August 22, 1979: Financial Times Exposes A. Q. Khan’s Continued Operations in Britain

The Financial Times runs an article showing that Pakistan is continuing to purchase equipment for its nuclear weapons program in Britain. The activities center on a company called Weargate Ltd., which was involved in a highly publicized deal to export equipment for Pakistan’s nuclear program the year before. The goods being shipped by Weargate are mostly machine tools, and the bulk of the company’s orders come from Pakistan’s Special Works Organization (SWO), an army engineering unit building a uranium enrichment facility at Kahuta for nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan. Peter Griffin, a long-time Khan collaborator and part-owner of Weargate, tells Simon Henderson, a reporter for the paper, that in the last 18 months he has sold £800,000 ($1,800,000) of equipment to the SWO and has still to fill an order for buses and ambulances. Griffin also says, “I am not helping Pakistan make a nuclear bomb, but why shouldn’t Pakistan have a nuclear bomb anyway?” [Armstrong and Trento, 2007, pp. 99]