NYT for tomorrow on NK: U.S. Aide Sees Arms Advance by North Korea
April 29, 2005
[If you read this article, you will see that Hillary is already starting to play politics with it....Evidently she didn't read this report that was presented during her husband's term....I've linked it MANY times, and not many seem ever to have looked at the 1999 Report to the US House re North Korea....
fas.org
It is a report for the 5 years previous to 1999 and for the five years following 1999. It also states in here that the Sub Committee felt that from the Intel they had at the time, that it was quite possible NK would/did have the capability to send nuclear tiped missiles to the US West Coast Mainland. Where was the New York Times then???? Where has Hillary been? ]
nytimes.com
By DAVID S. CLOUD and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, April 28 - The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency said
Thursday that American intelligence agencies believed North Korea had
mastered the technology for arming its missiles with nuclear warheads, an
assessment that if correct, means the North could build weapons to threaten
Japan and perhaps the western United States.
While Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, the Defense Intelligence Agency chief, said
in Senate testimony that North Korea had been judged to have the
"capability" to put a nuclear weapon atop its missiles, he stopped well
short of saying it had done so, or even that it had assembled warheads small
enough for the purpose. Nor did he give evidence to back up his view during
the public session of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Still, his assessment of North Korea's progress exceeded what officials have
publicly declared before.
When asked by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York during a hearing on
Thursday whether "North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a
nuclear device," Admiral Jacoby responded, "The assessment is that they have
the capability to do that, yes ma'am."
At a White House news conference on Thursday, President Bush said that given
the uncertainties, he was worried about the progress North Korea had made on
its nuclear program under its leader, Kim Jong Il. "There is concern about
his capacity to deliver," he said. "We don't know if he can or not, but I
think it's best when dealing with a tyrant like Kim Jong Il to assume that
he can."
In 2003, the United States warned South Korea and Japan that satellite
imagery had identified an advanced nuclear testing site in a remote corner
of North Korea where equipment had been set up to test conventional
explosives that could compress a plutonium core and set off a compact
nuclear explosion.
Since then, American investigators have been pressing Pakistan for details
about the kind of technology North Korea might have been given, perhaps in
conjunction with visits to Pakistani nuclear sites. North Korea supplied
Pakistan with many missiles it for its nuclear arsenal.
Building a nuclear warhead that can be delivered by a missile requires the
technical sophistication to make it small and light. North Korea has never
conducted a test that would prove it could manufacture a warhead, though in
recent days anxiety has risen in Washington and among North Korea's Asian
neighbors that the country could conduct a test in an effort to force the
world to deal with it as a nuclear state.
To field a working nuclear missile, North Korea would also have to conduct
new tests of its missiles themselves and of their payloads, including such
complex components as heat shields for re-entry of the warhead. North
Korea's last significant missile test, in 1998, overshot Japan and would not
have been able to reach United States territory.
North Korea is considered one of the most opaque intelligence targets for
American analysts, and the absence of reliable human spies has made it more
difficult to understand the progress of its program.
Admiral Jacoby said North Korea's ability to deliver a nuclear warhead to
the continental United States remained "a theoretical capability" because
its Taepo Dong 2 missile had not been flight tested. But he added that
American intelligence agencies judged that a two-stage Taepo Dong could
strike parts of the American West Coast and that a three-stage variant could
probably reach all of North America.
In an interview on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton called Admiral Jacoby's statement
"the first confirmation, publicly, by the administration that the North
Koreans have the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device that can
reach the United States," adding, "Put simply, they couldn't do that when
George Bush became president, and now they can."
At his news conference, Mr. Bush defended his decision to pursue the talks
in an effort to stop North Korea's nuclear program and noted that the United
States was exploring options including taking the issue to the United
Nations Security Council, if the North did not return to the talks.
"It's better to have more than one voice sending the same message to Kim
Jong Il. It's the best way to deal with this issue diplomatically," he said.
"We'll continue to do so."
In a statement, a Defense Intelligence Agency spokesman, Donald Black, said
Admiral Jacoby "was reiterating" testimony he gave last month before the
committee, in which he said the Taepo Dong 2 intercontinental ballistic
missile "may be ready for testing," adding, "This missile could deliver a
nuclear warhead to parts of the United States." He did not say then that the
North Koreans were able to make a warhead that the missile could hurl such a
distance.
Analysts with experience in Asia said the importance of Admiral Jacoby's
conclusion was striking.
"This has to constrain the president's ability to deal with the North Korean
nuclear problem," said Jonathan Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific
Studies at the Naval War College who has written extensively on the North's
program. "If you believe that Japanese territory is potentially at risk to a
North Korean nuclear-armed missile, it has to change the calculation."
If Mr. Bush accepts that judgment, it could significantly complicate choices
he must make in the next several months. North Korea declared publicly for
the first time in February that it had nuclear weapons. This month, American
spy satellites detected that the North had shut down its nuclear power plant
at Yongbyon and could be preparing to reprocess its spent fuel, a move that
could result in the production of enough plutonium to build up to three more
nuclear bombs.
Admiral Jacoby said American intelligence agencies had increased their
assessment of the current North Korean arsenal's size, but he gave no
numbers. Other government officials, in interviews off the record, have
estimated that North Korea's arsenal has increased by six weapons' worth of
plutonium since the North threw international inspectors out of the country
in early 2003, and began turning a stockpile of 8,000 spent fuel rods into
plutonium.
The six-nation talks have been stalled since last June. China has played
host to three inconclusive rounds of the negotiations, which involved the
United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, said American
estimates of the range of the Taepo Dong 2 and other North Korean missiles
had nearly doubled in recent years. The increases, he said, may reflect
American intelligence agencies' improving understanding of the help the
North Korea has received from Pakistan. |
