CHENEY & Others Enabled Rogue Nation To Get Nuclear Bomb & Covered It Up In The 1980s (Guardian)

[kpete]

Jonathan Schwarz:
Fixing the intelligence, circa 1989

There are other episodes almost no one knows about, though. One is the effort by Cheney and others in the eighties to cover up Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons, as well as the way we and the Saudis were helping. (They couldn’t let the truth get out because Pakistan was helping us with our proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, which of course turned out to be a giant success in its own right.) In order to do this, they had to crush a government nuclear analyst named Richard Barlow who was loudly warning about what Pakistan was up to.

Today the Guardian is running an excellent story about Barlow—what they did to him, what’s happened to him since, and the chance he may receive a small measure of justice. It provides a real glimpse into how the US government truly works, which is why it appears in a foreign publication. I encourage you to read it all.

http://thismodernworld.com/4021


The man who knew too much

He was the CIA's expert on Pakistan's nuclear secrets, but Rich Barlow was thrown out and disgraced when he blew the whistle on a US cover-up. Now he's to have his day in court.
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report

Saturday October 13, 2007
The Guardian

Rich Barlow idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campsite in Montana - itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

He prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at the Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal - a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb - he found himself a marked man.

....................

He soon discovered, however, that senior officials in government were taking quite the opposite view: they were breaking US and international non-proliferation protocols to shelter Pakistan's ambitions and even sell it banned WMD technology. In the closing years of the cold war, Pakistan was considered to have great strategic importance. It provided Washington with a springboard into neighbouring Afghanistan - a route for passing US weapons and cash to the mujahideen, who were battling to oust the Soviet army that had invaded in 1979. Barlow says, "We had to buddy-up to regimes we didn't see eye-to-eye with, but I could not believe we would actually give Pakistan the bomb.

.......................

It is only now, amid the recriminations about the war in Iraq and reassessments of where the real danger lies, that Barlow - the despised bringer of bad news about Pakistan - is finally to get a hearing. More than 20 years after this saga began, his case, filed on Capitol Hill, is coming to court later this month. His lawyers are seeking millions of dollars in compensation for Barlow as well as the reinstatement of his $80,000 a year government pension. Evidence will highlight what happened when ideologues took control of intelligence in three separate US administrations - those of Reagan, and of the two Bushes - and how a CIA analyst who would not give up his pursuit for the truth became a fall guy.

amazing read:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2188777,00.html

[Didereaux]

1. This does contain acts of treason, I do not believe a statute of limitations applies to trreason...

-edited typo in subject line---
Quote from the original posts link to the Guardian> "When the George Bush came to power, his administration quashed the case. CIA director George Tenet and Michael Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, asserted "state secrets privilege" over Barlow's entire legal claim. With no evidence to offer, the claim collapsed. Destroyed and penniless, the former CIA golden boy spent his last savings on a second-hand silver Avion trailer, packed up his life and drove off to Bear Canyon campground in Bozeman, Montana, where he still lives today.

Even with Barlow out of the picture, there were still analysts in Washington - and in the Bush administration - who were wary of Pakistan. They warned that al-Qaida had a natural affinity with Pakistan, geographically and religiously, and that its affiliates were seeking nuclear weapons. Some elements of the Pakistan military were sympathetic and in place to help. But those arguing that Pakistan posed the highest risk were isolated. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were in the ascendant, and they returned to the old agenda, lobbying for a war in Iraq and, in a repeat of 1981 and the Reagan years, signed up Pakistan as the key ally in the war against terror.

Contrary advice was not welcome. And Bush's team set about dismantling the government agency that was giving the most trouble - the State Department's Nonproliferation Bureau. Norm Wulf, who recently retired as deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, told us: "They met in secret, deciding who to employ, displacing career civil servants with more than 30 years on the job in favour of young, like-thinking people, rightwingers who would toe the administration line." And the administration line was to do away with any evidence that pointed to Pakistan as a threat to global stability, refocusing all attention on Iraq."

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Suggestion, no a plea! Make a copy of this whole article, fax or send to your Congressman, and one ESPECIALLY to that witch Pelosi and demand action on this. IF anyone has an argument that this is not an act of treason (the cover up) I am a willing listener...nut you'd better have good leagal and Constitutional grounds for basing your opinion upon.

[RainDog]

2. kpete, you are incredible

you post amazing links. I know about this under Bush I b/c of his ties to Saudi intel that he tried to deny. Read it in one of those BCCI books.

[seemslikeadream]

3. The guardian must be reading DU and our own robertpaulsen

AMERICAN JUDAS


http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-judas-2nd-edition-investigate.html

[hootinholler]

18. I'm sure they had the facts for a long time...

The important news is that the suit is going forward.

Sibel was rejected by the Supremes ya know, so if there's another State's Secrets case to go that far, the court might be more compelled to consider them. At least it will show where the court is on this.

-Hoot

[Fridays Child]

4. No wonder fundies love Darth Cheney. He's the father of Armageddon.

[struggle4progress]

5. So Cheney has been undermining the CIA experts on WMDs for decades

[malaise]

6. The mistake from day one was letting Nixon escape then letting

North et al escape. Men believe they can get away with murder.

Great read - frightening indeed..

Add

[Snarkoleptic]

7. Frightening stuff.

Makes me wonder if Saudi Arabia (and others) are undeclared nuclear weapon holders.

[robinlynne]

8. fascinating. a must-read!

[pansypoo53219]

9. more dick

what a good pick georgie made to be the center of power.

[seemslikeadream]

10. kick

[Toots]

11. Cheney did the same thing to another CIA agent that was following development

of nuclear materials throughout Mid-East and ex Soviet countries. That Covert Agent was named Valarie Plame..

[tom_paine]

12. ISI, CIA, Royal Bushies, Osama bin Laden...all seemingly working in concert judged by the results of

their actions.

Oh my yes, this is monstrous treason and they were committing back in the 80s.

I should have known. What was I thinking? They very probably murdered the Kennedy brothers, Royal Bushies have been committing treason since Prescott Bush and the FDR 1934 attempted coup.

[McCamy Taylor]

13. Kissinger and Nixon started it.

[eridani]

14. And Iran must not ever get the bomb because why? n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

15. Mere words are inadeqaute to describe the evil that is Cheney and his cohorts, along with BushCo,

Reagan, and Poppy. Their contempt for everything that the Constitution and the laws of this country are supposed to stand for is obvious. They could not be doing a better job if they were, in fact, moles for another government that was trying to destroy this country.

[proud patriot]

16. and this guy gets offended when wwe compare him to Vader?

perhaps he would like to be called Satan himself.

[mopinko]

17. this is why valerie plame had to be stopped

and her network destroyed. she knew.

[rateyes]

19. And, still, impeachment is off the table....

dammit, Nancy.

[dickbearton]

20. K&R.