Clinton Bankrolled North Korea's Nuke Program
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NewsMax.com
Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002 8:09 a.m. EDT
In what now looks like one of the worst foreign policy blunders of the postwar era in light of North Korea's acknowledgement yesterday that it's working to develop nuclear weapons, the Clinton administration poured billions of dollars in foreign aid into the rogue state throughout the 1990s - and earmarked a substantial portion of that aid for North Korea's nuclear energy program.
As NewsMax.com reported in February:
A country designated by President Bush as part of the "axis of evil" received more foreign aid during President Clinton's two terms than any other country in the Asia-Pacific region, a congressional study concluded two years ago.
House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., said the study conducted by his panel found that under the Clinton administration, North Korea became the "largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the Asia-Pacific region," according to the committee's report as quoted by CNSNews.com.
"In an astonishing reversal of nine previous U.S. administrations, the Clinton-Gore administration, in 1994, committed not only to provide foreign aid for North Korea, but to earmark that aid primarily for the construction of nuclear reactors worth up to $6 billion," the Cox Committee contended.
The committee's report added:
"The U.S.-funded light water reactors in North Korea will accumulate plutonium in spent fuel at the rate of about 17,300 ounces per year, enough to produce 65 nuclear bombs a year.
"The Clinton-Gore policy, it is now clear, has severely worsened the threat that North Korea poses to the world by systematically rewarding Kim Jong-il for his most dangerous misconduct. It has provided North Korea with an increased capacity for the development of nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them."
Cox, along with fellow congressmen Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., sent a letter to President Bush in February calling for the U.S. to cancel the nuke deal and urged him to spotlight the North Korean threat during his then-upcoming visit to Japan, South Korea and China.
Beyond aiding North Korea's nuke program, the Clinton administration provided 500,000 metric tons of fuel oil per year to the communist dictatorship's state-run military-industrial base, a figure that was "almost double what North Korea's civilian economy can use," the Cox Committee said.
In 1999, Rep. Cox conducted a separate investigation into China's acquisition of U.S. nuclear secrets during the Clinton years, concluding that the People's Liberation Army had, for the first time in its history, acquired the capacity to strike the continental United States with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
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Clinton Scandals
North KoreaCongressman Cussin' Mad Over Clinton-Korea Charges
NewsMax.com
Friday Oct. 18, 2002; 10:28 p.m. EDT
Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-NY, blew his stack during a radio debate with Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., on Thursday over charges that ex-President Clinton gave North Korea the bomb - growing so agitated at one point that his cursing had to be bleeped from the air.
Reacting to a report released in February by Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., charging that the Clinton administration's decision to fund North Korea's nuclear energy program netted the rogue state enough plutonium to produce 65 nuclear bombs, Ackerman told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity:
"First, those numbers at the end are absolutely untrue - scientifically impossible. Not from a lightwater reactor." The New York Democrat then asserted, "The Cox report (on Korea) is much discredited, by the way. There are other reports that contradict it which have been put out."
Undeterred by Ackerman's claims, Rep. Burton insisted it was a serious mistake for the Clinton administration to bankroll North Korea's nuclear program, telling Hannity, "They were not our friends. We should never have taken that step in the first place."
But the debate grew particularly heated when Burton compared the ex-president's North Korea bomb blunder to the Clinton administration's Chinagate scandal.
"During the time that Clinton was in office the security was so lax that almost every one of our nuclear secrets was stolen by the Chinese Communists," the Republican complained.
"So now every American man, woman and child is more at risk than they've ever been before," he added. "The blunders that took place in that administration were legion and I don't know how Gary can defend them."
The remark seemed to irk Ackerman, who responded heatedly, "There seems to be a whole industry building up bashing Bill Clinton. I think you guys have to move off of it."
When Hannity refused to change the subject, Ackerman remarked, "I don't know if you've seen the bulletin but we have a new president and a new administration."
But Rep. Burton continued to draw parallels with the Chinagate scandal.
"President Clinton received money for his campaign from the head of the Chinese military intelligence agency," he contended. "He got $300,000 from this fellow and we had testimony from our committee that verified that."
"Danny, c'mon. Give me a break," Ackerman shot back.
"Let me say this," the New York Democrat added moments later. "I think (Clinton) was one of our great presidents. I think you guys are just trying to smear him to cover-up for the inadequacies of the administration succeeding him."
Ackerman then blamed President Bush's "hatred" of Clinton for his decision to scuttle what he said were successful talks with North Korea, causing Pyongyang to "go ballistic."
"This president came into office and the first thing he did in foreign policy is start to reverse everything that Bill Clinton did," he charged. "Hating Bill Clinton was an excuse for foreign policy in his mind."
"I'll tell you one thing he's not doing," Burton shot back. "He's not bombing aspirin factories over in the Sudan. He's going after real terrorists now. He's not letting somebody like Osama bin Laden run around after he attacked the World Trade Center the first time."
The remark sent Ackerman through the roof.
"I can't believe this unmitigated B.S. of trying to blame Bill Clinton for bombing the World Trade Center," he protested. "Have you guys no morals, have you no scruples, have you no conscience?"
At that point the New York Democrat blurted out an obscenity that Hannity was able to catch with the station's seven second delay.
"That's the first time I've had to dump a congressman for cursing on the air," the radio host announced, before telling Ackerman, "I want you to know politically I just saved you from a big controversy."
Listen to NewsMax.com's exclusive audiotape of Bill Clinton admitting last February that he turned down Sudan's offer to extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S.
Read the story behind the explosive audio that the mainstream press refuses to cover, Click Here.
Editor's Note: New Book from NewsMax - "CATASTROPHE" Reveals Clinton's Role in 9/11 Click Here.
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Evidence Clinton Knew About North Korea's Nuclear Violations
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Saturday, Oct. 19, 2002WASHINGTON – The United States is not as prepared "as it should be” if America has to fight Iraq, North Korea and China all at once. Furthermore, there is evidence that the Clinton administration did know about the North Korean nuclear buildup, despite its protestations to the contrary.
"We are not as ready as we should be,” Frank Gaffney, president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, said at a briefing under the auspices of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR).
At the same gathering, Adam Mersereau, an attorney and Marine veteran, said the current military had been undermined by three factors:
The weakening of the "warlike ethos” whereby training standards have been compromised to accommodate more women in the military.
The zero-tolerance mentality. Commanders have been so severely punished for military accidents that many of them "are backing off” from necessary training. The military is too small. In the 1990s, "the military was slashed to the bone.” "We don’t have the numbers,” said Gaffney, who served as a high official in the Reagan administration’s Defense Department, at the time of a military buildup that helped win the cold War. The Clinton slashing of military strength, he opined, "is particularly egregious in terms of ships. That is where we most likely would demonstrate presence and begin projecting power in distant places around the world.”
The U.S. is "on a fast track to a 260-ship fleet,” Gaffney observed, "and that’s simply not enough to maintain the kind of global presence that we really need to have in peacetime to deter wars.”
Horrible Scenario
Mersereau had posited a situation where, while the U.S. is fighting Iraq to head off Saddam Hussein’s intent to use chemical and biological warfare against Americans, North Korea attacks South Korea and China decides it’s time for the long-awaited showdown over Taiwan.
"Even one nuclear bomb in the hands of Kim Jong Il is one too many,” Gaffney told the briefing. He noted irony in the fact that former President Jimmy Carter was instrumental in negotiating that 1994 nuclear agreement, and that just days after Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, North Korea admitted it had not lived up to its word.
Word of Dishonor
When the Clinton administration announced the agreement in 1994, more than one person pointed out at the time that the assumption that the militantly Stalinist regime would abide by its terms was based on little more than blind faith.
In a statement issued Friday, David A. Keene, co-chairman of Americans for Missile Defense, declared, "The North Koreans’ persistent eschewing of weapons inspectors undoubtedly raised red flags,” but left-wingers in Congress and the Clinton administration "believed for years that they offered protection.”
Now they admit they have been secretly building a massive arms production program. Given their decades-long record of deceit, added Keene, "is anyone surprised that they couldn’t be trusted?”
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Wendy Sherman, one of her assistants in the Clinton State Department, are now saying they did not know that the North Koreans were lying. They simply assumed the Stalinist nation was abiding by its word, despite experiences with communists, ignoring the fact that it was Lenin, the father of 20th-century communism, who once said treaties were "like pie crusts,” to be broken.
Albright's Not So Bright
Also on Friday, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh produced a speech by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay showing that as far back as 1998, intelligence sources were contradicting Albright’s assertion at the time that the North Koreans were not in violation of the Carter-negotiated treaty.
Way back in 1998, DeLay had called for the suspension of the $4 billion to $6 billion agreement to build two light-water nuclear reactors and to provide other assistance to North Korea until the president certifies that the North Korean government has agreed to cease its efforts to build these weapons and the means to divert them.
Limbaugh commented that Wendy Sherman had "made a buffoon of herself” by insisting the Clinton administration had no reason to believe North Korea was breaking its word, despite warnings from "Defense Intelligence Agency people, CIA people,” as DeLay was reporting in 1998.
"They’re all circling the wagons to protect Clinton,” Limbaugh told his listeners.
And now, North Korea boldly admits it has nuclear weapons just as the U.S. is preparing to go to war with Iraq, whose madman dictator prepares nuclear, biological and chemical weapons to attack the free world.
Amplifying on his statement about the need to maintain military strength to deter wars and keep the peace, Frank Gaffney told the CMR briefing: "I am as anxious as anyone to avoid having to fight anyone if it can be avoided. I simply believe that the alternative to fighting, appeasement is a formula for making things worse.
"If we can deter people from picking a fight with us or trying to exploit [a situation where we are distracted], that is very much to be preferred over having to fight them simultaneously.”
During the Nazi buildup in Europe in the late 1930s, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned that if you fail to confront an aggressor from the vantage point of strength, you may ultimately have to confront an even stronger enemy from the vantage point of relative weakness.
Security analysts believe that is a lesson of history the Clinton administration ignored, as is clear from its refusal to face the North Korean nuclear buildup despite warnings from its own intelligence sources.
As a NewsMax book has documented, this very attitude is Clinton’s "Bitter Legacy.”
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Editor's note:
"CATASTROPHE" Reveals Bill Clinton`s Role in 9/11 - Click Here to find out more