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Report: Papers Show North Korean Bribes For Pakistan's Nuclear Know-How

"The founder of Pakistan's nuclear bomb program asserts that the government of North Korea bribed top military officials in Islamabad to obtain access to sensitive nuclear technology in the late 1990s," according to a Washington Post front-page exclusive this morning.

Abdul Qadeer Khan has documents, the Post reports, that he says prove what has long been suspected: North Korea, which has tested nuclear weapons, paid Pakistani officials for his knowledge.

Pakistani officials say the papers are fake, according to the Post. But "some Western intelligence officials and other experts have said that they think [a key] letter is authentic."

Meanwhile, NPR's Mike Shuster reported today on Morning Edition that "as Pakistan tries to add to its stockpile of nuclear bombs, domestic terrorists are launching more sophisticated attacks on the country's military bases. Together, those trends are raising fears that terrorists might target Pakistan's widening network of nuclear facilities."

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.