The Spy Who Sold Nuclear Secrets to Iran | How a CIA Spy Recruiter Helped Stop Dr Strangelove | 4
The Spy Who
Audible
4.6 • 891 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
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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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of The Spy Who ad-free right now. |
| 0:05.7 | Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. |
| 0:12.4 | I'm Razor Jaffrey, and this is The Spy Who, an Audible original. |
| 0:19.4 | Thank you for joining us for our final episode of The Spy Who Sold Nuclear Secrets to Iran. |
| 0:26.3 | 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. |
| 0:35.8 | Who knows what might have transpired if this technology had been successfully shared with the regime's bidding for it? |
| 0:43.3 | It's a privilege then to round off our season talking to the man who spent much of his career confronting this possibility, |
| 0:50.3 | subverting the attempts of the players in our story to achieve their aims, |
| 0:55.2 | and so perhaps preventing a nuclear pandemic. |
| 0:58.8 | As CIA operations officer for 25 years, our guest today specialized in recruiting foreign spies. |
| 1:05.2 | He says, to be quite blunt about it, I'm expected to manipulate people, exploit people, subvert people, suborn |
| 1:12.8 | people, convince them to commit treason, to become traitors to their countries, to literally |
| 1:18.3 | betray a trust, and to give me secrets to which they have access. |
| 1:22.4 | And I found out that not only was I pretty darn good at it, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. It gives me great pleasure |
| 1:29.0 | to welcome our guest, Jim Lawler, to the show. |
| 1:36.3 | Alison Matt here from British Scandal. Matt's some news for you. British Scandal is going |
| 1:41.0 | to Broadway. What? Sorry, not literally. |
| 1:44.3 | I just mean we're taking it to the stage. Is this your festival crossed wires? We're all the UK's biggest podcast do live shows across iconic venues in Sheffield, between the 2nd and 5th of July. And that was a beautiful read. Matt and I cordially invite you to our British Scandal live show on Sunday, July the 5th. And if we're doing the story, I think we are, it is potentially one of the most ridiculous |
| 2:04.1 | scandals we've ever told. So grab a ticket at crossedwires. Live. That's C.R. O S-S-E-D. Wires. |
| 2:11.7 | Dot Live. |
| 2:14.0 | Jim, hello. Whereabouts in the world do we find you today? |
| 2:23.3 | Well, I am in a part of Bethesda, I think, D.C. not far, actually from the church I go to National Presbyterian Church, but I live in McLean, Virginia, about 25 minutes away. |
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