#BreakingNews: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals U.S. Covered Up Pakistan’s Nuclear Capabilities

Former CIA Counterproliferation Officer Richard Barlow revealed that U.S. Presidents knowingly certified Pakistan as non-nuclear through 1989—despite clear evidence Islamabad could mount atomic weapons on American-supplied F-16 fighters. In an exclusive ANI interview, Barlow detailed how intelligence experts, including engineers at national labs, confirmed the F-16s were fully capable of delivering Pakistan’s early nuclear designs. “It was a hard engineering question—answered without doubt,” he said. Yet Washington continued arms transfers to keep Pakistan as a key ally in the Soviet-Afghan war.

The deception peaked during the 1987 Brass Tacks crisis, when India’s massive military exercise near the border triggered Pakistani fears of invasion. U.S. satellites and signals intelligence captured nuclear warheads being moved from hidden tunnels to airbases and loaded onto F-16s—facts later exposed in Seymour Hersh’s 1993 New Yorker investigation. Pakistan’s bomb architect, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, even gave public interviews boasting of the weapon as a deterrent. Barlow, then briefing Pentagon and NSC officials, warned of the mismatch between reality and official denials.

Real control of the program rested with Pakistan’s military under General Mirza Aslam Beg and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto deliberately kept out of the loop, according to U.S. assessments. The charade ended only after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush refused further certification under the Pressler Amendment, halting most military and economic aid. That same year, another Indo-Pak crisis escalated to what CIA insiders called “the scariest moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” prompting Bush to send Robert Gates—then NSC deputy—to defuse tensions in both capitals.

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Barlow paid heavily for exposing the cover-up. After objecting to misleading congressional briefings, he faced retaliation: fabricated mental health claims, a nine-month internal probe, suspended security clearance, and forced resignation in 1989. The State Department’s Inspector General later ruled his allegations “credible.” Left without pension or career, Barlow has lived in a motorhome for nearly two decades. “My life was destroyed for telling the truth about Pakistan’s nuclear program,” he said.

He contrasted 1990’s dangers—few weapons, no missile delivery, fragile command structures—with today’s more stable but larger arsenals. Pakistan now holds around 170 warheads, India over 160. Barlow warned that limited controls back then made miscalculation far likelier than in recent flare-ups like Operation Sindoor. His testimony revives scrutiny of U.S. complicity in enabling the “Islamic bomb” and questions whether geopolitical expediency still trumps nonproliferation today.

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