The Spy Who Sold Nuclear Secrets to Iran | How a CIA Spy Recruiter Helped Stop Dr Strangelove
5/19/202640 min
Not many people can say they helped dismantle the most dangerous nuclear weapons network in history. Then again, not everyone is former CIA operative, Jim Lawler. Jim speaks to Raza Jaffrey about his CIA career (that almost wasn’t), bringing A.Q. Khan’s nuclear network to its knees, and whether he thinks a similar Khan-level threat is lurking in the shadows...
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Raza Jaffrey· Host0:10
[Instrumental music] I'm Raza Jaffrey, and this is The Spy Who..., an Audible Original. Thank you for joining us for our final episode of the spy who sold nuclear secrets to Iran. We hope you've enjoyed the series as we've shared the story of AQ Khan and the dismantling of one of the most dangerous nuclear weapons networks in history. Who knows what might have transpired if this technology had been successfully shared with the regimes bidding for it. It's a privilege then to round off our season talking to the man who spent much of his career confronting this possibility, subverting the attempts of the players in our story to achieve their aims, and so perhaps preventing a nuclear pandemic. A CIA operations officer for twenty-five years, our guest today specialized in recruiting foreign spies. He says, "To be quite blunt about it, I'm expected to manipulate people, exploit people, subvert people, suborn people, convince them to commit treason, to become traitors to their countries, to literally betray a trust, and to give me secrets to which they have access. And I found out not only was I pretty darn good at it, but I enjoyed the hell out of it." It gives me great pleasure to welcome our