NORTH KOREA AND BILL CLINTON'S FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP, 2 DATES IN HISTORY

North Korea and Bill Clinton's Failure of Leadership, 2 Dates in History

FLASHBACK:
N. Korean missile could reach U.S., intelligence warns
By Bill Gertz
9-29-95

The Western United States could be within range of North Korea's longest-range missile armed with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads by the year 2000, according to U.S. and foreign intelligence assessments. Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, said new information indicates North Korea's Taepo Dong-2 missile, still under development, is an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting U.S. cities and demonstrates the need for rapidly building a national missile defense. A South Korean intelligence official, quoting a Russian assessment, said the Taepo Dong-2 will be deployed by 2000 with a maximum range of 6,200 miles once warhead modifications and technical improvements are made, the newspaper Seoul Shinmun reported Sept. 11.

Mr. Kyl, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he investigated the report and found it "not inconsistent with some information that I have."

"The bottom line is that if the information is even close to the truth, it presents for the first time a very serious and relatively quick challenge to U.S. sovereignty," he said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimates the Taepo Dong-2 will have a range of about 4,650 miles and confirmed that with a smaller warhead it could reach 6,200 miles, a Pentagon source said.

Information on the North Korean ICBM comes as a House and Senate conference committee is working on provisions of the fiscal 1996 defense authorization about whether the Pentagon should move ahead quickly with deployment of a national missile defense that could defend against such North Korean missiles.

N. Korea Missile Can Hit U.S., CIA Says

washingtonpost.com
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 12, 2003; 4:08 PM

North Korea has an untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the western United States, intelligence officials said Wednesday.

The North Korean missile is a three-stage version of the Taepo Dong 2, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said to reporters. It has not been flight-tested, Jacoby said, leaving some questions about the North Korea's capability to successfully launch the missile.

CIA Director George J. Tenet, who joined Jacoby in briefing the Senate Armed Services Committee, also acknowledged the North Koreans have the capability to reach the western United States with a long-range missile.

However, after their statements, U.S. intelligence officials said North Korea has demonstrated no new missile capabilities in the last year. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Tenet's and Jacoby's statements were based on the same information that led U.S. intelligence to conclude in 2001 that North Korea was close to being able to flight-test a three-stage Taepo Dong 2.

Meanwhile, the U.N. nuclear agency declared North Korea in violation of international treaties, raising the stakes in the standoff by sending the dispute to the Security Council.

The move could lead to punishing sanctions which the North has said it would consider an act of war.

Russia and Cuba refused endorse the measure, saying the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision would detract from a flurry of diplomatic efforts aimed at easing the crisis.

Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the IAEA would continue to press for a peaceful solution, but he said months of intransigence on the part of North Korea's communist regime had left the U.N. nuclear watchdog no choice.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer also sought to downplay the statements on the missiles, saying they were reflecting old intelligence. He said, "This old news is why it's important to proceed with deployment of missile defense and also why the President is focused on multi-lateral diplomatic talks to deal with North Korea."

An unclassified U.S. intelligence estimate, released by CIA officials in December 2001, said the three-stage Taepo Dong 2 missile was late in development and close to flight testing.

But North Korea has held to a voluntary moratorium on flight tests of its long-range missiles, although officials say Pyongyang may renew testing at any time.

The U.S. estimate said such a missile probably could carry a nuclear weapon-sized payload across the Pacific Ocean.

"Technology and time means regimes like North Korea will increasingly have the ability to strike at the United States," Fleischer said .

He said that is why President Bush supports building an anti-missile shield.

"We do have concerns ... about North Korea's missile development programs," Fleischer told reporters.

The revelation was certain to raise questions about Bush's priorities - and whether North Korea or Iraq pose a greater threat to the United States. Baghdad does not possess weapons that can strike America, officials have said.

"They are both important priorities," Fleischer said. "The question is, what are the means best used to deal with each priority."

He said diplomacy has failed to curb Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program for more than a decade, thus Bush made military action a front-and-center option. "That's not the case with North Korea," Fleischer said, saying Bush believes diplomatic pressure can contain North Korea.

Tenet said North Korea probably has one or two nuclear weapons.

The 2001 U.S. government report said a three-stage Taepo Dong could deliver a several-hundred-pound payload from North Korea to targets about 9,300 miles distant - sufficient to strike all of North America.

A two-stage Taepo Dong 2, which would be easier to use successfully, may be able to reach Alaska or Hawaii, it said.

In 1998, the North Koreans attempted to put a satellite into orbit with the launch of a three-stage version of the earlier model of the Taepo Dong. It failed when the third stage did not ignite.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before the House International Relations Committee, said the United States is pressing China to use its leverage with North Korea to persuade it to end its nuclear program. China is the main supplier of foreign assistance and energy aid to North Korea.

"We are doing everything we can to persuade the Chinese that the problem in North Korea is not just a problem between North and the United States. It is between North Korea and the region and North Korea and the world," he said.

© 2003 The Associated Press

Dick Morris: Clinton Knew of North Korean Nukes

NewsMax.com

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 9:48 a.m. EST

Ex-President Bill Clinton knew that North Korea had resumed its nuclear weapons program at least two years before he left the White House - long before he now claims - according to former Clinton White House insider Dick Morris.

Responding to Clinton's profession of ignorance on CNN's "Larry King Live" last Thursday, Morris told Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" last night that he was stunned to hear his old boss make the claim.

"When I hear Bill Clinton saying that he didn't know that North Korea was building bombs in these underground caverns - in 1998, when he was president, the Washington Post published a report that that was the case," Morris said.

"Clinton read the Washington Post," he continued. "If you were the president of the United States and read in the Washington Post that your CIA thought that, would you pick up the phone and call them? Would you ask them?"

In fact, the Post report to which Morris referred went even further, revealing that top administration officials had been briefed on North Korean nuclear weapons activity.

"U.S. intelligence analysts believe about 15,000 North Koreans are at work on a vast, secret underground nuclear facility, a development administration officials say may represent a decision by North Korea to abandon a four-year-old agreement to freeze its nuclear weapons program," the Post reported on Aug. 18, 1998.

"Administration officials who have been briefed on the intelligence data, which includes imagery collected by spy satellites, describe a large-scale tunneling and digging operation in a mountainside about 25 miles northeast of Yongbyon, a former nuclear research center where North Korea is said to have produced enough plutonium for two nuclear weapons."

After citing the Post report, Morris told O'Reilly: "For [Clinton] to take the position he didn't know North Korea was cheating is absolutely disingenuous. Not only did he know, but while he knew, he was pressing Congress to give them food and fuel to honor his '94 agreement [with Pyongyang].

On Thursday the ex-president told Larry King: "We had a tough time with [North Korea], but we got them to end that program and they kept it ended until apparently today they started again. They would have a hundred weapons if we hadn't done that. ... It turns out they had this smaller laboratory program to develop a nuclear bomb with enriched uranium."

Despite her husband's history of bungling the North Korean nuclear situation, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton recently accused President Bush of "mishandling" the crisis in a radio interview with WLIE Radio's Mike Siegel.

To hear Mrs. Clinton attempt to blame Bush for her husband's North Korean nuclear blunder, Click Here.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Clinton Scandals
North Korea

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