00:00extremely sad tale you've suffered so much just for telling the truth about one of a rogue nation's
00:06nuclear program well you know that's not that's partially true but you know that's the story but
00:16really my primary sin was not telling the truth although i did um the primary sin
00:25because as i've tried to explain you know um people in the executive branch they withhold the
00:36truth from congress and lie all the time you know when you're talking about top secret intelligence
00:45congress doesn't always know that they're not being told the truth you understand right my
00:50primary sin was was getting people arrested because then the truth comes out do you understand yeah and
00:59that is
01:03if if this was just about me we wouldn't be here right now but what happened to me is emblematic of
01:12our government's handling of aq khan and pakistan's nuclear program because not only did they
01:22from doing anything about that in 1988 87 88
01:31they did nothing for the next 20 24 years
01:35they did nothing for us during which period as i predicted it was it was always very clear that
01:43while pakistan's primary motive for developing nuclear weapons was to counter india for sure
01:52but it was also very clear from aq khan and the general's perspective it was it was it was not just
01:59the pakistani bomb it was the islamic bomb the muslim bomb i mean you can see i mean i think aq khan was
02:08even quoted once as saying well we've got the christian bomb we've got the jewish bomb the hindu
02:15bomb we need a muslim bomb you know and it was very clear to me that pakistan intended to provide
02:24nuclear weapons technology to other muslim countries which is what happened you know and you know
02:34this is towards the concluding section of this this broadcast that uh we're we're talking to each
02:39other you know general big who took over after uh general zia's uh crash that happened did go to iran
02:48and uh when he came back he did mention that you know the they were sort of brothers in a way and
02:57your point about an islamic bomb i guess it's even more relevant now because there is renewed interest
03:04in iran's nuclear program uh that president trump has claimed is after he bombed it that it's not it's
03:11it's been set back but tell me how closely linked is iran's nuclear program to pakistani nuclear technology
03:24or aq khan proliferated technology oh i mean there in my opinion there is no way that iran could ever
03:34have developed gas centrifuges without the centrifuges that khan and pakistan provided them you know in
03:43the early 1990s um along probably with nuclear weapons plans i mean let me put you this way at the very
03:51least it might have been impossible i think like i said this is very difficult making gas centrifuges and
04:02nuclear weapons is no small undertaking you know it knocked at the very least decades many decades off
04:12the iranian nuclear program yeah i think now it looks to me remember i'm out of it for years i don't
04:19have any access to intelligence but the iranian program is now quite advanced in terms of their gas
04:25centrifuges they've done a lot of work on their own but they were they never could have gotten started
04:31without pakistan's help you know in his in the book fallout uh by douglas uh france and catherine
04:38collins collins they talked about the other side of the ci the the d the do that went ahead and busted
04:46yeah they busted aq khan and uh his network apart from the p1 p2 sort of uh centrifuge technology they also
04:57found g4 which was a more advanced form of um the center of pakistan yeah pakistani centrifuges but they
05:06also found uh blueprints of chinese warheads of pakistani warheads also in aq khan's uh document seizure
05:15so tell tell me how like what kind of technology do you think was passed on to iran or north korea uh by this
05:26network of aq khan which i believe was actively supported uh by the pakistani deep state what do
05:32you think was passed yes what kind of technology clearly you just described what was passed
05:41advanced pakistani nuclear weapons designs advanced pakistani centrifuges you know you also come across the
05:49same intelligence when you were there no because i was no longer there when this happened right i had
06:00i can just speak personally i was not aware of any evidence that pakistan had pet let me let me backtrack
06:11i was extremely concerned that this is what was going to happen from day one okay that this was the
06:20intent of aq khan general beg etc right but i had no evidence they had actually done it by the time i was
06:30removed from that equation in 1989. this happened after that correct yeah i mean i've seen references
06:43in the media that the first couple of centrifuge transfers took place in 1987. i was not aware of
06:51that that's all i can tell you i don't know where they got that information but
06:55even in the books i mean the vast majority of it happened in the in the 1990s the early 1990s
07:03and while i was in the intelligence community working for the fbi that was not my area of responsibility
07:14anymore the kind of things the kind of intelligence hard target stuff that i did
07:21was not my area of responsibility for the fbi it it had to have a u.s nexus to it if you understand
07:27it's different than the cia so i wouldn't have been following that part you know in general
07:35you know years later i was certainly aware of it yeah absolutely years later sure in conclusion mr
07:44barlow so you you you've obviously paid a very heavy price uh for the nature of the work that
07:50you did exposing pakistan's uh nuclear trade and other assorted activities what what lessons do you
08:00think us in south asia over here should learn about what you went through uh the way the united states
08:07functions and the almost constant pakistani nuclear blackmail that this region has to face well
08:19i mean i think i think the lesson for all of us is that it was too little too late
08:25we should have dealt with this back in the 1980s before i mean the but the bust of khan is kind of
08:35a joke i mean you bust khan after he's transferred top secret centrifuges and nuclear weapons plan to
08:43some of the most dangerous states in the world i mean it was too late you know i mean sure they stopped
08:49the libyan thing but i doubt that the libyans could have done much with what they received from him
08:54anyway but in terms of the current situation in south asia i mean i think the certainly the greatest fear
09:06in washington is that the wrong people take control in pakistan that's a huge fear in washington
09:16yeah and if that happens all bets are off
09:24yeah mae
09:37um
09:41yeah
09:41yeah
09:42um
09:43um
09:45um
09:45uh
09:46uh
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