MARGARET THATCHER and I had an intriguing exchange at the end of the 1970s.
At a Prime Minister’s Question Time, I asked her if she could persuade her Dutch
counterpart to explain a mystery of the day: how crucial secrets were stolen
from the world’s most advanced enriched-uranium enterprise at Almelo in the
Netherlands, only to turn up in Pakistan. It could, I suggested, prove more
damaging to world peace than anything done by the earlier “atom
spies”—including even the notorious Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Americans
who passed on nuclear weapons secrets to the Russians.
Thatcher was on the…
