The Islamabad CIA station spent much of its time worrying about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. In 1990, just as the agency’s partnership with ISI on the Afghan frontier was fraying, the CIA’s sources began to report that Pakistan’s generals had pushed their nuclear program to a new and dangerous level. After a visit to Washington, Robert Oakley returned to Islamabad carrying a private message for Pakistan’s army. Pakistan was now just one or two metaphorical turns of a screw away from possessing nuclear bombs, and the CIA knew it. Under an American law known as the Pressler Amendment, the
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