Uranium Do-Over

Uranium Do-Over
The Bush Administration's "confidence" game on North Korea.

Friday, March 2, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Things sure are looking up for Kim Jong Il. The North Korean dictator has already been promised 50,000 tons of fuel oil and eased sanctions in return for one more pledge to give up his nuclear weapons. And now, even before he has to declare all of his nuclear facilities, the Bush Administration appears to be backing down from its own intelligence judgments on North Korea.

That's the meaning of this week's disclosure at a Senate hearing by Administration spook Joseph DeTrani about Pyongyang's uranium enrichment program. Asked for an update by Rhode Island's Jack Reed, the new Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell invited Mr. DeTrani to address the issue. Mr. DeTrani replied that while the U.S. had previously had "high confidence" about the uranium effort, now it was only "at the mid-confidence level."

Keep in mind that the uranium program is separate from the plutonium that Kim has already used to explode a nuclear device. Confronted with U.S. intelligence in 2002, North Korean officials admitted to the secret uranium effort in a face to face meeting with then Assistant Secretary of State Jim Kelly. Such an effort violated both the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Agreed Framework that Kim had signed with the Clinton Administration. The North Koreans have since denied saying that, or having any such program, but U.S. intelligence has claimed to have solid evidence that it did.

What's changed now? Mr. DeTrani didn't elaborate, but the timing of this intelligence walk-down is certainly strange. Under the six-party accord signed in Beijing on February 13, North Korea has 60 days to come clean about all of its nuclear programs and facilities. By telegraphing to Kim that the U.S. has new doubts about his uranium plans, the Bush Administration is all but inviting Kim to declare as little as possible. The flip-flop has all the earmarks of the intelligence community trying to cover its own keister if Kim does precisely that.

This is all the more bizarre given the volumes of public evidence that North Korea's uranium-enrichment program is very real. Following North Korea's admission in 2002, numerous Bush officials made the rounds discussing what they knew. "The enriched uranium issue, some have assumed, is somewhere off in the fog of the distant future. It is not," Mr. Kelly told the Senate in March 2003. "It is only probably a matter of months, and not years, behind the plutonium."

Richard Armitage, then Deputy Secretary of State and hardly a neocon, said at the time that North Korea was acquiring "many more [centrifuges] than was orginally thought." And he added that North Korea had been "intent on going to a full-up production program" starting from "at least" February 2000.

Don't believe Bush officials? How about Pervez Musharraf? In his recent memoir, the Pakistan President discloses that he learned as early as 1999 that North Koreans were canoodling with Pakistani A.Q. Khan to buy uranium-enrichment technology. "I received a report suggesting that some North Korean nuclear experts, under the guise of missile engineers, had arrived" at Pakistan nuclear labs "and were being given secret briefings," Mr. Musharraf writes.

In his book about the A.Q. Khan network, "Shopping for Bombs," BBC reporter Gordon Corera reports that Mr. Musharraf has admitted that "probably a dozen" centrifuges were sent to North Korea from Pakistan, "both plans and complete devices," as well as "blueprints and designs."

And in May 2002, two Germans were convicted in Stuttgart for trying to ship 22 million tons of aluminum tubing to North Korea. The tubing had been ordered by Yun Ho-Jin, Pyongyang's man at (of all places) the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The measurements on the tubing were made to European standards for the kind of vacuum casings used for gas centrifuges to enrich uranium.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported in March 2005 that the U.S. found traces of North Korean UF6, or uranium hexafloride, when it dismantled Libya's nuclear program. The Post said Pyongyang had sold the UF6 to Pakistan, which had later sold it to Libya.

All of this is merely what's on the public record. We understand that intelligence is rarely definitive. But if this is what adds up to "mid-confidence level," what does the CIA need for "high"? And what in the world qualifies as a "slam dunk"?

The bigger issue here is what this intelligence reversal suggests about Bush Administration policy. When the February 13 accord was announced, senior officials assured us that it included "all" North Korean nuclear programs, not just plutonium. But now that the U.S. is embarked on an "arms control process," the pressure to keep making unilateral concessions or overlook Kim's transgressions will be great.

Assume that, in its 60-day declaration, North Korea admits some past attempt to buy centrifuge technology but says it's all been destroyed and there's nothing to inspect. Would President Bush really walk away from the talks, amid the inevitable criticism from China, South Korea and the American media? We think we know where the State Department would come out. Chris Hill, State's negotiator with the North, has already hinted that its uranium program isn't that big a deal.

White House officials say President Bush has earned the benefit of the doubt on North Korea and that he'll insist on dismantling all of its nuclear facilities. We hope he's not relying on the U.S. intelligence community to tell him when that's happened.

OpinionJournal - Featured Article: "
REVIEW & OUTLOOK"