|
Richard Barlow Resource Page 2
...History has shown that Mr. Barlow's judgment and actions were more than sound, and that all the accusations against him were willfully falsified. But for nearly twenty years, via a truly mind-boggling display of procedural tactics and dereliction, the Congress has failed to address either the issue of Mr. Barlow's personal fate, or the serious intelligence issues raised by his case, signaling an institutional failure of epic proportions. This charade continues despite the efforts of dozens of powerful senators, ten congressional committees, former senior government officials, and POGO to at least compensate Mr. Barlow with modest relief.
In 1998, following seven years of congressionally directed investigations by three Inspector Generals (IGs) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a virtually unanimous bipartisan majority in Congress, along with the President of the United States, concluded that Mr. Barlow deserved to be compensated with relief. But a bill to pay him minimal damages was blocked when the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a highly questionable move, bowed to the objections of a single Senator, John Warner (R-VA), and sent Mr. Barlowand his pro bono attorney, the Honorable Paul Warnke, on a million dollar wild goose chase in a federal claims court where the Executive Branch blocked all evidence of crimes against the Congress (in the Senate's own court case) through improper use of the president's State Secrets Privilege (SSP). The long overdue bust of the A.Q. Khan network in 2004, which Barlow had tried to shut down 22 years ago at great personal cost, provided new impetus for justice, and last year a bipartisan majority crafted yet another amendment to provide a modest pension to Mr. Barlow, who has worked quietly as a consultant to the intelligence community for many years. Once again, this effort was blocked by the suspicious activities of only a few anonymous Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. By refusing to allow the amendment to pass, the Committee is denying relief to a patriotic intelligence officer whose life has been destroyed in an apparent attempt to protect Executive Branch officials who lied to Congress and jeopardized national security.
Click here to return to the Richard Barlow Resource Page.
