"Armed Madhouse" 1st installment

I just started reading "Armed Madhouse" by Greg Palast, author of New York Times best seller "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."

I'm only on page twenty-one and already I've got to stop and tell this story.

It was only a few weeks after Bush (George W.) took office, that the CIA and DIA were told to "back off" certain targets of investigations begun by Bill Clinton.

Khan Labs in Pakistan was one such investigation. Even as Dr. A.Q. Khan, known as the "Father "of Pakistan's atomic bomb was selling copies of his bomb to Libya and North Korea.

So why would the US pull back from nabbing Libya's bomb connection? Because it was Saudi Arabia who was funding Pakistan's nukes and there's definitely constraints on US investigation of Saudis. ( Can any one explain what's behind this?)

It was Nov. 2001 when BBC got the story about Khan's bomb and reported it that night on TV and in the London Guardian. Over two years later Bush called an emergency press briefing and expressed shock at having learned Khan was selling bombs.

It wasn't US intelligence that exposed Khan but one of Khan's own customers, Muammar Gaddafi the mischievous tyrant of Libya. In return for Gaddafi's shutting down his bomb program the US and Britain agreed to end their trade embargo on Libya.

After Libya gave up their bomb everyone assumed the planet was safe once more. But had US government not worked hard at ignoring the Saudi money trail to Dr. Khan, the US just may have uncovered the nuclear shipments sent to despot Kim Jong ll of North Korea.

Fear not, while America was averting it's gaze from Khan, Homeland Security and the FBI were staking out libraries and borrowing records without subpoenas. When legal nitpickers started questioning the constitutionality of this, Congress rushed in to extend the Patriot Act to permit the FBI to hunt library records without showing any reason or cause. This was July 2005, two days after the London bombings.

What we have here is the Great Con: to get us to pull out each other's hair over the sanctity of library card privacy. While Khan's out peddling nukes, we are dragged in to a nitwit debate over "the balance between security and civil liberties"- with the defenders of America against terrorists sneering at the sissies of the ACLU.

Wow! This is a prime example of diversionary tactics implemented by our government routinely.

Can anyone elaborate on this or tell me more about the author?