HOW GEORGE BUSH GAVE KRAZY KIM THE BOMB

From the never restful pen of Greg Palast:

"How did a berserker like North Korea’s Kim John Il get the bomb in the first place? Answer: He bought it from the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan in 2001 — while all our President’s men ordered our intelligence agents to keep their eyes shut tight.

"On November 9, 2001, BBC Television Centre in London received a call from a phone booth just outside Washington. The call to our Newsnight team was part of a complex prearranged dance coordinated with the National Security News Service, a conduit for unhappy spooks at the CIA and FBI to unburden themselves of disturbing information and documents. The top-level U.S. intelligence agent on the line had much to be unhappy and disturbed about: a 'back-off' directive.

[CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO OF PALAST AND AMY GOODMAN READING ‘THE BACK-OFF’ DIRECTIVE FROM ARMED MADHOUSE]

"This call to BBC came two months after the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Towers. His fellow agents, he said, were now released to hunt bad guys. That was good news. The bad news was that, before September 11, in those weeks just after George W. Bush took office, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) personnel were told to 'back off' certain targets of investigations begun by Bill Clinton. He said there were particular investigations that were effectively killed.

"Which particular investigations? The agent was willing to risk his job to get this story out, but we had to press repeatedly for specifics on the directive to 'back off.' The order, he said reluctantly, spiked at least one fateful operation. As he talked, I wrote in my notebook, 'Killed off Conn. Labs investigation.' Connecticut Laboratories? I was clueless until my producer Meirion Jones, a weapons expert, gave me that 'you idiot' look and said, 'Khan Labs! Pakistan. The bomb.'

"Dr. A. Q. Khan is known as the 'Father' of Pakistan’s atomic bomb. He’s not, however, the ideal parent. To raise the cash for Pakistan’s program (and to pocket a tidy sum for himself), Khan sold off copies of his baby, his bomb, to Libya and North Korea—blueprints, material and all the fixings to blow this planet to Kingdom Come.

"From another source inside the lab itself, we learned that Dr. Khan was persuading Pakistan to test his bomb—on India. Why would Team Bush pull back our agents from nabbing North Korea’s bomb connection? The answer in two words: Saudi Arabia ..."

Find out why here!