Washington DC, Nov. 8 -- Former CIA officer Richard Barlow has revealed that senior officials in the US State Department secretly tipped off the Pakistani government about an undercover American operation to arrest a retired Pakistani general involved in nuclear smuggling during the 1980s.

In an interview with ANI, Barlow recounted that the operation, jointly run by the CIA and US Customs, was targeting a Pakistani agent named Arshad Parvez, who was attempting to purchase 25 metric tons of Maraging 350 steel, a critical material used in uranium enrichment, from a US steel company.

Barlow said Parvez was working under the direction of retired Brigadier General Inam-ul-Haq, a known procurement agent at that time for Pakistan's Khan Resear...