"We knew Pakistan's F-16s could carry nukes, without any doubt": Former CIA officer

New Delhi [India], November 7 (ANI): Former CIA officer Richard Barlow said successive US Presidents continued to certify that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons all the way through 1989 and despite even knowing that the Islamabad could deploy nuclear weapons on F-16s, the US supplied them.

we knew that the F-16s were capable of delivering the Pakistani nuclear weapons as they existed at that time, without any doubt. It's a hard engineering question, period. It had been looked at by the engineers and the physicists, not by me. There was that. Yet the government went ahead with the sale

"The President continued to certify that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons all the way through 1989. Now, I mean, I can tell you that most of us in the CIA are not comfortable with that, to say the least. But we're not elected officials. All we can do is provide the elected officials and senior policymakers with the best available intelligence information, which is accurate, and brief them accordingly. What they do after that is not our place; we're not in control of that. They're the elected representatives of the American people," Barlow, who worked as a counterproliferation officer during Pakistan's nuclear activities in the 1980s, said during an interview with ANI.

The former CIA member was part of the intelligence agency as a counterproliferation officer during Pakistan's clandestine nuclear activities in the late 1980s.

"You can read all about it in Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker in 1993. They saw the intelligence community saw nuclear weapons moving to air bases and being put on F-16s, et cetera. You know, so the nuclear weapons that Pakistan did not possess, according to the president of the United States, were actually being stuck on," he said.

He added that Seymour Hersh, an American investigative journalist and political writer, conducted interviews, which were published in The New Yorker. In 1987, during the Brass Tacks crisis, the father of Pakistan's bomb, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, gave an interview explicitly stating Pakistan had the bomb as a deterrent.

"To put it in a nutshell, there had been studies for years inside the intelligence community by experts, like national laboratories, etc. We knew all about the Pakistani nuclear weapons design, and we knew all about the F-16s, as you could imagine. And we knew that the F-16s were capable of delivering the Pakistani nuclear weapons as they existed at that time, without any doubt. It's a hard engineering question, period. It had been looked at by the engineers and the physicists, not by me. There was that. Yet the government went ahead with the sale," he said.

The Brasstacks Crisis was a nuclear scare between Pakistan and India following an Indian Army exercise from November 1986 to January 1987. Pakistan perceived that the military exercise was a direct threat of it being cut in two.

US intelligence believed Pakistan's then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had been "cut out of the loop" on the nuclear program. The military, led by General Mirza Aslam Beg, and then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, held real control.

Only after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 did the US (under President George Bush Senior) get tough, informing Bhutto that it would no longer be able to certify Pakistan as non-nuclear in 1990.

The crisis remained secret because the Reagan and Bush administrations had been complicit in Pakistan's nuclear program. Pakistan was a critical US ally in the proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This foreign policy goal was prioritised above all else.

Barlow said that he was not present during the 1990s because he had been sacked, but he had heard that the Indo-Pak crisis was grave.

"As I said, I was not involved, but I spoke to people at the CIA very high up, and they gave interviews to Seymour Hersh.... was the scariest thing since the Cuban missile crisis," he said.

"But there were very grave concerns as to how this was continuing. In 1990, I was not in the government exactly because I was working for the Secretary of Defence. And I had been removed from my job and had my security clearance suspended. So I wasn't in when that was happening. But in 1990, there was another crisis between India and Pakistan, a major crisis," he said.

The situation was eventually defused after former US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates was dispatched to Islamabad and Delhi by President George W Bush senior. Barlow believes the Brass crisis was more dangerous than recent tensions between India and Pakistan, citing the limited command and control structures and potential for miscalculation.

"And my former boss, Robert Gates, was the NSC Advisor at that point, I believe. And, the president was so concerned that he dispatched Gates to Islamabad and New Delhi to try to defuse the crisis. By this point, I'd been dealing extensively with the CIA inspector general, Frederick Hitz, and I asked, 'What should I do?' He said, Do the interview and don't screw up. So I did. That was approved, and I was then informed by the director that I had done a good job, protected sources and methods, and caused no harm to the CIA. So that's how it started," he said.

Barlow said that after the 1990 crisis, US citizens still wanted to adhere to the Pressler Amendment, a US law passed in 1985 that required the President to certify annually that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear device to receive most economic and military aid.

"But, after the 1990 nuclear crisis, my bosses at the agency, the director, refused to go along. They put their foot down at that point and refused to go along with any more certifications. Believe it or not, there were still people in the US government who wanted to certify under the Pressler Amendment. I mean, they were having a collective heart attack because they knew it was over, the aid, et cetera. The press remember was gonna be triggered," he said.

However, in May 1990, the world's attention was focused on the Bush-Gorbachev summit and the end of the Cold War.

"And people in the Pentagon and in the regional offices and the state department were having heart attacks. However, it no longer made much of a difference, as the Cold War had come to an end. The Soviet Union collapsed around that time. So it was continued," he said.

He said that the crisis of 1990 was worse than that of May this year in Operation Sindoor, as at that time, it was difficult to ascertain the extent of nuclear weapons there.

"I don't know all the details of the events of this spring, you know. However, from what I do know, the 1990s situation was far more alarming for several reasons. Number one, you know, you had actual nuclear weapons coming out of their hidden tunnels, moving delivery platforms. I mean, maybe that happened this year. If it did, I haven't heard about it," he said.

He further stated that there was a command and control issue, and a potential miscommunication or miscalculation may have occurred at that time.

"Secondly, there's a command and control issue. Pakistan had very, very few nuclear weapons in those days. They lacked missile delivery capabilities. They're far more advanced now, and I'm sure the Indians are too. Therefore, there was a significantly greater chance of miscalculation in 1990 and miscommunication, among other issues. So I think that was a far more dangerous period. I mean, you know, from the press that I saw about the events of the spring, it was, you know, Two nuclear-armed nations. I mean, we all know that. But I didn't see any specifics about nuclear weapons being moved or deployed. It could have happened, but I haven't heard it. There's a difference. Yeah," he said.

Barlow said that "Skip" a nickname for Edward Gnehm, tasked him with assessment Pakistan's nuclear program.

"Well, we're jumping ahead in Richard's life, but you know, that was when I was at the office of the Secretary of Defence, and I met a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for the region covered, the Near East, you know, named Skip Knie. He later became the ambassador to Kuwait. And I briefed him on the intelligence on Pakistan's nuclear program. And his response was, this charade must stop. What he said. And he then tasked me with drafting a full assessment of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, looking at everything, delivery systems, weapons development, you name it," he said.

Barlow then stated that the regional action officer had attempted to ask him to revise his assessments.

"And I did for our new Secretary of Defence, Dick Cheney, for an upcoming National Security Council meeting on Pakistan. So I wrote that paper, and the regional action officer for Pakistan in another part of the Pentagon was breathing down my neck to change my assessments, which were quite in line with my colleagues over at Langley, etc," he said.

"And I actually had Defence Intelligence Agency prepare a separate assessment just on the F-16 delivery issue," he said.

Barlow, a top CIA analyst on Pakistan's nuclear program, attempted to expose the cover-up. He discovered in 1987 that State Department and CIA officials were lying to and misleading Congress about the extent of Pakistan's illegal nuclear purchases.

After persistently raising objections and continuing his investigations, he was forced to resign from the government in 1989. His allegations were later described as credible by the State Department's Inspector General. (ANI)

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