View Full Version : Pakistan's nuclear weapons program had Cheney's blessing
You have to wonder when folks will start to see through these a-holes...
Pakistan's nuke programme had the US blessing, says a study
[India News]: New Delhi, Mar. 22 : Pakistan's clandestine nuclear programme had the blessing of several countries, including the United States. The erstwhile West Germany had also prior knowledge of Pakistan's use of diplomatic missions to trade in nuclear material.
"Pakistan's Nuclear Underworld," an investigation by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) reveals that even the present US Vice President Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defense had blocked an in- house report on Pakistan's proliferation activities to facilitate sale of F-16s.
In fact, Washington's priorities changed dramatically following the occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet forces in 1979.
The Americans were "far too obsessed with driving out the Soviets to waste time worrying about stopping Pakistan from going nuclear," reveals the study.
The US seems to have taken a diametrically opposite stand in the case of Iran. While Iran insists it intends to use enriched uranium only in power stations, but Washington argues that Iran is making fuel for atomic warheads. Britain, France and Germany are also putting diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to scrap uranium enrichment.
Pakistan's nuclear programme, which began officially after the 1971 war with India, had the tacit support of by several other countries like China. But its genesis goes back to the nuclear ambitions of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who way back in 1965 said, "If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leave; even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. We have no alternative."
The ORF research investigation says "Pakistan relied heavily on clandestine deals with nations like Germany, the US, China and North Korea to buy, sell and barter nuclear know-how and materials."
Pakistan had maintained such extreme secrecy and security to its nuclear programme, that its Army, which guarded the installations it did not even allow the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhuttoo to visit Kahuta, where a uranium enrichment centrifuge facility was established. Centrifuges are used to purify uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons.
Islamabad has admitted in the past that its nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan smuggled nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, but has not given specifics as to what he supplied.
" Yes, we provided the centrifugal system to Iran. Yes, we gave this technology to Iran, Dr. (Abdul) Qadeer (Khan) did," Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said at a seminar recently.
Ahmed's admission comes after repeated assertions by Pakistan Government that it had ever helped Iran with nuclear technology.
Khan in a televised apology in last February too had admitted that "many of the reported activities did occur and these were inevitably initiated at my behest," but he had tried to keep his government out of the hook, taking "full responsibility for my actions."
The investigation by ORF was released in New Delhi today by former External Affairs Minister Yaswant Sihha. (ANI)
http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=88981
Leonidas
03-22-2005, 04:10 PM
Is there anything Bush or Cheney are not responsible for?
I could find an obscure article claiming Bush and Cheney were responsible for every war the last 200 years and plenty of people would believe it.
Is there anything Bush or Cheney are not responsible for?
I could find an obscure article claiming Bush and Cheney were responsible for every war the last 200 years and plenty of people would believe it.
Your problem is you won't research anything..
Then, when other people do, you deny deny deny
If you were a WISE person, you would see something like this and be INQUISITIVE.. you'd say, "shit.. that's awful.. I want to know more about that... that's totally different than everything I've been lead to believe.. .maybe I've been lied to" and you'd lok into it... That's the signature of INTELLIGENCE...
Instead, what you do is attack the messenger, then deny everything without even looking into it at all.. That the signature of an ignorant person... A fool.
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=6090&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported
Cheney Helped Cover-Up Pakistani Nuclear Proliferation So US Could Sell Fighter
March 06, 2004
By: Jason Leopold
Independent Media TV
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Material by:
Jason Leopold
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Material about:
Top Stories Ignored By U.S. Media
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Bush Administration Lies and Deceit
When news of Pakistan’s clandestine program involving its top nuclear scientist selling rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, blueprints for building an atomic bomb was uncovered last month, the world’s leaders waited, with baited breath, to see what type of punishment President Bush would bestow upon Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharaff.
Bush has, after all, spent his entire term in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMDs. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.
Remember, Bush accused Iraq of harboring a cache of WMDs, which was the primary reason the United States launched a preemptive strike there a year ago, and also claimed that Iraq may have given its WMDs to al-Qaeda terrorists and/or Syria, weapons that, Bush said, could be used to attack the U.S.
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan’s proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.
Like the terrorist attacks on 9-11, the Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan’s sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the U.S.—nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq—but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen.
In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then working as Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush administration: Pakistan built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S. said was sponsoring terrorism.
But Barlow’s findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in the magazine Mother Jones, were “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,” Mother Jones reported.
Ironically, Pakistan, critics say, was let off the hook last month so the U.S. could use its borders to hunt for al-Qaeda leader and 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Cheney dismissed Barlow’s report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities when he testified on the threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon and 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,” Mother Jones reported. “In 1998, Islamabad detonated its first bomb.”
During the time that Barlow prepared his report on Pakistan, Bryan Siebert an Energy Department analyst, was looking into Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in Iraq. Siebert concluded that "Iraq has a major effort under way to produce nuclear weapons," and said that the National Security Council should investigate his findings. But the Bush administration--which had been supporting Iraq as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran--ignored the report, the magazine reported.
"This was not a failure of intelligence," Barlow told Mother Jones. "The intelligence was in the system."
Cheney went to great lengths to cover-up Pakistan’s nuclear weaponry. In a New Yorker article published on March 29, 1993, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/? 040119fr_archive02, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh quoted Barlow as saying that some high-ranking members inside the CIA and the Pentagon lied to Congress about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal so as not to sacrifice the sale of the F-16 fighter planes to Islamabad, which was secretly equipped to deliver nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities and the had become so grave by the spring of 1990 that then CIA deputy director Richard Kerr said the Pakistani nuclear threat was worse than the Cuban Missile crisis in the 1960s.
“It was the most dangerous nuclear situation we have ever faced since I’ve been in the U.S. government,” Kerr said in an interview with Hersh. “It may be as close as we’ve come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more frightening than the Cuban missile crisis.”
Presently, Kerr is leading the CIA’s review of prewar intelligence into the Iraqi threat cited by Bush.
Still, in l989 Cheney and others in the Pentagon and the CIA continued to hide the reality of Pakistan’s nuclear threat from members of Congress. Hersh explained in his lengthy New Yorker article that reasons behind the cover-up “revolves around the fact… that the Reagan Administration had dramatically aided Pakistan in its pursuit of the bomb.”
“President Reagan and his national-security aides saw the generals who ran Pakistan as loyal allies in the American proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan: driving the Russians out of Afghanistan was considered far more important than nagging Pakistan about its building of bombs. The Reagan Administration did more than forgo nagging, however; it looked the other way throughout the mid-nineteen-eighties as Pakistan assembled its nuclear arsenal with the aid of many millions of dollars’ worth of restricted, high-tech materials bought inside the United States. Such purchases have always been illegal, but Congress made breaking the law more costly in 1985, when it passed the Solarz Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act (the amendment was proposed by former Representative Stephen J. Solarz, Democrat of New York), providing for the cutoff of all military and economic aid to purportedly non-nuclear nations that illegally export or attempt to export nuclear-related materials from the United States.”
“The government’s ability to keep the Pakistani nuclear-arms purchases in America secret is the more remarkable because (since 1989) the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department (under Cheney) have been struggling with an internal account of illegal Pakistani procurement activities, given by a former C.I.A. intelligence officer named Richard M. Barlow,” Hersh reported. “Barlow… was dismayed to learn, at first hand, that State Department and agency officials were engaged in what he concluded was a pattern of lying to and misleading Congress about Pakistan’s nuclear-purchasing activities.”
The description by Hersh of what took place in mid-1990 is eerily reminiscent of what’s taking place today in terms of the current Bush administration’s foreign policy objectives and its
Hersh interviewed scores of intelligence and administration officials for his March 1993 New Yorker story and many of those individuals confirmed Barlow’s claims that Pakistani nuclear purchases was deliberately withheld from Congress by Cheney and other officials, for fear of provoking a cutoff in military and economic aid that would adversely affect the prosecution of the war in Afghanistan.
It seems that today, Cheney is advising President Bush to deal with Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation much in the same way he did more than a decade ago. Give the country a pass, lie to the public about the seriousness of the matter and tell Pakistan you'll turn the other cheek if the country agrees to allow U.S. troops to use its borders to hunt for Bin Laden before the November election.
Leonidas
03-22-2005, 04:23 PM
Actually, I just stick to reputable sources.
Actually, I just stick to reputable sources.
Well.. name some.. and I'll see what I can do
What are reputable sources to you?? Seriously.. Give me 5 names (of any sort of media) that you would trust to be accurate
Bman
FLASHBACK
Copyright 1989 U.P.I.
United Press International
June 7, 1989, Wednesday, BC cycle
Washington News
U.S. will sell F-16s to Pakistan
By HELEN THOMAS, UPI White House Reporter
WASHINGTON
President Bush promised Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto the United States will sell her nation 60 U.S.-made F-16 jet fighters, one of Bhutto's key requests during her visit to the United States, a top administration official said.
The F-16s will join the fleet of 40 planes Pakistan purchased earlier, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft told reporters late Tuesday.
The sale of the advanced fighter planes is subject to congressional approval.
Some members of Congress fear the possible $1.4 billion sale would fuel an arms race between Pakistan and India, and divert limited resources from needed economic reforms.
At a congressional hearing Monday, John Kelly, assistant secretary of state-designate for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, said such a sale might be formally announced during Bhutto's six-day visit to the United States, which began Monday.
Bhutto was scheduled to address a joint session of Congress Wednesday and will have another round of talks with administration officials, including Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.
Wednesday evening she will host a dinner in honor of Vice President and Mrs. Dan Quayle.
In his toast Tuesday night at a state dinner in honor of Bhutto, the first female leader of a Moslem nation in modern times, Bush said he had ''very frank and meaningful'' talks with the prime minister, and both leaders pledged to help restore ''peace and freedom to Afghanistan and stability to Southeast Asia.''
''We just concluded a round of very frank and meaningful discussions,'' Bush said.
He said both leaders have a ''commitment to democracy'' and shared values.
Bhutto praised Bush for the ''moderation of your approach'' to foreign affairs.
''I can't help but remember the darker days of the dictatorship'' in Pakistan, she said, referring to the government of the late Gen. Mohammed Zia, who was killed in an airplane crash. Zia overthrew Bhutto's father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and later had him executed in 1977.
Bhutto predicted a ''stronger partnership'' between the United States and Pakistan and said the partnership would have a ''new vitality'' as a result of her visit.
Bhutto also declared that a return of stability to Afghanistan would permit ''millions of refugees'' in Pakistan to return to their homes after years of exile.
In farewell remarks after their official talks concluded, Bush said Bhutto ''assured me that her nation's nuclear program is committed to peaceful purposes.''
Pakistan maintains its nuclear program is geared for energy production, but some U.S. officials contend it is close to developing an atomic bomb.
Bush told Bhutto, elected prime minister just six months ago as democracy returned to her country, ''I welcome this opportunity to ... reassure the prime minister of our continued commitment to assist in Pakistan's security and its economic and cultural development.''
After a meeting at the White House, Bush gave Bhutto a pink rose bush from the Rose Garden and told her, ''May you and it prosper in the years to come.''
Bush and Bhutto said they are committed to seeing a political solution reached in Afghanistan that would replace what Bush called the ''illegitimate regime in Kabul.''
Both the United States and neighboring Pakistan provided support to Afghan rebels in their nearly decade-long war against Soviet troops, who withdrew from that country last winter. Predictions that the Kabul government would collapse with the Soviet withdrawal proved inaccurate and the fighting has continued.
Bhutto said, ''The president and I have reviewed the situation and we are in complete accord on our analysis and future policies that need to be done.''
Here's a more accurate account.......he was being tracked by EVERYONE since the mid 70s:
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan
Here's a more accurate account.......he was being tracked by EVERYONE since the mid 70s:
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan
More accurate in what way??? What part of the articles I posted do you feel is inaccurate?
Bman
Shinywalrus
03-22-2005, 07:46 PM
Bman, I do think it's important to have an open discussion on what era-specific foreign policy directives can mean in terms of long term consequences - Lord knows decisions that many politicians have made in the past, including those in our current administration, have come back to bite us in the proverbial ass, and this has been happening for decades.
But I think a lot of us are a little resistant to the light you automatically portray these things in - there should be dialogue on whether these things happened, yes, but also on whether it is reasonable to expect that a rational leader could have (or should have) forseen the consequences we're seeing today. If the answer's yes, that's fine, but I get the impression that if someone suggested that concept, you'd simply say they were excusing away Bush and being Hitler-youth, which in a lot of cases isn't the case.
Correct me if I'm wrong, that's really just impression I get lately.
Bman, I do think it's important to have an open discussion on what era-specific foreign policy directives can mean in terms of long term consequences - Lord knows decisions that many politicians have made in the past, including those in our current administration, have come back to bite us in the proverbial ass, and this has been happening for decades.
I'm all for having that open discussion, but in my opinion that discussion can't begin until there is some admission that events occurred and some accountability.
I find it incredible (as in "not credible") that the current Bush Administration is littered with so many of the same players that were in office in the late 1980s and early 1990s... GW has taken his father's place as President. Dick Cheney went from Defense Secretary to VP. James Baker went from Secretary of State to Bush's personal envoy to the Mid East. Rumsfeld went from Reagan's personal envoy to Saddam Hussein, to Defense Secretary.. heck the only thing missing is Ollie North in the White House and Ron Reagan Jr!!
Given the intricate history of these men and their strong connections to the CIA, it stretches the imagination to think that GW and Cheney were simply sitting around the White House reading reports from the CIA with no clue whatsoever how unreliable that information might be.. Slam dunk?? Who can believe that they actually believed that??
What we see over and over again are telltale signs of decisions that AT BEST appear to have been designed to gain some small short term advantage at the price of tremendous long term risk to the nation. At worst, one could reasonably conclude that the decisions were KNOWINGLY made for some personal benefit (either to the parties involved or their supporters) even when it was apparent that those decisions had tremendous potential to jepardize the US over the long term. The decision to arm Saddam seems to be one blatant example. The decision to sell F-16s to Pakistan when CREDIBLE VOICES were warning (even back in the late 1980s) that the country was on the verge of having the bomb (turns out they already had the ability to assemble a bomb in 1987) was another..
Yet, these men that seemingly made these "errors" have been BROUGHT BACK into the government here in 2001, where it appears they made another huge mistake in assessing the arsenal of Saddam Hussein.
How many times does one have to screw up before we get rid of them?? Or, how many times can one claim to have been "duped" before we stop believing that it was just another honest mistake and begin believing there is something more sinister at work???
Bman
To wit:
1992 The Financial Times Limited;
Financial Times (London,England)
December 4, 1992, Friday
Uproar over Pakistan atom bomb report
By Our New Delhi Correspondent
INDIA yesterday reacted strongly to a US television report that Pakisan built seven nuclear bombs and considered using them during a flare-up in border tensions in 1990.
Even though Pakistan denied the allegations, the report based on CIA sources, caused uproar in the Indian parliament.
The report could escalate tensions between the two countries which are already running high after two Pakistanis were shot dead in October by Indian security forces in the troubled Indian province of Punjab. India has said the two were agents aiding local terrorists - a charge Pakistan has denied.
The report said Pakistan prepared seven atom bombs, each the size of the weapon which destroyed Hiroshima, and considered using them in the event of a conventional Indian attack.
To wit, on August 29, 1989 , the sale of US F-16s to Pakistan was announced...
yet, this article ran in the New York Times 2 months earlier!!!!!
Copyright 1989 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
June 11, 1989, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
U.S. SEES PAKISTAN MOVING ON A-ARMS
By STEPHEN ENGELBERG, Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, June 10
Despite Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assurances this week that Pakistan does not intend to produce a nuclear bomb, the Bush Administration believes Pakistan is pressing ahead with some aspects of a weapons program, according to Administration officials.
Pakistan each year faces the cutoff of American military aid unless the President can certify the country does not possess a nuclear device. President Reagan made that certification last year, but one official said the decision for this year, scheduled for October, ''could go either way.''
Administration officials praised Pakistan for slowing some aspects of the atomic program that trouble American analysts. But they said the country has pressed ahead with other activities consistent with weapons manufacture.
''It's a question of whether the glass is half full or half empty,'' an Administration official said. ''There's been some progress. Those who think that she solved the problem with her public statements are deluding themselves. The jury is still out. This is a complicated problem. Her visit did not clear it up, and only in hindsight will we we know whether her visit was successful.''
Walking a Tightrope
Administration officials said Ms. Bhutto appeared to be walking a tightrope. The officials noted that the nuclear program is under the control of the Pakistani military and has widespread support from the Pakistani public. They said the Prime Minister might have to spend political capital to comply with the American law.
Ms. Bhutto told President Bush in a private meeting this week that Pakistan did not plan to make an atomic bomb, and she repeated the statement in a speech before Congress. Her predecessors have expressed similar sentiments.
''Speaking for Pakistan, I can declare that we do not possess, or do we intend to make, a nuclear device,'' she told Congress. ''That is our policy.''
Administration officials said this week that there were nonetheless several areas of concern about the Pakistani research and procurement efforts. They said, for example, that Pakistan was continuing its longstanding worldwide efforts to buy the parts and technology needed to make nuclear weapons.
One official said Pakistan was also enriching uranium at its plant in Kahuta to a level beyond the 5 percent appropriate for a peaceful atomic research program.
Another official said the United States had recently detected some changes in Pakistan's enrichment program that suggested the country was paying heed to the American concerns. He declined to elaborate. U.S. 'Benchmarks' Cited During Ms. Bhutto's visit, Bush Administration officials told Pakistani officials what activities they would use as ''benchmarks'' in evaluating whether the country has a nuclear device. The Americans, officials said, also explained which aspects of Pakistan's program pose the greatest threat to continuing certification.
In her meeting with Mr. Bush, Ms. Bhutto received a briefing from William H. Webster, the Director of Central Intelligence, in which he spelled out in detail what it knows about the Pakistani program. The information was processed to remove any hints of where it had come from.
Even so, American officials said this was a highly unusual step. Seldom, if ever, has the head of the Central Intelligence Agency disclosed the fruits of American intelligence collection with the ''target'' of those efforts. Intelligence professionals were said to be worried that any extensive sharing of the data with the Pakistanis could cause them to tighten security and make it more difficult to gather data.
But the officials said Mr. Bush had decided that it was more important to show Ms. Bhutto that the United States can monitor Pakistan's nuclear activities in some detail.
Administration officials said Mr. Bush had proposed on-site visits to the Pakistani installations by American inspectors.
Following the long-standing Pakistani position on this issue, Ms. Bhutto declined, the officials said. Pakistan had previously said it would allow on-site inspection if India agreed to similar measures. American officials said they did not expect Ms. Bhutto to change this stance.
American officials and lawmakers said, however, that they were pleased by Ms. Bhutto's forthright public statements to Congress.
The law that would cut off military aid to Pakistan dates to 1985. It states that no security assistance can be provided unless the President certifies in writing to Congress that Pakistan does not ''possess'' a nuclear explosive device. He must also certify that the continued American aid significantly reduces the risk of Pakistan possessing an atomic bomb.
There has been some debate among intelligence officials over how to interpret the word ''possess.'' One official said that the Pakistanis have fabricated many, but not all, of the parts needed for a bomb and have distributed them in different locations around the country. It is not clear whether the law would be violated if Pakistan acquired all the necessary parts but did not assemble them into a bomb.
November 20, 1988.. AROUND THE TIME GEORGE HW BUSH was elected President...
Copyright 1988 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
November 20, 1988, Sunday, City Edition
Nuclear club grows and grows
By David Nyhan, Globe Staff
When the slim, feisty, 35-year-old Benazir Bhutto led her People's Party to a stunning populist election victory in Pakistan Wednesday, she put herself in line to take over a country of 100 million mostly-impoverished citizens.
She's also in line to take custody of all the ingredients and plans needed to make between two and four nuclear bombs. Pakistan is one of 11 countries with an arsenal of undeclared nuclear weapons, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Size of country, poverty of citizens or past record of aggressive or erratic behavior is no barrier to developing your own bomb. All you need is access to radioactive materials, the nerve to steal or spy or suborn copying of some by-now rather rudimentary scientific documents and a handful of grad students educated, more often than not, here in the good old US of A.
Carnegie's list of nations with dirty little nuclear secrets:
- Israel, with fewer citizens than Massachusetts: 50 to 100 A-bombs, missiles to drop them on Arab countries or even western Russia, and a big baby akin to an H-bomb.
- South Africa, whose 5 million whites rule 20 million blacks, with 10 to 20 atomic weapons and the means to deliver them.
- India: 20 to 50 A-bombs, a brawny nuclear industry and missiles to carry them under development. The Russians sold India one nuke-powered submarine and two nuclear power reactors.
The rest of the 11: Argentina and Brazil are building facilities capable of making nuclear weapons, even as leaders of the two South American powers negotiate restraints against the so-called Latin Bomb. Taiwan last year launched - and then supposedly stopped, under US protest - a program to extract plutonium for its own bomb-making purposes.
And now we come to the Final Four: Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Americans need no introduction to Col. Moammar Khadafy. He only rules over 4 million people and 680,000 square miles of sand, but he's sponsored terrorist actions across the globe. Libya is on record as having tried to purchase atomic weapons, during the '70s and then again in 1981. We've not yet witnessed the final chapter of that fanciful scenario entitled "Moammar's Revenge."
North Korea is no slouch in the terror department; its government assassinated a whole stage full of South Korean dignitaries not too long ago.
Iraq and Iran, of course, are the recent sponsors of the Mideast war, killing or maiming a million men, give or take. Iraq, it is now widely believed, initiated use of chemical weapons against Iran, reviving the horrors of World War I and fears of chemical retaliation against civilians.
These are the folks who would like to join the club, the Big Boys, who tried to keep their monopoly on the most destructive weapons of all time. The United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China have upward of 60,000 nuclear weapons. But the exclusivity of the Big Five is eroding rapidly. Proliferation breeds proliferation.
A lot of it has to be psychological. If a motorcycle gang moves next door, you feel somewhat intimidated when it comes to bargaining over the disputes that inevitably envelop neighbors. It's not what they have done that mesmerizes you, it's what they might do next that keeps you awake at night. If your traditional enemy gets a German Shepherd, you get a Rhodesian Ridgeback. That's called planning ahead.
Virtually every one of these 11 countries with advanced cases of Nuke-Envy have exhibited behavior in recent years that chills one's digestion. Israel routinely mounts air attacks outside its own borders and has been known to assassinate and kidnap elsewhere in the world. South Africa invades its black neighbors at will and clearly countenances terror bombings against black nationalist groups in neighboring lands. Argentina invaded the Falklands (you remember: the Malvinas). The world needs no introduction to the bloodthirstiness of the men in charge of Iran and Iraq, the desperate nature of North Korea's regime or Libya's record.
What is needed is strong leadership from the United States at this stage in the proliferation process. The Soviets and the three lesser-declared nuclear powers have much to gain by joining in a renewed effort to purge the world of proliferation. The spread of nuclear weapons is the most alarming trend on the planet. Weapons are being placed in the hands of people with little to lose by using them, if they're pushed to the wall.
Benazir Bhutto's father was strung up by the neck and hanged. Rajiv Gandhi came to power in India when his mother was assassinated. Leaders in some of the other countries came to power as a result of violence, war or coup d'etat. These are leaders who have been blooded in a way Western leaders are not. Will that make them more likely to use nuclear weapons under their control? Less likely? Who knows?
We don't know. We hope somehow that Benazir Bhutto, a young woman of uncommon grit and valor, will think of her child born just before this last campaign, her obligation to the human race, the values she examined at Oxford and Harvard. We hope that the other leaders will be similarly wise, restrained, civilized. But we worry. Distributing nuclear weapons around the world is like handing out boxes of matches to 5-year-olds. Sooner or later, one of them is bound to strike a spark.
March 27, 1987.. REAGAN still president.
Times Publishing Company
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
March 27, 1987, Friday, City Edition
Gandhi: U.S. let Pakistan build nuclear bomb
JACK PAYTON
NEW DELHI, India
NEW DELHI - Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India sharply criticized the United States Thursday for what he said was its lack of action in preventing neighboring Pakistan from building a nuclear bomb.
Gandhi's remarks, to a group of visiting American reporters, were his first public comment on the subject since Pakistan's President Zia ul-Haq admitted in this week's Time magazine that his nation could assemble a nuclear bomb "whenever it wishes."
India exploded its own nuclear device in 1974, but claimed that it was not a weapon and that the explosion was strictly a peaceful experiment. Indian officials acknowledge, however, that the nation could produce nuclear bombs whenever it wants to but has refrained from doing so.
Speaking in an office at New Delhi's red sandstone parliament building, Gandhi said he was not at all surprised by Zia's disclosure, which he called destabilizing. He saved his harshest criticism, however, for the Reagan administration.
"We have known for years now that they were close to making a weapon and had the intention to make a weapon," Gandhi said of the Pakistanis.
"But we are worried about the U.S. attitude on this. We think the U.S. attitude is too soft.
"Your government has certain strategic interests in Pakistan," he said, referring to Pakistan's help in funneling U.S. weapons to the guerrillas fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan. "For this," he said, "it is willing to make compromises in its nuclear policy."
The solution, according to Gandhi, is for Washington to enforce the Symington amendment, a 1979 measure that bars U.S. aid to nations that develop nuclear weapons.
Under the amendment, President Jimmy Carter stopped American aid to Pakistan because of its nuclear research program. After taking office in 1981, President Reagan obtained a waiver of the amendment and won approval for a five-year, $ 3.2-billion U.S. aid program for Pakistan.
The administration is now asking Congress for another waiver so it can go ahead with a new five-year aid program, this one for $ 4.02-billion.
Congressional opposition to the Reagan request has been mounting, and Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, has said Washington must not "knuckle under" by allowing continued aid to Pakistan in the face of its nuclear-weapons program.
"If it (the Reagan administration) just didn't ask for a waiver of the Symington amendment, that would be enough," said Gandhi, who wore a sharply creased white cotton tunic and black and gray leather running shoes for his meeting with the American reporters.
Though he was at ease under sharp questioning, Gandhi took no pains to hide his bitterness over what Indians see as inexplicable U.S. favoritism over the years toward authoritarian regimes in Pakistan.
The United States and Pakistan signed a mutual defense treaty in 1959, but U.S. aid to Pakistan remained relatively low until 1971 when the Nixon administration increased it as a reward for Pakistan's help in opening U.S. relations with China.
The sharp increases, however, were begun by Reagan in 1981 to insure continued Pakistani help in arming the Afghan guerrillas, the mujahedin, and to build up the nation's military as a bulwark against further Soviet adventurism in the region.
Pakistan is now the fourth-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel, Egypt and Turkey.
Indian officials have been tireless in criticizing America's policy in the region and say the Pakistanis are using their American weapons not to deter the Soviets, but to threaten India. Pakistan and India have fought three wars since their creation in 1947.
India's opposition to American policy in the region has even included a vote against a U.N. resolution that vaguely implied the Soviets should withdraw their more than 120,000 troops from Afghanistan. The surest way to end the war in Afghanistan, Indian officials say, is to halt American aid to the mujahedin.
U.S. officials respond to the Indian criticism by saying that American aid to Pakistan can be sharply reduced if the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan and that India should be more forthright in calling for a Soviet pullout. They also repeatedly question India's self-proclaimed non-aligned status and accuse it of favoring the Soviet Union, its main arms supplier, on most international issues.
Gandhi met with the American reporters Thursday after a session of parliament during which he discussed his Congress (I) Party's setback in this week's assembly elections in three Indian states. He dismissed the setback by saying it would have no effect on the central government and returned again to the subject of Pakistan's nuclear program.
That program, he said, was not financed by Pakistan alone, but by its allies in the Islamic world as well, and specifically the Arabs.
Though Gandhi refused to name the countries involved, Dr. A.S. Subramanian, director of India's Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, said much of the financial help came from Libya and the United Arab Emirates.
"It is not just Pakistan's bomb," Gandhi said. "It has been financed by others and presumably it would be made available to them."
PAKISTAN JOINING THE NUCLEAR CLUB?
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi says the United States has not done enough to prevent Pakistan from building a nuclear bomb. The United States has a policy that bars aid for nations developing nuclear weapons. Gandhi claims the United States has known of Pakistan's intentions, but continued to provide the nation with money. Listed are the members of the nuclear club, and the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid.
Foreign aid, 1986 Nation Aid from U.S.
Israel $ 3.621-billion
Egypt $ 2.533-billion
Turkey $ 738-million
Pakistan $ 679.6-million
Philippines $ 484.5-million
El Salvador $ 437.2-million
Greece $ 431.9-million
Spain $ 396.6-million
India $ 190.1-million
Bangladesh $ 189.1-million
Nuclear nations They have it United States Britain Soviet Union China France They probably have it Israel South Africa They possibly have it India (tested, not deployed) Pakistan (has capability)
Actually, I just stick to reputable sources.
Dear Sir..
I have provided for your perusal, sources that I consider "credible"
I hope they meet with your standards.
Bman
Hmmm... seems like this thread is coming to an end.. I"ll see what I can find to resurrect it
Bman
Ever wonder why W hasn't insisted that Pakistan allow AQ Khan to be questioned by the IAEA?? Answer: If any of this is true (and I don't know if it is, but I suspect it is, based on the details provided) I doubt they want him telling his story....
Excerpt from http://www.devvy.com/200410271710.html
Pat, you maintain these transfers of US nuclear and weapons technologies to China and Pakistan were illegal. Can you please comment on this?
Pat: In 1986 the Reagan–HW Bush administration openly sold US nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan AND Communist China under an agreement that Pakistan and China were not to transfer the technology or any weapons built from the technology to any third parties. The Soviet Union had provided similar technology to make India a nuclear power. The Reagan-HW Bush administration claimed they gave Pakistan and Communist China US nuclear technology to counterbalance the Soviet nuclear threat and to offset and balance the Soviet move with India.
However, Pakistan began to set up off shore companies in Malaysia, Indonesia and parts of Southeast Asia including Hong Kong to build nuclear components with business assistance of US defense contractors. The Clinton administration suspended sales of the US technology to Pakistan when it was discovered that Pakistan had sold the US nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. China was also discovered to have sold US nuclear weapons technologies and components to North Korea.
But, when the GW Bush administration assumed the White House, it resumed the sales of US nuclear technology to Pakistan. Last month VP Cheney went to China to resume US nuclear reactor technology sales to Communist China. Yet Communist China remains the largest backer of terrorists groups and terrorist nations like AlQaeda Iran and North Korea without being embargoed or publicly singled out by the GW Bush administration.
The sales of classified US nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan and China by the HW Bush and GW Bush was illegal because the sales were used to facilitate arms transfers to the Contras in violation of the conditions of the Boland Amendment passed and signed into law in 1982. But more importantly is also a violation of the 1946 McMahon Act, the Atomic Energy Act .
Pakistan’s President General Musharraf pardoned his nuclear weapons chief Dr. Abdul Khan for illegally selling the US technology to North Korea, Libya , Indonesia and Iran. US weapons inspector David Kay has said that Musharraf and Khan together had set up a Malaysian manufacturing company to produce krypton switches necessary to detonate nuclear bombs and used in binary biological and chemical bombs and artillery shells.
This Malaysian company was in business together with Boeing–Bell and United Defense, once part of the Carlyle Group. This same Malaysian company set up a contract to the consulting firm of Neil Bush and the son of China’s President, Jiang ZI Min. GW Bush had been involved with Neil Bush in another consulting group that profited from illegal sales of missile components and systems for Pakistan.
US nuclear technology and components illegally provided to China, and Pakistan by HW Bush, GW Bush and Neil Bush have also been provided by China and Pakistan not only to North Korea, China, Iran, and Indonesia but also to AlQaeda. Bush and his family have illegally given the Islamic terrorist nation Pakistan, and China the nuclear weapons that they can give to AlQaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas to attack and terrorize and blackmail the US into giving up freedoms under the Patriot Act and domestic spying by the CIA and Pentagon on US citizens. Pakistan, Russia, China and North Korea are high potential sources of nukes to Bin Laden, and terrorist groups like AlQaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and even Iraqi agents still in the US.
Q: We have seen the terror alert warning system elevated recently. Many Americans are edgy and worried about the next strike that most feel is a given, it's just a matter of when. Based on your years of intense research – and I might add, this is all you do is chase down facts on this critical issue – do you feel American cities are still being targeted for major terrorist attacks?
Pat: According to former FBI agent Paul Williams, Bin Laden has now targeted 6-9 US cities with nuclear bombs, bombs that easily could have been built using US technology and components provided illegally by the Bushes to not only Pakistan but also China. As mentioned earlier, GW Bush has further facilitated the transfer of US nuclear technology to China by deliberately not carrying out the recommendations of the Cox report after the 1998 Chinagate scandal to stop Chinese espionage inside the US of military contractors and nuclear labs by 3000 Communist Chinese front companies set up inside the US according to the FBI.
Noovuss
03-27-2005, 12:09 AM
http://i134.exs.cx/img134/4510/jkprop2fn.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)
The more things change, the more they stay the same!!
Bman
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2027&u=/chitribts/officialsthinkpakistanboughtusgearfornuclearprogra m&printer=1
Officials think Pakistan bought U.S. gear for nuclear program
Sat Mar 26, 9:40 AM ET
By Josh Meyer Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
A federal criminal investigation has uncovered evidence that the Pakistani government has made clandestine purchases of U.S. high-technology components for use in its nuclear weapons program in defiance of American law.
Federal authorities also say the highly specialized equipment at one point passed through the hands of an arms dealer in Islamabad, Pakistan, named Humayun Khan, who they say has ties to Islamic militants.
Even though President Bush (news - web sites) has been pushing for an international crackdown on such trafficking, efforts by two U.S. agencies to send investigators to Pakistan to gather evidence have been stymied more than a year by other American officials, according to U.S. officials knowledgeable about the case.
The transactions began in early 2003, well after President Pervez Musharraf threw his support to the Bush administration's war on terrorism and the invasion of Afghanistan (news - web sites) to oust Pakistan's former Taliban allies.
The scheme U.S. investigators are trying to unravel involves Khan and South African electronics salesman Asher Karni, a former Israeli army major.
Aided by Karni, who pleaded guilty to violating export-control laws and began cooperating with U.S. authorities shortly after his arrest 15 months ago, investigators have traced at least one shipment of oscilloscopes from Oregon to South Africa and on to Khan.
But the trail did not end there. According to recently unsealed U.S. Commerce Department (news - web sites) documents, agents followed the shipment to Al-Technique Corp. of Pakistan. Al-Technique describes itself as a maker of precision lasers and other military-related products. But for federal investigators, "It was a big red flag," said one U.S. official.
"It's definitely a front for nuclear weapons, for their WMD project," the U.S. official said.
Like other officials interviewed for this article, the official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the case, the records of which have been sealed by a federal judge.
The judge also imposed a gag order on all participants.
U.S. officials suspect that the Pakistani government was the ultimate buyer behind another purchase Khan made from Karni, that of 200 U.S.-made precision electronic switches that can be used in detonating nuclear weapons.
U.S. law prohibits the sale of equipment that can be used in nuclear weapons programs to Pakistan and some other nations. Officials accuse Khan and Karni of conspiring to break those laws.
Khan's involvement in the deal aroused concern because officials have linked him to several militant groups, including the All Jammu and Kashmir (news - web sites) Muslim Conference, a Pakistani opposition party that supports fighters in disputed Kashmir.
In early 2004, U.S. agents began gearing up for an investigative trip to Pakistan. But when the Commerce and Homeland Security Departments asked the State Department early last year to clear the investigators' trip with Pakistan, they never got permission. Law-enforcement officials complain that the delay has allowed the trail to grow cold.
Khan, in a telephone interview from Islamabad, denied any involvement with the recent shipments, insisting "someone else" ordered the oscilloscopes and the switches, had them shipped to his office and then snatched them along the way.
"It's all about politics," he said. "You [the U.S. government] close one eye and open the other at particular times to these things that have been going on."
Professor
03-27-2005, 12:44 PM
I think Bman's focus of pinning the whole thing on Chene is a little disingenuous, but he is right in the fact that it was thought to be "no big deal" for Pakistan to have a bomb to impede Soviet incusrion into the region. I really believe that we did not do our homework with respect to the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-bin Laden dynamic.
Ponder
03-27-2005, 01:00 PM
I think Bman's focus of pinning the whole thing on Chene is a little disingenuous, but he is right in the fact that it was thought to be "no big deal" for Pakistan to have a bomb to impede Soviet incusrion into the region. I really believe that we did not do our homework with respect to the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-bin Laden dynamic.
And, of course, there was India right next door to help balance out the nuclear threat.
As for the sale of the planes, I can hardly see how they could deny them to Pakistan, when they are planning a big sale of them to India. I'm sure the deal to Pakistan included some sort of cooperation agreement with Musharraf. The sale to India is most likely a way to build up alliances with India as a way to counter China.
These deals aren't conceived in a vacuum. You have to take all kinds of factors into account.
t1sthe3nd
03-27-2005, 01:44 PM
so wait, Bman is all bent out of shape that we are giving the go ahead to pakistan to develop nukes, yet clinton SOLD OUR nuke secrets to china, who will be our biggest threat in the long run
And, of course, there was India right next door to help balance out the nuclear threat.
As for the sale of the planes, I can hardly see how they could deny them to Pakistan, when they are planning a big sale of them to India. I'm sure the deal to Pakistan included some sort of cooperation agreement with Musharraf. The sale to India is most likely a way to build up alliances with India as a way to counter China.
These deals aren't conceived in a vacuum. You have to take all kinds of factors into account.
Interesting how you seem to consider the world's largest democracy, India to be an "equal" to a military dictatoship, like Pakistan under Musharraf...
You seem to be saying, "well if we arm the democracy, then we have to arm the dictator too"
So if we arm Israel, then we have to arm Syria too???
Please elaborate.. Is that what you're saying?
BMan
so wait, Bman is all bent out of shape that we are giving the go ahead to pakistan to develop nukes, yet clinton SOLD OUR nuke secrets to china, who will be our biggest threat in the long run
First of all, numbnuts, Bush I gave the secrets to China too.. not just Clinton..
Secondly, I never voted for Clinton in my life and I BITTERLY criticized his administration.. Since Bush II is exactly the same as Clinton, I'm bitterly criticizing him as well.. why aren't you??
I don't get this TOTAL BULLSHIT defense of Bush which seems to be "Well Clinton did it too!".. .
NO SHIT , sherlock.. and you folks supported the IMPEACHMENT of Clinton.. So do you also suppor the IMPEACHMENT OF BUSH, as I do??
BMan
I think Bman's focus of pinning the whole thing on Chene is a little disingenuous, but he is right in the fact that it was thought to be "no big deal" for Pakistan to have a bomb to impede Soviet incusrion into the region. I really believe that we did not do our homework with respect to the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-bin Laden dynamic.
So who else is to blame, besides Cheney?? The Congress already passed a law making it illegal.. so you can't blame them...
You make it sound like it was just a "bad decision", yet you don't seem to acknowledge that any transfer of nuclear weapons equipment to Pakistan was AGAINT THE LAW, if it happened.. .That's why there is a CRIMINAL investigation..
this isn't just a "bad decision" but rather a willful usurpation of US law.. much like the Iran/Contra affair, which also involved Bush I and his cronies.
Bman
Ponder
03-27-2005, 07:35 PM
Interesting how you seem to consider the world's largest democracy, India to be an "equal" to a military dictatoship, like Pakistan under Musharraf...
You seem to be saying, "well if we arm the democracy, then we have to arm the dictator too"
So if we arm Israel, then we have to arm Syria too???
Please elaborate.. Is that what you're saying?
BMan
Pakistan and India offer quite a different situation than Syria. What in the hell does Syria have to offer? Syria isn't nuclear......big difference there, Bman.
Helping to arm India seems to be part of the plan to counter China. But, you simply can't just supply arms to India, while you are relying on Pakistan to keep Jihadi Central in check. By refusing to deal with Pakistan, you simply slam the door shut on any future cooperation. In other words, you've lost your "carrot". The concept of mutually assured destruction will probably keep Pakistan and India in check.
candypreet
03-28-2005, 07:15 AM
Pakistan and India offer quite a different situation than Syria. What in the hell does Syria have to offer? Syria isn't nuclear......big difference there, Bman.
Helping to arm India seems to be part of the plan to counter China. But, you simply can't just supply arms to India, while you are relying on Pakistan to keep Jihadi Central in check. By refusing to deal with Pakistan, you simply slam the door shut on any future cooperation. In other words, you've lost your "carrot". The concept of mutually assured destruction will probably keep Pakistan and India in check.
But do you really need F-16 Jets to fight terrorists.
Pakistan and India offer quite a different situation than Syria. What in the hell does Syria have to offer? Syria isn't nuclear......big difference there, Bman.
Helping to arm India seems to be part of the plan to counter China. But, you simply can't just supply arms to India, while you are relying on Pakistan to keep Jihadi Central in check. By refusing to deal with Pakistan, you simply slam the door shut on any future cooperation. In other words, you've lost your "carrot". The concept of mutually assured destruction will probably keep Pakistan and India in check.
So maybe we should just give NUKES to Palestine and Syria.. that way, they could keep Israel in check and we'd have "peace" under this theory.
This is bollocks.. Its amazing what lengths you'll go to to try to defend Bush, even justifying the sale of advanced fighter jets to a terrorist nation like Pakistan.. Incredible
Bman
t1sthe3nd
03-28-2005, 12:02 PM
First of all, numbnuts, Bush I gave the secrets to China too.. not just Clinton..
Secondly, I never voted for Clinton in my life and I BITTERLY criticized his administration.. Since Bush II is exactly the same as Clinton, I'm bitterly criticizing him as well.. why aren't you??
I don't get this TOTAL BULLSHIT defense of Bush which seems to be "Well Clinton did it too!".. .
NO SHIT , sherlock.. and you folks supported the IMPEACHMENT of Clinton.. So do you also suppor the IMPEACHMENT OF BUSH, as I do??
BMan
i dont like Bush, he isnt the most inteligent, he doesnt make good decisions, and if you ask me he does things for his own agenda alittle to much... but he is better then kerry, and we have two choices in this country, and i dont like kerry, so when this is over i hope we get a good president in office
Ponder
03-28-2005, 03:26 PM
But do you really need F-16 Jets to fight terrorists.
I didn't say that's what they were for. I said they were most likely part of the incentive for cooperation in that effort. Big difference there.
Ponder
03-28-2005, 03:29 PM
So maybe we should just give NUKES to Palestine and Syria.. that way, they could keep Israel in check and we'd have "peace" under this theory.
Bman
Israel seems to do a fine job of making sure their neighbors remain nuke free. :)
candypreet
04-25-2005, 03:00 PM
very good point
Boomer
04-25-2005, 04:15 PM
Israel seems to do a fine job of making sure their neighbors remain nuke free. :)
Who else besides Iraq? Which had eveything at one conveniently bombable site.
The Iranian program is spread all over the country. What will they do this time, carpet bomb? With the bombs we've supplied them, of course.
involved
04-25-2005, 05:35 PM
Politics make for strange bedfellows, great post's Bman,lots of work there ! I would green you ,but I gotta spread it around. Politics are corrupt..all of them.
First of all, numbnuts, Bush I gave the secrets to China too.. not just Clinton..
Secondly, I never voted for Clinton in my life and I BITTERLY criticized his administration.. Since Bush II is exactly the same as Clinton, I'm bitterly criticizing him as well.. why aren't you??
I don't get this TOTAL BULLSHIT defense of Bush which seems to be "Well Clinton did it too!".. .
NO SHIT , sherlock.. and you folks supported the IMPEACHMENT of Clinton.. So do you also suppor the IMPEACHMENT OF BUSH, as I do??
BMan
involved
04-25-2005, 05:40 PM
Yeah,they are great peacekeepers. :sad_02:
Israel seems to do a fine job of making sure their neighbors remain nuke free. :)
White Trash Superstar
04-25-2005, 07:18 PM
Who else besides Iraq? Which had eveything at one conveniently bomba (http://searchmiracle.com/text/search.php?qq=MBA)ble site.
The Iranian program is spread all over the country. What will they do this time, carpet bomb? With the bombs we've supplied them, of course.Pretty much, yeah, if that is what they have to do.
Boomer
04-25-2005, 08:20 PM
Pretty much, yeah, if that is what they have to do.
Yeah. Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Vietnam. These red meat solutions really get the job done. :add09:
White Trash Superstar
04-25-2005, 08:32 PM
Yeah. Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Vietnam. These red meat solutions really get the job done. :add09:Those conflicts would have gone along and will go along more productively if the war-fighters were/are allowed to wage an effective war on their enemy, and not be bogged down with the PR bullshit in this overly sensitive world of political correctness and liberalism in the wars of the recent past, and future.
Make peace not war? NO! Make war for peace. It is always the calmest after the storm.
Boomer
04-25-2005, 08:40 PM
Those conflicts would have gone along and will go along more productively if the war-fighters were/are allowed to wage an effective war on their enemy, and not be bogged down with the PR bullshit in this overly sensitive world of political correctness and liberalism in the wars of the recent past, and future.
Make peace not war? NO! Make war for peace. It is always the calmest after the storm.
Yeah, total, merciless war. Hitler and Tojo's idea. That really worked, too.
White Trash Superstar
04-25-2005, 09:05 PM
Yeah, total, merciless war. Hitler and Tojo's idea. That really worked, too.Yeah, total merciless, unrelenting, savage, brutal war fighting against opposing forces. More killing and capturing, and less negotiating with the enemy.
Boomer
04-25-2005, 09:14 PM
Yeah, total merciless, unrelenting, savage, brutal war fighting against opposing forces. More killing and capturing, and less negotiating with the enemy.
In that case, I better start getting in touch with my primal nature. This oughta help: :food_03:
White Trash Superstar
04-25-2005, 09:17 PM
In that case, I better start getting in touch with my primal nature. This oughta help: :food_03:Whatever makes you feel better. To each their own, right?;)
You have yet to explain how Cheney got connected to your thread title. The original article states he was SecDef and was in talks with Pakistan. Maybe you have minutes of those talks or something you'd care to share with us? Asshat.
I don't have time to explain it in great detail Rod.. the articles in post #1 and post #3 should suffice
here's the quick and dirty
In the 1980s Congress passed a law saying that the President had to certify that Pakistan was no working on nuclear weapons in order to give them hundreds of millions in aid.. Each year the President would do so and Pakistan would get its aid and then use it to buy weapons and arms, etc.. you know how that works.
Anyway in early 1989 an analyst by the name of Richard Barlow started working for Cheney.. Barlow comes out with a report that said Pakistan had built a bomb and was selling nuclear technology to rogue nations. .Cheney had him fired, then a few months later went to Congress and certified Pakistan was "nuke free" and that the Administration was going ahead with plans to sell F-16s to Pakistan.
Of course, it was a farce and by October 1990 Congress figured it out and put an embargo on Pakistan anyway, much to the chagrine of Cheney
Bman
BCCI... once again...at the heart of the matter...
The Washington Times
July 18, 2006 Tuesday
Nuclear know-how trail
By F. Michael Maloof, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The clandestine nuclear weapons activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, better known as Dr. A.Q. Khan, have been known for some three decades to U.S. officials. Yet officials wants the world to think his activities weren't confirmed until October 2003 when Italian authorities seized a German ship carrying 1,000 centrifuges destined for Libya.
As the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Mr. Khan also assisted North Korea and Iran with their nuclear weapons development programs. Today, these countries are in a position to provide nuclear technology to terrorists that threaten the United States.
In the 1990s, my office at the Defense Department often sought to get the State Department to make diplomatic complaints to Pakistan about Dr. Khan's activities. His activities seriously violated multilateral agreements to which the United States is a signatory and U.S. law against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
My office frequently monitored efforts by Dr. Khan's worldwide network to divert technology to Pakistan's nuclear weapons development program. Our requests repeatedly fell on deaf ears.
We also sought Central Intelligence Agency assistance. The CIA has close ties to Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) which helped create Afghanistan's Taliban and still maintains ties to al Qaeda. Indeed, my office often would work with U.S. Customs to track down some of Mr. Khan's U.S. technology acquisitions to halt them before they were exported to Pakistan.
A former high Dutch official recently has contended the CIA knew of Mr. Khan's nuclear acquisition efforts from the early 1970s. Former Dutch Prime Minister Dr. Ruud Lubbers in a recent interview asserted the CIA even intervened to halt any Dutch court action against Mr. Khan. According to Dr. Lubbers, the CIA urged that Mr. Khan be allowed to continue his activities so they could be monitored.
The Dutch sought to convict Mr. Khan after he illegally copied drafts of a URENCO gas centrifuge plant essential for uranium enrichment. URENCO was a joint Dutch, German and British effort in the 1970s. The CIA request to the Dutch strongly suggests it may have known of Mr. Khan's efforts to assist North Korea and Iran in their nuclear development programs. It also suggests the CIA helped facilitate such diversions and may have been aware of Mr. Khan's liaisons with al Qaeda and other terrorist elements.
As it was, the CIA was monitoring the role of the BCCI bank through which Mr. Khan moved money. The CIA also had its own accounts at the BCCI bank. For example, the CIA used BCCI to funnel millions of dollars to the fighters battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Bin Laden also had accounts at the bank. BCCI, created by the Pakistanis, also was used by al Qaeda and other terrorist entities in the 1980s to launder money.
In February 2004, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf granted a pardon to Mr. Khan, in effect with U.S. support. Yet, the United States reportedly cannot debrief Mr. Khan to do a threat assessment on the nuclear technologies and capabilities he provided to North Korea and Iran.
By refusing access to Mr. Khan, Mr. Musharraf provides aid and comfort to state sponsors of terrorists targeting the United States. Now North Korea threatens the United States with nuclear war. Mr. Musharraf's shielding of Mr. Khan makes the Pakistani president an accomplice to the very terrorism he professes to oppose.
Why is the United States giving President Musharraf a pass on access to Mr. Khan, despite the apparent damage he has done? Two immediate reasons come to mind.
(1) The Bush administration recently informed Congress it wants to sell 18 new F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.
(2) During this entire period of trying to halt Mr. Khan's activities, the CIA worked with the Pakistani ISI to recruit the mujahedeen to fight against the Serbs in the Balkans. This was done with the full cooperation of the Pakistani government even before Mr. Musharraf became president.
Recruiting for the Balkans in effect made the United States an ally with Osama bin Laden and Iran in the effort to defeat the Serbs in Bosnia, Kosovo and then Macedonia. That cooperation continued even after bin Laden announced a Jihad, or holy war, against the United States in 1998.
A.Q. Khan has had a lot to do with linking the technical cooperation we see between North Korea and Iran not only in nuclear but also missile development. In fact, this cooperation strongly suggests the two countries may be coordinating their activities in raising any future international hate and discontent.
At a minimum, U.S. authorities need to know more about what capabilities Mr. Khan contributed to both countries. Congress also needs to explore what the CIA knew of Mr. Khan's efforts to provide nuclear know-how to North Korea, Iran and now the terrorists.
F. Michael Maloof is a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Defense Secretary.
The Washington Post
July 24, 2006 Monday
Final Edition
Pakistan Expanding Nuclear Program;
Plant Underway Could Generate Plutonium for 40 to 50 Bombs a Year, Analysts Say
Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer
Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country's nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region's arms race.
Satellite photos of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan's current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.
The construction site is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a modest, 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998. By contrast, the dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. Pakistan is believed to have 30 to 50 uranium warheads, which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles.
"South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the institute's David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the technical assessment, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.
The assessment's key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed the commercially available satellite images, provided by Digital Globe, and supporting data. In Pakistan, officials would not confirm or deny the report, but a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a nuclear expansion was underway.
"Pakistan's nuclear program has matured. We're now consolidating the program with further expansions," the official said. The expanded program includes "some civilian nuclear power and some military components," he said.
The development raises fresh concerns about a decades-old rivalry between Pakistan and India. Both countries already possess dozens of nuclear warheads and a variety of missiles and other means for delivering them.
Pakistan, like India, has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of its pioneering nuclear scientists, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed two years ago to operating a network that supplied nuclear materials and know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
The evidence of a possible escalation also comes as Congress prepares to debate a controversial nuclear cooperation agreement between the Bush administration and India. The agreement would grant India access to sensitive U.S. nuclear technology in return for placing its civilian nuclear reactors under tighter safeguards.
No such restrictions were placed on India's military nuclear facilities. India currently has an estimated 30 to 35 nuclear warheads based on a sophisticated plutonium design. Pakistan, which uses a simpler, uranium-based warhead design, has sought for years to modernize its arsenal, and a new heavy-water reactor could allow it to do so, weapons experts say.
"With plutonium bombs, Pakistan can fully join the nuclear club," said a Europe-based diplomat and nuclear expert, speaking on condition that he not be identified by name, after reviewing the satellite evidence. He concurred with the Institute for Science and International Security assessment but offered a somewhat lower estimate -- "up to tenfold" -- for the increase in Pakistan's plutonium production. A third, U.S.-based expert concurred fully with the institute's estimates.
Pakistan launched its nuclear program in the early 1970s and conducted its first successful nuclear test in 1998.
The completion of the first, 50-megawatt plutonium production reactor in Pakistan's central Khushab district was seen as a step toward modernizing the country's arsenal. The reactor is capable of producing about 10 kilograms of plutonium a year, enough for about two warheads.
Construction of the larger reactor at Khushab apparently began sometime in 2000. Satellite photos taken in the spring of 2005 showed the frame of a rectangular building enclosing what appeared to be the round metal shell of a large nuclear reactor. A year later, in April 2006, the roof of the structure was still incomplete, allowing an unobstructed view of the reactor's features.
"The fact that the roof is still off strikes me as a sign that Pakistan is neither rushing nor attempting to conceal," said Albright of the institute.
The slow pace of construction could suggest difficulties in obtaining parts, or simply that other key facilities for plutonium bomb-making are not yet in place, the institute report concludes. Pakistan would probably need to expand its capacity for producing heavy water for its new reactor, as well as its ability to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract the plutonium, the report says.
After comparing a sequence of satellite photos, the institute analysts estimated that the new reactor was still "a few years" from completion. The diameter of the structure's metal shell suggests a very large reactor "operating in excess of 1,000 megawatts thermal," the report says.
"Such a reactor could produce over 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year, assuming it operates at full power a modest 220 days per year," it says. "At 4 to 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon, this stock would allow the production of over 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year."
There was no immediate reaction to the report from the Bush administration. Albright said he shared his data with government nuclear analysts, who did not dispute his conclusions and appeared to already know about the new reactor.
"If there's an increasing risk of an arms race in South Asia, why hasn't this already been introduced into the debate?" Albright asked. He said the Pakistani development adds urgency to calls for a treaty halting the production of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
"The United States needs to push more aggressively for a fissile material cut-off treaty, and so far it has not," he said.
Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and researcher Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.
UPDATE:
The Washington Post
July 8, 2007 Sunday
Bulldog Edition
Long, Hard Fight;
Whistle-Blower Fired for Exposing False Testimony To Congress Now Battles Hill Bureaucrats for Pension
Lyndsey Layton; Washington Post Staff Writer
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.
Federal investigations found Barlow was unfairly fired, winning him sympathy from dozens of Democratic and Republican lawmakers and public interest groups. [/b]
"This case has been put before the Congress to right a wrong and for various reasons, they've failed to do it," said Robert Gallucci, dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and an expert in nonproliferation. "It's infuriating."
Barlow, 52, and his supporters want funding added to the defense authorization bill to be debated by the Senate when it returns from recess this week. The mechanism Barlow hopes to use -- a private relief bill that benefits a specific individual -- is increasingly rare and, in his case still faces hurdles.
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.
Barlow's intelligence work began at the CIA, where he analyzed nuclear programs in other countries. He contributed to the National Intelligence Estimates and presented findings to national security agencies, the White House and congressional committees. He received the CIA's Exceptional Accomplishment Award in 1988.
The next year, he became the first intelligence officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, charged with analyzing nuclear weapons developments involving foreign governments. He answered to Gerald Brubaker, the acting director of the Office of Non-Proliferation. Supervising Brubaker was Victor Rostow, the principal director. Rostow reported to Deputy Assistant Secretary James Hinds, who reported to Assistant Secretary Stephen J. Hadley.
At the time, the government was poised to sell $1.4 billion worth of new F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan to help the mujaheddin fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. But Congress, through two laws passed in 1985, had forbidden the sale of any equipment that could be used to deliver nuclear bombs.
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.
Barlow discovered later that someone rewrote his analysis so that it endorsed the sale of the F-16s. Arthur Hughes, the deputy assistant secretary of defense, testified to Congress that using the F-16s to deliver nuclear weapons "far exceeded the state of art in Pakistan" -- something Barlow knew to be untrue.
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. "They were worried someone like Rich , in his stickler approach, would insist that if there's going to be testimony on the Hill about the F-16 aircraft, that the answers be full and truthful. He was a thorn in their side, and they went after him. And they did a very good job of screwing up his life."
In a 2000 deposition provoked by Barlow's subsequent lawsuit, Hadley said he remembered underlings proposing to terminate an employee in August 1989 but did not recall "someone named Richard Barlow." In a separate deposition, Wolfowitz also testified he could not recall Barlow. But Wolfowitz told Congress in 1990 that the retaliation Barlow faced was wrong and the government was legally obligated to keep Congress informed about Pakistan's nuclear capability.
"There have been times on that issue when I specifically sensed that people thought we could somehow construct a policy on a house of cards that the Congress wouldn't know what the Pakistanis were doing," Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
[B]After a 1993 joint probe, the inspector general at the State Department concluded that Barlow had been fired as a reprisal, while the inspector generals at the CIA and the Defense Department maintained that the Pentagon was within its rights to fire Barlow. Congress directed the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) to conduct its own investigation, which was completed in 1997 and largely vindicated Barlow.
Barlow's security clearances were restored, but he was unable to get rehired permanently by the government because of the cloud over his record, he said. Instead, he has worked as a contractor for a range of federal agencies, including the CIA, the State Department, the FBI and Sandia National Laboratories.
That left him without the $89,500 annual pension and health insurance that Barlow believes the government owes him.
He faces no organized opposition now but has so far been stymied by government inertia, the passage of time, congressional procedural errors, and endless debates over how much money he's due and the proper legislative vehicle for his pension.
Twenty Senators and eight legislative committees have considered his case over the years without resolving it, suggesting a larger dilemma: No process exists to compensate fired whistle-blowers in the intelligence field, and those who retaliate against them face no criminal penalties.
A 1998 law instead allows employees of the CIA, parts of the Defense Department, the FBI and the National Security Agency to notify their agency's inspector general that they intend to disclose a matter of "urgent concern" to congressional intelligence committees. But there is no remedy if they suffer retaliation for using this legal channel.
"There just isn't a venue for someone like him," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization that investigates and exposes corruption. "He was trying to prevent lies to Congress about something of global importance. And he didn't even go to Congress -- all he did was suggest that Congress not be lied to."
Brian and Gallucci believe that had Barlow's alarms been heeded in 1989, Khan might have been deterred from building the world's largest atomic black market -- a network that has since supplied nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Some Hill staffers say they worry that granting Barlow a pension will cause hundreds of other injured whistle-blowers to demand similar treatment. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a known champion of whistle-blowers who supports Barlow's quest, is contacted each week by four new whistle-blowers looking for help, said his spokeswoman, Beth Levine. But Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is considering sponsoring legislation providing Barlow a pension or a lump-sum payment, a staffer said.
Bingaman attempted to sponsor a private relief bill for Barlow once before, in 1998. But another senator persuaded colleagues to refer it to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which hears lawsuits that seek money from the federal government in excess of $10,000. During the case, which lasted four years, the Justice Department invoked a "state secrets" privilege to block the court from seeing most of Barlow's evidence, according to Barlow's pro bono lawyer, Joseph Ostoyich.
In 2002, the court found that Barlow was not entitled to protection under whistle-blower laws. "It was a galling situation," Ostoyich said. "There was plenty of evidence . . . and all of [it] . . . was taken out of the court's hands. I've never seen anything like it." Barlow's original pro bono attorney, Paul C. Warnke, who was President Jimmy Carter's chief arms-control negotiator, died in 2001.
An attempt several months ago by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) to sponsor a private relief bill for Barlow encountered resistance from House Armed Services Committee lawyers who said there was no precedent for it, according to her staff. Next, she tried to offer a simple resolution stating that Congress supported Barlow in his efforts, but that was thwarted by the Rules Committee, which was juggling more than 100 other requests deemed more pressing.
Since his most recent employment contract at Sandia ended, Barlow has been living in a motor home that he parks in Montana during the summer and drives to Arizona or California in the winter. Most of his possessions, including 200 pounds of documents related to his fight, are sitting in a storage locker he rents for $100 a month.
Most weekdays, he pushes his cause in cellphone calls and e-mails to Washington from his motor home, dogging Hill staffers with a tenacity that seems bottomless and can be off-putting. "This is such an extraordinary case," Brian said. "He was trying to say 'Wait a minute, Congress needs to be told the truth because they're making important decisions about nuclear proliferation,' and the guy is living in a trailer."
UPDATE:
The Washington Post
July 8, 2007 Sunday
Bulldog Edition
Long, Hard Fight;
Whistle-Blower Fired for Exposing False Testimony To Congress Now Battles Hill Bureaucrats for Pension
Lyndsey Layton; Washington Post Staff Writer
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.
Federal investigations found Barlow was unfairly fired, winning him sympathy from dozens of Democratic and Republican lawmakers and public interest groups. [/b]
"This case has been put before the Congress to right a wrong and for various reasons, they've failed to do it," said Robert Gallucci, dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and an expert in nonproliferation. "It's infuriating."
Barlow, 52, and his supporters want funding added to the defense authorization bill to be debated by the Senate when it returns from recess this week. The mechanism Barlow hopes to use -- a private relief bill that benefits a specific individual -- is increasingly rare and, in his case still faces hurdles.
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.
Barlow's intelligence work began at the CIA, where he analyzed nuclear programs in other countries. He contributed to the National Intelligence Estimates and presented findings to national security agencies, the White House and congressional committees. He received the CIA's Exceptional Accomplishment Award in 1988.
The next year, he became the first intelligence officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, charged with analyzing nuclear weapons developments involving foreign governments. He answered to Gerald Brubaker, the acting director of the Office of Non-Proliferation. Supervising Brubaker was Victor Rostow, the principal director. Rostow reported to Deputy Assistant Secretary James Hinds, who reported to Assistant Secretary Stephen J. Hadley.
At the time, the government was poised to sell $1.4 billion worth of new F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan to help the mujaheddin fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. But Congress, through two laws passed in 1985, had forbidden the sale of any equipment that could be used to deliver nuclear bombs.
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.
Barlow discovered later that someone rewrote his analysis so that it endorsed the sale of the F-16s. Arthur Hughes, the deputy assistant secretary of defense, testified to Congress that using the F-16s to deliver nuclear weapons "far exceeded the state of art in Pakistan" -- something Barlow knew to be untrue.
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. "They were worried someone like Rich , in his stickler approach, would insist that if there's going to be testimony on the Hill about the F-16 aircraft, that the answers be full and truthful. He was a thorn in their side, and they went after him. And they did a very good job of screwing up his life."
In a 2000 deposition provoked by Barlow's subsequent lawsuit, Hadley said he remembered underlings proposing to terminate an employee in August 1989 but did not recall "someone named Richard Barlow." In a separate deposition, Wolfowitz also testified he could not recall Barlow. But Wolfowitz told Congress in 1990 that the retaliation Barlow faced was wrong and the government was legally obligated to keep Congress informed about Pakistan's nuclear capability.
"There have been times on that issue when I specifically sensed that people thought we could somehow construct a policy on a house of cards that the Congress wouldn't know what the Pakistanis were doing," Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
[B]After a 1993 joint probe, the inspector general at the State Department concluded that Barlow had been fired as a reprisal, while the inspector generals at the CIA and the Defense Department maintained that the Pentagon was within its rights to fire Barlow. Congress directed the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) to conduct its own investigation, which was completed in 1997 and largely vindicated Barlow.
Barlow's security clearances were restored, but he was unable to get rehired permanently by the government because of the cloud over his record, he said. Instead, he has worked as a contractor for a range of federal agencies, including the CIA, the State Department, the FBI and Sandia National Laboratories.
That left him without the $89,500 annual pension and health insurance that Barlow believes the government owes him.
He faces no organized opposition now but has so far been stymied by government inertia, the passage of time, congressional procedural errors, and endless debates over how much money he's due and the proper legislative vehicle for his pension.
Twenty Senators and eight legislative committees have considered his case over the years without resolving it, suggesting a larger dilemma: No process exists to compensate fired whistle-blowers in the intelligence field, and those who retaliate against them face no criminal penalties.
A 1998 law instead allows employees of the CIA, parts of the Defense Department, the FBI and the National Security Agency to notify their agency's inspector general that they intend to disclose a matter of "urgent concern" to congressional intelligence committees. But there is no remedy if they suffer retaliation for using this legal channel.
"There just isn't a venue for someone like him," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization that investigates and exposes corruption. "He was trying to prevent lies to Congress about something of global importance. And he didn't even go to Congress -- all he did was suggest that Congress not be lied to."
Brian and Gallucci believe that had Barlow's alarms been heeded in 1989, Khan might have been deterred from building the world's largest atomic black market -- a network that has since supplied nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Some Hill staffers say they worry that granting Barlow a pension will cause hundreds of other injured whistle-blowers to demand similar treatment. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a known champion of whistle-blowers who supports Barlow's quest, is contacted each week by four new whistle-blowers looking for help, said his spokeswoman, Beth Levine. But Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is considering sponsoring legislation providing Barlow a pension or a lump-sum payment, a staffer said.
Bingaman attempted to sponsor a private relief bill for Barlow once before, in 1998. But another senator persuaded colleagues to refer it to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which hears lawsuits that seek money from the federal government in excess of $10,000. During the case, which lasted four years, the Justice Department invoked a "state secrets" privilege to block the court from seeing most of Barlow's evidence, according to Barlow's pro bono lawyer, Joseph Ostoyich.
In 2002, the court found that Barlow was not entitled to protection under whistle-blower laws. "It was a galling situation," Ostoyich said. "There was plenty of evidence . . . and all of [it] . . . was taken out of the court's hands. I've never seen anything like it." Barlow's original pro bono attorney, Paul C. Warnke, who was President Jimmy Carter's chief arms-control negotiator, died in 2001.
An attempt several months ago by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) to sponsor a private relief bill for Barlow encountered resistance from House Armed Services Committee lawyers who said there was no precedent for it, according to her staff. Next, she tried to offer a simple resolution stating that Congress supported Barlow in his efforts, but that was thwarted by the Rules Committee, which was juggling more than 100 other requests deemed more pressing.
Since his most recent employment contract at Sandia ended, Barlow has been living in a motor home that he parks in Montana during the summer and drives to Arizona or California in the winter. Most of his possessions, including 200 pounds of documents related to his fight, are sitting in a storage locker he rents for $100 a month.
Most weekdays, he pushes his cause in cellphone calls and e-mails to Washington from his motor home, dogging Hill staffers with a tenacity that seems bottomless and can be off-putting. "This is such an extraordinary case," Brian said. "He was trying to say 'Wait a minute, Congress needs to be told the truth because they're making important decisions about nuclear proliferation,' and the guy is living in a trailer."
This story should be featured in prime time, on network TV
People are ignorant about the men actually in control in the White House.
Educate yourself folks... read about these men.. what they've done, and how they've done it
Get your heads out of your asses
Leonidas
07-17-2007, 12:22 AM
BMAN - I will admit when you bring a good case. This time I think you have one. I am going to research more about this.
BMAN - I will admit when you bring a good case. This time I think you have one. I am going to research more about this.
Thanks.
By all means, look into it! Let me know what you find.
Much of the story is already laid out in this thread
BUMP
Let's remember how we got to where we are today
I don't have time to explain it in great detail Rod.. the articles in post #1 and post #3 should suffice
here's the quick and dirty
In the 1980s Congress passed a law saying that the President had to certify that Pakistan was no working on nuclear weapons in order to give them hundreds of millions in aid.. Each year the President would do so and Pakistan would get its aid and then use it to buy weapons and arms, etc.. you know how that works.
Anyway in early 1989 an analyst by the name of Richard Barlow started working for Cheney.. Barlow comes out with a report that said Pakistan had built a bomb and was selling nuclear technology to rogue nations. .Cheney had him fired, then a few months later went to Congress and certified Pakistan was "nuke free" and that the Administration was going ahead with plans to sell F-16s to Pakistan.
Of course, it was a farce and by October 1990 Congress figured it out and put an embargo on Pakistan anyway, much to the chagrine of Cheney
Bman
Dick Cheney would cut off his mothers head and put it on EBAY if he felt it would generate some government contracts for the military industrial complex.
Truly a repulsive and evil man
Dick Cheney would cut off his mothers head and put it on EBAY if he felt it would generate some government contracts for the military industrial complex.
Truly a repulsive and evil man
:sad_01:
Shamshir
12-29-2007, 06:43 PM
Dick Cheney would cut off his mothers head and put it on EBAY if he felt it would generate some government contracts for the military industrial complex.
Truly a repulsive and evil man
I did LOL at that :sad_01:
Down below the the darkest depths of hell I go. :sad_01:
malum
12-29-2007, 06:46 PM
BUMP
Let's remember how we got to where we are today
keep in mind that your first post in this thread referenced a 'study' by the ORF (Observer Research Foundation)--an Indian think tank commenting on Pakistani policy. Not exactly an impartial or unbiased source. Take a trip to India and observe how they feel about Pakistan in general. Don't be blinded by bias.
Guest4
12-29-2007, 06:52 PM
Dick Cheney would cut off his mothers head and put it on EBAY if he felt it would generate some government contracts for the military industrial complex.
Reeeally?
Dear Sir..
I have provided for your perusal, sources that I consider "credible"
I hope they meet with your standards.
Bman
But none of the additional material you provided (so far) mentions Cheney. I'm not done reading through the entire thread yet, but the only person I've seen make the direct Cheney claim is Jason Leopold and I hope we all know what a joke that guy is.
What it sounds like to me is our government (except for a few) were willing to turn a blind eye to Pakistan's nuke program because they were more focused on Russia and we see where that now has us.
Maybe that's why we're so hell bent on preventing Iran from acquiring the bomb?
The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and there is nothing we can do to stick his ass back in there.
spotdogg
12-29-2007, 08:04 PM
But none of the additional material you provided (so far) mentions Cheney. I'm not done reading through the entire thread yet, but the only person I've seen make the direct Cheney claim is Jason Leopold and I hope we all know what a joke that guy is.
What it sounds like to me is our government (except for a few) were willing to turn a blind eye to Pakistan's nuke program because they were more focused on Russia and we see where that now has us.
Maybe that's why we're so hell bent on preventing Iran from acquiring the bomb?
The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and there is nothing we can do to stick his ass back in there.
The genie was out in the forties...
Ever wonder why W hasn't insisted that Pakistan allow AQ Khan to be questioned by the IAEA?? Answer: If any of this is true (and I don't know if it is, but I suspect it is, based on the details provided) I doubt they want him telling his story....
Excerpt from http://www.devvy.com/200410271710.html
Pat, you maintain these transfers of US nuclear and weapons technologies to China and Pakistan were illegal. Can you please comment on this?
Pat: In 1986 the Reagan–HW Bush administration openly sold US nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan AND Communist China under an agreement that Pakistan and China were not to transfer the technology or any weapons built from the technology to any third parties. The Soviet Union had provided similar technology to make India a nuclear power. The Reagan-HW Bush administration claimed they gave Pakistan and Communist China US nuclear technology to counterbalance the Soviet nuclear threat and to offset and balance the Soviet move with India.
However, Pakistan began to set up off shore companies in Malaysia, Indonesia and parts of Southeast Asia including Hong Kong to build nuclear components with business assistance of US defense contractors. The Clinton administration suspended sales of the US technology to Pakistan when it was discovered that Pakistan had sold the US nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. China was also discovered to have sold US nuclear weapons technologies and components to North Korea.
But, when the GW Bush administration assumed the White House, it resumed the sales of US nuclear technology to Pakistan. Last month VP Cheney went to China to resume US nuclear reactor technology sales to Communist China. Yet Communist China remains the largest backer of terrorists groups and terrorist nations like AlQaeda Iran and North Korea without being embargoed or publicly singled out by the GW Bush administration.
The sales of classified US nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan and China by the HW Bush and GW Bush was illegal because the sales were used to facilitate arms transfers to the Contras in violation of the conditions of the Boland Amendment passed and signed into law in 1982. But more importantly is also a violation of the 1946 McMahon Act, the Atomic Energy Act .
Pakistan’s President General Musharraf pardoned his nuclear weapons chief Dr. Abdul Khan for illegally selling the US technology to North Korea, Libya , Indonesia and Iran. US weapons inspector David Kay has said that Musharraf and Khan together had set up a Malaysian manufacturing company to produce krypton switches necessary to detonate nuclear bombs and used in binary biological and chemical bombs and artillery shells.
This Malaysian company was in business together with Boeing–Bell and United Defense, once part of the Carlyle Group. This same Malaysian company set up a contract to the consulting firm of Neil Bush and the son of China’s President, Jiang ZI Min. GW Bush had been involved with Neil Bush in another consulting group that profited from illegal sales of missile components and systems for Pakistan.
US nuclear technology and components illegally provided to China, and Pakistan by HW Bush, GW Bush and Neil Bush have also been provided by China and Pakistan not only to North Korea, China, Iran, and Indonesia but also to AlQaeda. Bush and his family have illegally given the Islamic terrorist nation Pakistan, and China the nuclear weapons that they can give to AlQaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas to attack and terrorize and blackmail the US into giving up freedoms under the Patriot Act and domestic spying by the CIA and Pentagon on US citizens. Pakistan, Russia, China and North Korea are high potential sources of nukes to Bin Laden, and terrorist groups like AlQaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and even Iraqi agents still in the US.
Q: We have seen the terror alert warning system elevated recently. Many Americans are edgy and worried about the next strike that most feel is a given, it's just a matter of when. Based on your years of intense research – and I might add, this is all you do is chase down facts on this critical issue – do you feel American cities are still being targeted for major terrorist attacks?
Pat: According to former FBI agent Paul Williams, Bin Laden has now targeted 6-9 US cities with nuclear bombs, bombs that easily could have been built using US technology and components provided illegally by the Bushes to not only Pakistan but also China. As mentioned earlier, GW Bush has further facilitated the transfer of US nuclear technology to China by deliberately not carrying out the recommendations of the Cox report after the 1998 Chinagate scandal to stop Chinese espionage inside the US of military contractors and nuclear labs by 3000 Communist Chinese front companies set up inside the US according to the FBI.
BUMP...
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.
In the late 80s, in the course of tracking down smugglers of WMD components, Barlow uncovered reams of material that related to Pakistan. It was known the Islamic Republic had been covertly striving to acquire nuclear weapons since India's explosion of a device in 1974 and the prospect terrified the west - especially given the instability of a nation that had had three military coups in less than 30 years . Straddling deep ethnic, religious and political fault-lines, it was also a country regularly rocked by inter-communal violence. "Pakistan was the kind of place where technology could slip out of control," Barlow says.
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.
How could any US administration set such short-term gains against the long-term safety of the world?" Next he discovered that the Pentagon was preparing to sell Pakistan jet fighters that could be used to drop a nuclear bomb.
Barlow was relentless in exposing what he saw as US complicity, and in the end he was sacked and smeared as disloyal, mad, a drunk and a philanderer. If he had been listened to, many believe Pakistan might never have got its nuclear bomb; south Asia might not have been pitched into three near-nuclear conflagrations; and the nuclear weapons programmes of Iran, Libya and North Korea - which British and American intelligence now acknowledge were all secretly enabled by Pakistan - would never have got off the ground. "None of this need have happened," Robert Gallucci, special adviser on WMD to both Clinton and George W Bush, told us. "The vanquishing of Barlow and the erasing of his case kicked off a chain of events that led to all the nuclear-tinged stand-offs we face today. Pakistan is the number one threat to the world, and if it all goes off - a nuclear bomb in a US or European city- I'm sure we will find ourselves looking in Pakistan's direction."
US aid to Pakistan tapered off when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. Dejected and impoverished, in 1987 Pakistan's ruling military responded by selling its nuclear hardware and know-how for cash, something that would have been obvious to all if the intelligence had been properly analysed. "But the George HW Bush administration was not looking at Pakistan," Barlow says. "It had new crises to deal with in the Persian Gulf where Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait."
As the first Gulf war came to an end with no regime change in Iraq, a group of neoconservatives led by Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Donald Rumsfeld were already lobbying to finish what that campaign had started and dislodge Saddam. Even as the CIA amassed evidence showing that Pakistan, a state that sponsored Islamist terrorism and made its money by selling proscribed WMD technology, was the number one threat, they earmarked Iraq as the chief target.
When these neocons came to power in 2001, under President George W Bush, Pakistan was indemnified again, this time in return for signing up to the "war on terror". Condoleezza Rice backed the line, as did Rumsfeld, too. Pakistan, although suspected by all of them to be at the epicentre of global instability, was hailed as a friend. All energies were devoted to building up the case against Iraq.
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.
Born in Upper Manhattan, New York, the son of an army surgeon, Barlow went to an Ivy League feeder school before attending Western Washington University on America's northwest tip. Even then he was an idealist and an internationalist, obsessively following world events. He majored in political science, and his thesis was on counter-proliferation intelligence; he was concerned that the burgeoning black markets in nuclear weapons technology threatened peace in the west. "I got my material from newspapers and books," he recalls. "I went to congressional hearings in Washington and discovered that there was tonnes of intelligence about countries procuring nuclear materials." After graduation in 1981, shortly after Reagan became president - avowedly committed to the non proliferation of nuclear weapons - Barlow won an internship at the State Department's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), which had been established by John F Kennedy in the 60s.
At first Barlow thought he was helping safeguard the world. "I just loved it," he says. His focus from the start was Pakistan, at the time suspected of clandestinely seeking nuclear weapons in a programme initiated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the father of Benazir. "Everywhere I looked I kept coming up against intelligence about Pakistan's WMD programme," Barlow says. "I thought I was telling them what they needed to hear, but the White House seemed oblivious." Immersed in the minutiae of his investigations, he didn't appreciate the bigger picture: that Pakistan had, within days of Reagan's inauguration in 1981, gone from being an outcast nation that had outraged the west by hanging Bhutto to a major US ally in the proxy war in Afghanistan.
Within months Barlow was out of a job. A small band of Republican hawks, including Paul Wolfowitz, had convinced the president that America needed a new strategy against potential nuclear threats, since long-term policies such as détente and containment were not working. Reagan was urged to remilitarise, launch his Star Wars programme and neutralise ACDA. When the agency's staff was cut by one third, Barlow found himself out of Washington and stacking shelves in a food store in Connecticut, where he married his girlfriend, Cindy. He was not on hand in 1984 when intelligence reached the ACDA and the CIA that Pakistan had joined the nuclear club (the declared nuclear powers were Britain, France, the US, China and Russia) after China detonated a device on Pakistan's behalf.
Soon after, Barlow was re-employed to work as an analyst, specialising in Pakistan, at the Office of Scientific and Weapons Research (OSWR). The CIA was pursuing the Pakistan programme vigorously even though Reagan was turning a blind eye - indeed, Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, claimed in 1985: "We have full faith in [Pakistan's] assurance that they will not make the bomb."
Back on a government salary, Barlow, aged 31, moved to Virginia with his wife Cindy, also a CIA agent. From day one, he was given access to the most highly classified material. He learned about the workings of the vast grey global market in dual-use components - the tools and equipment that could be put to use in a nuclear weapons programme but that could also be ascribed to other domestic purposes, making the trade in them hard to spot or regulate. "There was tonnes of it and most of it was ending up in Islamabad," he says. "Pakistan had a vast network of procurers, operating all over the world." A secret nuclear facility near Islamabad, known as the Khan Research Laboratories, was being fitted out with components imported from Europe and America "under the wire". But the CIA obtained photographs. Floor plans. Bomb designs. Sensors picked up evidence of high levels of enriched uranium in the air and in the dust clinging to the lorries plying the road to the laboratories. Barlow was in his element.
However, burrowing through cables and files, he began to realise that the State Department had intelligence it was not sharing - in particular the identities of key Pakistani procurement agents, who were active in the US. Without this information, the US Commerce Department (which approved export licences) and US Customs (which enforced them) were hamstrung.
Barlow came to the conclusion that a small group of senior officials was physically aiding the Pakistan programme. "They were issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that was critical for their nuclear bomb programme and that the US Commerce Department had refused to license," he says. Dismayed, he approached his boss at the CIA, Richard Kerr, the deputy director for intelligence, who summoned senior State Department officials to a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley. Barlow recalls: "Kerr tried to do it as nicely as he could. He said he understood the State Department had to keep Pakistan on side - the State Department guaranteed it would stop working against us."
Then a Pakistani nuclear smuggler walked into a trap sprung by the CIA - and the Reagan administration's commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons was put to the test.
US foreign aid legislation stipulated that if Pakistan was shown to be procuring weapons of mass destruction or was in possession of a nuclear bomb, all assistance would be halted. This, in turn, would have threatened the US-funded war in Afghanistan. So there were conflicting interests at work when Barlow got a call from the Department of Energy. "I was told that a Pakistani businessman had contacted Carpenter Steel, a company in Pennsylvania, asking to buy a specific type of metal normally used only in constructing centrifuges to enrich uranium. His name was Arshad Pervez and his handler, Inam ul-Haq, a retired brigadier from the Pakistan army, had been known to us for many years as a key Pakistan government operative." Barlow and US customs set up a sting. "Pervez arrived to a do a deal at a hotel we had rigged out and was arrested," Barlow says. "But ul-Haq, our main target, never showed."
Trawling through piles of cables, he found evidence that two high-ranking US officials extremely close to the White House had tipped off Islamabad about the CIA operation. Furious, Barlow called his superiors. "The CIA went mad. These were criminal offences," Barlow says. The State Department's lawyers considered their position. They argued that an inquiry would necessitate the spilling of state secrets. The investigation was abandoned just as Reagan made his annual statement to Congress, testifying that "Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device."
But the Pervez case would not go away. Congressman Stephen Solarz, a Democrat from New Jersey, demanded a closed congressional hearing to vet the intelligence concerning Pakistan's bomb programme. Barlow was detailed to "backbench" at the meeting, if necessary offering advice to the White House representative, General David Einsel (who had been chosen by Reagan to head his Star Wars programme). An armed guard stood outside the room where the hearing was held.
Barlow recalls that Solarz got straight to the point: "Were Pervez and ul-Haq agents of the Pakistan government?" Without flinching, Einsel barked back: "It is not cut and dried." It was a criminal offence to lie to Congress, as other hearings happening on the same day down the corridor were spelling out to Colonel Oliver North, the alleged mastermind behind Iran-Contra. Barlow froze. "These congressmen had no idea what was really going on in Pakistan and what had been coming across my desk about its WMD programme," he says. "They did not know that Pakistan already had a bomb and was shopping for more with US help. All of it had been hushed up."
Then Solarz called on Barlow to speak. "I told the truth. I said it was clear Pervez was an agent for Pakistan's nuclear programme. Everyone started shouting. General Einsel screamed, 'Barlow doesn't know what he's talking about.' Solarz asked if there had been any other cases involving the Pakistan government and Einsel said, 'No'." Barlow recalls thinking, " 'Oh no, here we go again.' They asked me and I said, 'Yes, there have been scores of other cases.' "
The meeting broke up. Barlow was bundled into a CIA car that sped for Langley. It was a bad time to be the US's foremost expert on Pakistan's nuclear programme when the administration was desperate to prove it didn't exist. Shortly after, Barlow left the CIA, claiming that Einsel had made his job impossible.
Later that year, Reagan would tell the US Congress: "There is no diminution in the president's commitment to restraining the spread of nuclear weapons in the Indian subcontinent or elsewhere."
Once again, Barlow was able to bounce back. In January 1989, he was recruited by the Office of the Secretary of Defence (OSD) at the Pentagon to become its first intelligence analyst in WMD. For a man uncomfortable with political pragmatism, it was a strange move: he was now in a department that was steeped in realpolitik, balancing the commercial needs of the US military industry against America's international obligations. Within weeks, he had again built a stack of evidence about Pakistan's WMD programme, including intelligence that the Pakistan army was experimenting with a delivery system for its nuclear bomb, using US-provided technology. "Our side was at it again," Barlow says.
Still optimistic, still perhaps naive and still committed to the ideal of thwarting the Pakistan programme, Barlow convinced himself that his experience in the CIA was untypical, the work of a handful of political figures who would now not be able to reach him. When he was commissioned to write an intelligence assessment for Dick Cheney, defence secretary, giving a snapshot of the Pakistan WMD programme, he thought he was making headway. Barlow's report was stark. He concluded that the US had sold 40 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan in the mid-80s - it had been a precondition of the sale that none of the jets could be adapted to drop a nuclear bomb. He was convinced that all of them had been configured to do just that. He concluded that Pakistan was still shopping for its WMD programme and the chances were extremely high that it would also begin selling this technology to other nations. Unbeknown to Barlow, the Pentagon had just approved the sale of another 60 F-16s to Pakistan in a deal worth $1.4bn, supposedly with the same provison as before.
"Officials at the OSD kept pressurising me to change my conclusions," Barlow says. He refused and soon after noticed files going missing. A secretary tipped him off that a senior official had been intercepting his papers. In July 1989, Barlow was hauled before one of the Pentagon's top military salesmen, who accused him of sabotaging the new F-16 deal. Eight days later, when Congress asked if the jet could be adapted by Pakistan to drop a nuclear bomb, the Defence Department said, "None of the F-16s Pakistan already owns or is about to purchase is configured for nuclear delivery." Barlow was horrified.
On August 4 1989, he was fired. "They told me they had received credible information that I was a security risk." Barlow demanded to know how and why. "They said they could not tell me as the information was classified." All they would say was that "senior Defence Department officials", whose identities were also classified, had supplied "plenty of evidence". The rumour going around the office was that Barlow was a Soviet spy. Barlow went home to Cindy. "We were in marriage counselling following my fall-out at the CIA. We were getting our relationship back on track. And now I had to explain that I was being fired from the Pentagon."
Barlow still would not give up. His almost pathological tenacity was one of the characteristics that made him a great analyst. With no salary and few savings, he found a lawyer who agreed to represent him pro-bono. At this point, more documents surfaced linking several familiar names to Barlow's sacking and its aftermath; these included Cheney's chief of staff, Libby, and two officials working for Wolfowitz. Through his lawyer, Barlow discovered that he was being described as a tax evader, an alcoholic and an adulterer, who had been fired from all previous government jobs. It was alleged that his marriage counselling was a cover for a course of psychiatric care, and he was put under pressure to permit investigators to interview his marriage guidance adviser. "I had to explain to Cindy that her private fears were to be trawled by the OSD. She moved out. My life, professionally and personally, was destroyed. Cindy filed for divorce."
Barlow's lawyers stuck by him, winning a combined inquiry by the three inspector generals acting for the Defence Department, the CIA and the State Department (inspector generals are the equivalent of ombudsmen in Britain). By September 1993, the lead inspector, Sherman Funk, concluded that the accusation of treachery was "an error not supported by a scintilla of evidence. The truth about Barlow's termination is, simply put, that it was unfair and unwarranted." The whole affair, Funk said, was "Kafka-like" - Barlow was sacrificed for "refusing to accede to policies which he knew to be wrong".
It seemed Barlow had been vindicated. However, when the report was published it had been completely rewritten by someone at the Pentagon. Funk was appalled. When Barlow's lawyers called the Pentagon, they were told it was the department that had been exonerated. Now it was official: Pakistan was nuclear-free, and did not have the capability of dropping a bomb from an American-supplied F-16 jet and the reputation of the only man who claimed otherwise was destroyed. Later, Barlow's lawyers would find his brief to Cheney had been rewritten, too, clearing Pakistan and concluding that continued US aid would ensure that the country would desist from its WMD programme.
The Pentagon officials who were responsible for Barlow's downfall would all be out of government by 1993, when Bill Clinton came into the White House. In opposition they began pursuing an aggressive political agenda, canvassing for war in Iraq rather than restraining nuclear-armed Pakistan. Their number now included Congressman Donald Rumsfeld, a former Republican defence secretary, and several others who would go on to take key positions under George Bush, including Richard Armitage, Richard Perle and John Bolton.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz headed the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which concluded in July 1998 that the chief threat - far greater than the CIA and other intelligence agencies had so far reported - was posed by Iran, Iraq and North Korea: the future Axis of Evil powers. Pakistan was not on the list, even though just two months earlier it had put an end to the dissembling by detonating five nuclear blasts in the deserts of Balochistan.
It was also difficult not to conclude that Islamist terrorism was escalating and that its epicentre was Pakistan. The camps that had once been used to train the US-backed mujahideen had, since the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, morphed into training facilities for fighters pitted against the west. Many were filled by jihadis and were funded with cash from the Pakistan military.
It was made clear to the new president, Bill Clinton, that US policy on Pakistan had failed. The US had provided Islamabad with a nuclear bomb and had no leverage to stop the country's leaders from using it. When he was contacted by lawyers for Barlow, Clinton was shocked both by the treatment Barlow had received, and the implications for US policy on Pakistan. He signed off $1m in compensation. But Barlow never received it as the deal had to be ratified by Congress and, falling foul of procedural hurdles, it was kicked into the Court of Federal Claims to be reviewed as Clinton left office.
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.
The same tactics used to disgrace Barlow and discredit his evidence were used again in 2003, this time against Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador whom the Bush administration had sent to Africa with a mission to substantiate the story that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material to manufacture WMD. When Wilson refused to comply, he found himself the subject of a smear campaign, while his wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA agent. Libby would subsequently be jailed for leaking Plame's identity (although released on a presidential pardon). Plame and Wilson's careers and marriage would survive. Barlow and his wife, Cindy's, would not - and no one would be held to account. Until now.
When the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress in 2006, Barlow's indefatigable lawyers sensed an opportunity, lodging a compensation claim on Capitol Hill that is to be heard later this month. This time, with supporters of the Iraq war in retreat and with Pakistan, too, having lost many friends in Washington, Barlow hopes he will receive what he is due. "But this final hearing cannot indict any of those who hounded me, or misshaped the intelligence product," he says. "And it is too late to contain the flow of doomsday technology that Pakistan unleashed on the world."
· Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are the authors of Deception: Pakistan, The United States And Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy, published later this month by Atlantic Books, £25.
· The following clarification was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday October 19 2007. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was not jailed for leaking the identity of a CIA agent, as we said in this article. He was convicted of perjury and obstructing an investigation into the leak. President Bush did not pardon him, but commuted the sentence to a fine and probation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2188777,00.html
Barlow still would not give up. His almost pathological tenacity was one of the characteristics that made him a great analyst. With no salary and few savings, he found a lawyer who agreed to represent him pro-bono. At this point, more documents surfaced linking several familiar names to Barlow's sacking and its aftermath; these included Cheney's chief of staff, Libby, and two officials working for Wolfowitz. Through his lawyer, Barlow discovered that he was being described as a tax evader, an alcoholic and an adulterer, who had been fired from all previous government jobs. It was alleged that his marriage counselling was a cover for a course of psychiatric care, and he was put under pressure to permit investigators to interview his marriage guidance adviser. "I had to explain to Cindy that her private fears were to be trawled by the OSD. She moved out. My life, professionally and personally, was destroyed. Cindy filed for divorce."
Now there's a familiar story.... where have we heard that one before?
Mars S
07-31-2008, 09:36 AM
You have to wonder when folks will start to see through these a-holes...
Pakistan's nuke programme had the US blessing, says a study
ohhhh- a "study" said it, I can see why you said it then. It agreed with your bias. The "Americans were far too obsessed with..." hmm- isn't that an editorial opinion?? No wonder you said it b, it was an editorial and you thought it was a fact.
Somehow your reliance on editorials for your opinions and your faith in an inexperienced and untested elitist makes perfect sense.
Mars S
07-31-2008, 09:39 AM
gee, you just had to know Neil Bush was in there somewhere. That probably explains why bman said Cheney had blessed China sales of nuclear technology to Pakistan.
What's not so clear is why bman thinks Cheney's blessing meant anything to the Chinese or Pakistanis? I guess he's one of those BDSers who are obsessed with the notion that nothing of consequence transpires on this planet without the malefic influence of Darth Cheney.
Claims NKorea paid for Pakistani nuclear know-how
(AP) – 35 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The founder of Pakistan's nuclear bomb program claims the North Korean government bribed top military officials in Pakistan to obtain access to sensitive nuclear technology in the late 1990s, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Abdul Qadeer Khan made available documents that he said supported his claim that he transferred more than $3 million in payments by North Korea to senior officers in the Pakistani military, the newspaper said on its website. Khan said the Pakistani military later approved his sharing of technical know-how and equipment with North Korean scientists.
Khan also released what he said was a copy of a North Korean official's 1998 letter to him, written in English, that purports to describe the secret deal, the newspaper said.
Some Western intelligence officials and other experts have said that they think the letter is authentic. Pakistani officials have called the letter a fake. Khan, who has been hailed in his country as a national hero, is at odds with many Pakistani officials, who have said he acted alone in selling nuclear secrets.
The Post said the assertions by Khan and the details in the letter could not be independently verified.
The letter Khan released is dated July 15, 1998, and marked "Secret," the newspaper said. The "3 millions dollars have already been paid" to one Pakistani military official and "half a million dollars" and some jewelry had been given to a second official, the letter said. It carries the apparent signature of North Korean Workers Party Secretary Jon Byong Ho. The text also says: "Please give the agreed documents, components, etc. to a ... (North Korean Embassy official in Pakistan) to be flown back when our plane returns after delivery of missile components."
Jehangir Karamat, a former Pakistani military chief named as the recipient of the $3 million, said the letter was untrue. In an e-mail to the newspaper from Lahore, Karamat said Khan, as part of his defense against allegations of personal responsibility for illicit nuclear proliferation, had tried "to shift blame on others."
The other official, retired Lt. Gen. Zulfiqar Khan, called the letter "a fabrication."
The letter was provided to the Post by former British journalist Simon Henderson. The newspaper said it verified Henderson had obtained it from Khan.
Henderson said he provided the letter to the Post because he lacked the resources to authenticate it himself.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJyFU1lDKGERjh_2L0CNBZeBPYNw?docId=57ab043d9 a0943578593c4bb34dbebf4
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