F-16 sale indisputably violated the NPT and the Solarz and Pressler Amendments. He drew on details available to the intelligence community about how Pakistan had used the F-16s it already possessed. He then learned that Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Hughes had given testimony before Congress that stated the exact opposite, including that using F-16s to deliver nuclear weapons "far exceeded the state of art in Pakistan." Barlow knew this was not true. He checked the files and found that his reports had been “mysteriously substituted or altered” and "willfully falsified by officials at the Office of the Secretary of Defense", including then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and then-Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Scooter Libby. Barlow then told his superiors that congress had been misled and urged that the record be corrected. Within days, Barlow was fired. Events following dismissal Barlow is not a whistleblower in the traditional sense, because he did not release classified information to the public. Instead, he lawfully disclosed in a classified briefing to a committee of the US Congress information that his management did not want shared with Congress. Because of his lawful and protected disclosures, he was fired for asking his managers to correct the record when blatantly false statements had been made to Congress. This information became public as a result of a legal action that Barlow filed for wrongful termination. That suit received considerable attention, including from the United States Congress. In this he was defended by Paul Wolfowitz who said "there have been times on that issue when I specifically sensed that people thought we could somehow construct a policy on a house of cards that the Congress wouldn't know what the Pakistanis were doing". He concluded that the retaliation Barlow had faced was "wrong". Following congressionally ordered investigations, the inspector general at the State Department concluded that Barlow had been fired as a reprisal. However, the inspectors general at the CIA and the Defense Department stated that the Pentagon was within its rights to fire Barlow. A final investigation by Congress' own Government Accountability Office was completed in 1997 and "largely vindicated" Barlow, who had his security clearance restored. During the investigation, the State department inspector-general, Sherman Funk, described Barlow as "one of the most brilliant analysts I've ever seen". His security clearances were restored, but he was unable to get rehired permanently by the government, presumably because