'US admn allowed Pak to acquire nuke tech'

WASHINGTON: The US allowed Pakistan to manufacture and acquire nuclear weapons without informing the Congress, a non-profit corruption watchdog has said, quoting a whistleblower who was fired for objecting to the policy.

A CIA and Pentagon official, who tried to object to this policy of the then US administration of keeping the Congress in dark on this issue, was fired.

"As a CIA intelligence officer and later in the Pentagon, Rich Barlow learned that top US officials were allowing Pakistan to manufacture and possess nuclear weapons," Danielle Brian, executive director, Project on Government Oversight (POGO), told a Congressional hearing last week.

Washington-based, POGO is a non-profit non-partisan watchdog that works with whistleblowers and government insiders to expose corruption, fraud, and abuse of power.

"Barlow also discovered that US officials were hiding these activities from Congress," Brian told US lawmakers in her testimony during a hearing.

"Barlow objected and suggested to his supervisors that Congress should be made aware of the situation... he was fired," said Brian in her testimony.

"Barlow is now destitute and living in a trailer," she said as she went on to give other examples of the fate of the whistleblowers in the US government.