For those of you who care about how nuclear proliferation really works, the story of Atif Amin should restore your faith that there are real public servants out there. Amin was the Customs investigator for the British government who uncovered A.Q. Khan and Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation network in Dubai in April 2000.  Amin went to his bosses with the evidence, only to have his investigation shut down. Khan was allowed to proliferate nuclear technology to places like Iran and Libya for another three years.

David Armstrong and I told this story in our book, America and The Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise, which was published in 2007. We never met Amin before publication of the book. We got the secret documents that contained his story from American and French sources. But because these documents embarrassed British and American intelligence agencies, the British authorities targeted their collective wrath on Amin.