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Levy began by outlining the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program, noting that a Pakistani bomb became an inevitable response to India detonating its first nuclear weapon in 1974. Before 1979, he said, the United States opposed Pakistan’s nuclear program. But after the Iranian Revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US began to see Pakistan as a key Cold War ally, and thus turned a blind eye to the country’s nuclear ambitions. Levy characterized this period, from 1979 to 1989, as a “feast” period for Pakistan’s relations with the United States.

Levy then argued that the US government was well aware from the early 1980s that Pakistan’s nuclear program was for expressly military purposes. He cited the 1989 report of an American official that documented the evolution of the Pakistani nuclear program from simulated tests to “hot” tests (in China) to Pakistan’s ability to attach a nuclear bomb to an F-16. Because its information would have been politically damaging to the Reagan administration if released — the US was at that time about to sell Pakistan a large number of F-16s — the report was severely edited before it reached the President. The official was the target of both an investigation and a smear campaign.

After 1989 there was a “famine” period in which the US government began to enforce their official “zero tolerance” proliferation policy. Previously, the US had tacitly supported the Pakistani nuclear program, but by 1989 the administration abandoned its alliance with Pakistan. Pakistan thus began to look for new allies, finding them in countries like Iran, China, and North Korea. At this point, Levy claims, the Pakistani government began to actively peddle its nuclear technology on the world market, trading centrifuge technology for North Korean missile blueprints, and even approaching Saddam Husayn to offer him a nuclear bomb. During this period, US-Pakistan relations were chilly at best, and Pakistan began working to create an “anti-NATO, anti-US” alliance.

The events of September 11 returned US-Pakistan relations to a period of feast, Mr. Levy said. Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan “took the rap” for Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation — although, according to Levy, Khan’s work would have been impossible without official sanction — and in return, Pakistan agreed to join US efforts against the Taliban. Although US-Pakistan relations are relatively good at the moment, Levy noted three developments he sees as problematic. First, Pakistan is buying far more nuclear components than its program needs. It appears to be buying in order to sell. Second, a number of Pakistani “front” companies — most of which were shut down in the 1990s —have begun operating again and are actively acquiring nuclear components under the regulatory radar. Third, there are more than 40 barrels of fissile material missing from A.Q. Khan’s nuclear program. It is unclear whether these materials were simply lost or ended up in Iran, North Korea or another state with nuclear ambitions.

After Mr. Levy spoke, Ms. Scott-Clark fielded a number of questions and comments from the audience. One commenter, a State Department official, chided the authors for relying on a lack of evidence — Musharraf’s refusal to grant the US government access to A.Q. Khan, specifically — to construct a narrative. Khan, the commenter insisted, would try to pin proliferation activities on the Pakistani government even if he had in fact acted alone. Ms. Scott-Clark replied that it would be best to keep an open mind in the face of incomplete evidence. But, she concluded, despite the lack of information in some parts of the narrative, the available evidence strongly supports the book’s main idea: the deception of the American people by both the Pakistani government and by their own.