning of this word?

Of course not because you could not differentiate between the mouth and the back hole of a donkey. I do not owe an explanation to anybody, but I did owe an explanation to the Dutch government, which I did with all the documents.

Not the language that would befit a national hero, is it?! But the language is not really the point here. The point is... now that the man in question, himself, has admitted to being a global nuclear black-marketeer, this letter makes him look like a bloody fool, doesn't it?! ;-)

By the way, the New York Times has an in-depth story (NYTimes registration required) on how Dr. AQ Khan built up his global network of illicit nuclear trade ...

The scope and audacity of the illicit network are still not fully known. Nor is it known whether the Pakistani military or government, which had supported Dr. Khan's research, were complicit in his activities.

But what has become clear in recent days is that Dr. Khan, a Pakistani national hero who began his rise 30 years ago by importing nuclear equipment to secretly build his country's atom bomb, gradually transformed himself into the largest and most sophisticated exporter in the nuclear black market.

"It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before," said a senior American official who has reviewed the intelligence. "First, he exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments."