Whistleblower outted AQ Khan-Cheney-Bush connection, now fighting for pension

[Octafish]

Your BFEE at work.

Whistle-Blower's Fight For Pension Drags On

Former Defense Official Seeks Private Relief Bill

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 7, 2007; A03

From a cramped motor home in a Montana campground where Internet access is as spotty as the trout, Richard Barlow wakes each morning to battle Washington.

Once a top intelligence officer at the Pentagon who helped uncover Pakistan's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, Barlow insisted on telling the truth, and it led to his undoing.

He complained in 1989 that top officials in the administration of President George H.W. Bush -- including the deputy assistant secretary of defense -- were misleading Congress about the Pakistani program. He was fired and stripped of his security clearances. His intelligence career was destroyed; his marriage collapsed.

SNIP...

Gallucci has known Barlow since the late 1980s, when Barlow was tracking the work of A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist amassing materials to produce nuclear weapons. Some of the men setting policy at the Defense Department at the time of Barlow's firing -- Stephen J. Hadley, Paul D. Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney -- resurfaced in the current Bush administration, which Democrats and others have accused of shaping intelligence on the Iraq war to fit political goals.

SNIP...

Barlow wrote an analysis for then-Secretary Dick Cheney that concluded the planned F-16 sale violated this law. Drawing on detailed, classified studies, Barlow wrote about Pakistan's ability, intentions and activities to deliver nuclear bombs using F-16s it had acquired before the law was passed.

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070602127.html

The government owes Richard Barlow money.

We the People owe him our eternal thanks for outting traitors like Poppy Bush and Dick Cheney.

Background:

BCCI is old news. Marc Rich, AQ Khan? Who cares? Well, apparently SOMEONE

[madrchsod]

1. dickie and the old man that`s who..

[Octafish]

3. Poppy and Sneer made a lot of money, er, connections off their government work.

They've been especially adept at marketing their services in the petrodollar-rich Middle East.

Know your BFEE: Cheney & Halliburton Sold Iran Nuke Technology

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=928662

[AntiFascist]

2. K&R, shades of Brewster-Jennings n/t

[Octafish]

4. Two DUers pegged these traitors.

DUers H20 Man and Robert Paulsen have documented the story:

Plame twofer - The Waterman Paper and American Judas

WOW! More dirt on Plame/Khan conspiracy & Sibel Edmonds!

We've got them by the yarblockos. Now, where's the Cavalry?

[AntiFascist]

8. Yeah, where IS the cavalry??

with the majority of Americans supporting the impeachment of Cheney, we only have 14 representatives signing onto HR 333, but Democratic leaders (with the exception of Kucinich) are still saying impeachment is off the table. Something stinks about this, and it smells similar to the Iran-Contra coverup.

[mod mom]

5. Of course, we learned this week that AQ Khan went OFF house arrest:

Pakistan's Nuke Dealer Off House Arrest
By Spencer Ackerman - July 2, 2007, 3:34 PM
So much for punishing an infamous nuclear proliferator.

Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, who ran a global network of nuclear-weapons technology -- catering to such clients as Libya, Iran and North Korea --was placed under house arrest by strongman Pervez Musharraf in 2004 under pressure from the Bush administration. House arrest was a compromise: Musharraf feared imprisoning Khan, a national hero, due not only to popular outrage but fear that Khan might disclose collaborators in Musharraf's government. Now, however, the AP reports that Khan is "virtually a free citizen," and has been for "several months," according to Pakistani officials:

In what is believed to be his first public comment in about three years, Khan told The Associated Press that he was recovering from treatment for cancer, but declined to discuss other topics.
Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, confessed in 2004 to heading an international ring of smugglers that supplied sensitive technology to Iran and others.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned him while confining him to his tightly guarded villa in the capital, Islamabad. He has been permitted few visitors.


Musharraf refused to allow U.S. intelligence officials to question Khan, and Congress has raised questions over whether the proliferation network Khan created is truly out of business. Meanwhile, Musharraf's grip on power is loosening, raising the prospect that Khan's newfound freedom is a cynical pander by an increasingly desperate dictator.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003577.php

JUST LIKE LIBBY'S SENTENCE WAS COMMUTED SO WAS A Q KHAN-because BFEE + their cronies are above common laws.

[Octafish]

6. 'They sold out the world for an F-16 sale'

Thank you for a most important reminder, mod mom.

More on the guy and how he helps the BFEE in so many ways:

'They sold out the world for an F-16 sale'

Onetime CIA analyst alleges Cheney, Libby lied to Congress about Pakistani nukes

by Luke Ryland
Published: Monday April 30, 2007
RawStory.com

In the era of Ronald Reagan, intelligence officer Richard Barlow was an analyst for the CIA, monitoring Pakistan's nuclear program. In 1989, he moved over to the Pentagon, where he worked for then-Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. Barlow lost that job when he raised objections to his bosses about senior Pentagon officials allegedly lying to Congress concerning Pakistan’s emerging nuclear program.

SNIP...

Barlow sparks a firestorm

In 1987, Barlow engineered the arrest of some of Khan’s agents in the US as part of an undercover operation. He says the arrests came with the full support and knowledge of the highest levels of the CIA and the Reagan administration.

The arrest sparked a firestorm. Proof of Pakistan's proliferation activities would trigger the provisions of the the so-called Solarz Amendment and put an end to Pakistani aid.

The amendment’s author, Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs Chairman Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-NY), called for a top-secret briefing by the CIA. Barlow was sent to represent the agency, armed with talking points.

Under orders from the CIA, Barlow told Solarz’ Subcommittee the truth: There were “scores” of illegal transactions that should have triggered the Solarz Amendment, and the Pakistanis involved—including a retired general—were agents of the government of Pakistan.

Pakistan, Barlow said, had been breaking US nuclear export laws regularly since 1985, and the responsible individuals in the US intelligence and law enforcement communities knew it. Having just approved a multi-billion dollar aid package, Solarz and others in Congress—including Senator Larry Pressler, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee—were outraged to learn about Pakistan's violations of their laws. Solarz was appalled that information had been hidden from Congress.

In contrast, those who had willfully misled Congress were horrified that Barlow had told the truth. They tried to undercut Barlow's testimony but to no avail. Barlow’s classified testimony was unimpeachable.

The pressure on Barlow continued

Barlow was a marked man. While those in his part of the CIA (the Directorate of Intelligence), the State Department non-proliferation staff, and the law enforcement agencies considered him a hero, those running the covert Afghan war—the Directorate of Operations, the former National Intelligence Officer for Proliferation who had been responsible for briefing Congress, and the State Department's regional office—tried to get him fired for engineering the arrest and spilling the beans.

Barlow, however, was soon vindicated. A US court convicted the Pakistani agents and President Reagan triggered the Solarz Amendment for the first and only time.

Immediately afterward, Reagan invoked a national security waiver provision in the law, nullifying the amendment. In the words of veteran intelligence reporter Seymour Hersh, "The President was telling Pakistan that it could have its money—and its bomb."

CONTINUED...

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/They_sold_out_world_for_F16_0426.html

The elite and their cronies are above the law.

We need some new laws.

[lala_rawraw]

7. now you guys are getting at what

i have been poking you to;)

[InkAddict]

9. Another tentacle tethered by Octafish - Thanks! n/t

[Octafish]

13. You're welcome, InkAddict. The real credit goes to those who've reported the issues...

...from whistleblowers, to their families, to interested individuals, to scholars to journalists to researchers on DU and the rest of the Internets.

Sibel Edmonds and other Whistleblowers Group

[bleever]

10. 'Barlow discovered later that someone rewrote his analysis so that it endorsed the sale...

of the F-16s.'

...

'In the summer of 1989, Barlow told Brubaker, Rostow and Michael MacMurray, the Pakistan desk officer in charge of military sales to Pakistan who prepared Hughes's testimony, that Congress had been misled.

Within days, Barlow was fired.

"They clearly didn't want the nonproliferation policy to get in the way of their regional policy," Gallucci said.'

[Octafish]

14. What happens when U.S. spies get the goods -- and the government won't listen?

It appears that intelligence get "missed" by certain political dynasties than others.

News: What happens when U.S. spies get the goods -- and the government won't listen?

By Ken Silverstein & David Isenberg
Mother Jones
January/February 2002 Issue

In 1989, an intelligence analyst working for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney issued a startling report. After reviewing classified information from field agents, he had determined that Pakistan, despite official denials, had built a nuclear bomb. "I was not out there alone," the analyst, Richard Barlow, recalls. "This was the same conclusion that had been reached by many people in the intelligence community."

But Barlow's conclusion was politically inconvenient. A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, a key ally in the CIA's efforts to support Afghan rebels fighting a pro-Soviet government. It also would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad.

Barlow's report was dismissed as alarmist. A few months later, a Pentagon official downplayed Pakistan's nuclear capabilities in testimony to Congress. When Barlow protested to his superiors, he was fired.

Three years later, in 1992, a high-ranking Pakistani official admitted that the country had developed the ability to assemble a nuclear weapon by 1987. In 1998, Islamabad detonated its first bomb. "This was not a failure of intelligence," says Barlow. "The intelligence was in the system."

Barlow's case points to an issue that has largely been overlooked in the post-September 11 debate about how to "fix" the nation's spy networks: Sometimes, the problem with intelligence is not a lack of information, but a failure to use it.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2002/01/political_intel.html

That was five years ago. We've come a long way in our understanding of the situation.

Unfortunately, Barlow is still being punished for telling the TRUTH.

[bleever]

16. If you can "stovepipe" intelligence, and fall back on

"failure to connect the dots" and "no one could have anticipated ___", you can pretty much run the house, and play the "good" guys against the "bad" guys according to your own script.

Is this the last sixty years of U.S. history?

[bleever]

11. See also Peace Patriot's work on this issue,

e.g., http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Peace%20Patriot/48

Thank you Octafish, slad, rp, and lala (for the poking).

:patriot:

[Octafish]

19. Peace Patriot is a true American hero.

"Traitorgate" does some it up. Bush lied America into war. To get Congress and a large chunk of the American people to go along, he need a nuclear rationale.

Why Plame Matters

by Ray McGovern
AntiWar.com July 19, 2005

The significance of the Plame affair is not about former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson; or his wife, Valerie Plame; or Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; or even President George W. Bush's alter ego, Karl Rove. White House v. Wilsons is about Iraq, where our sons and daughters – and many others – are daily meeting violent death. And it's about manipulation.

It's about how our elected representatives were deceived into voting for an unprovoked war and what happened when one man stood up and called the administration's bluff. And it's about the perfect storm now gathering, as more lies are exposed (whether in journalists' e-mails or in the minutes of high-level meetings at 10 Downing Street), as guerrilla war escalates in Iraq, and as more and more American citizens find themselves agreeing with Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) that administration leaders seem to be "making it up as they go along."

It wasn't envisaged this way by the naïve "neoconservative" ideologues that got us into the quagmire in Iraq. They may still believe that all will be well if the Iraqi people can only get it into their heads that we are liberators, not occupiers.

So much smoke is being blown over White House v. Wilsons that it is becoming almost impossible to see the forest for the trees. Bewildered houseguests from outside the Beltway throw up their hands: "It's all just politics … and character assassination." And that may well be precisely the impression the media wish to leave with us. Otherwise, left to our own devices, we might conclude they served us poorly with the indiscriminate, hyper-patriotic cheerleading that helped slide us into the worst foreign policy debacle in our nation's history.

Our weekend guests had a hard time trying to understand why the White House two years ago blew the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson. Sure, Wilson had caught and exposed the Bush administration in a very serious lie. But almost immediately, top officials conceded that Ambassador Wilson was essentially correct in dismissing the flimsy report that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in Africa.

Betrayal of Trust

SNIP...

The main motivation of the White House character assassins had more to do with the particular lie that Joseph Wilson exposed and the essential role it played in the administration's plans. For a nuclear-armed Iraq was the most compelling threat that could be peddled to our elected representatives and senators to deceive them into approving a war launched for reasons we now know were unrelated to any putative Iraqi WMD program.

CONTINUED...

http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=6697

These guys are traitors on so many levels, it's hard to keep track. Good thing we have the Internets and DUers who give a damn, including Peace Patriot and bleever.

[slipslidingaway]

12. K&R thanks. n/t

[IChing]

15. We shall look at these times

on what happened in Arkansas, at that airport
to let things be past.

[Old and In the Way]

17. It would appear that Clinton was compromised by his new best bud George HW Bush.

Might that be why Bill took a walk on Kerry and his investigation on BCCI?

[Old and In the Way]

18. Always an automatic nomination when I see your posts Octafish....

We truly live in a parallel universe where the good guys get punished and the bad guys get rewarded.

[seemslikeadream]

20. Dick Cheney AMERICAN JUDAS

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/

[formercia]

21. People wonder how these assholes got as far as they did.

it's pretty simple, really, they crushed anyone who disagreed with them.

I remember one of the boys sitting down with me and having a little tete a tete about my future. I had two choices. Go along with the program, have a good career and live comfortably ever after or I could be flipping burgers if I was lucky.
I chose option number two. They weren't kidding.

There are thousands who chose option number two. Most are dead.

So, if someone retires and goes back on contract, collects their military pension plus social security, you can bet they chose option number one.